SusanG recently front-paged
the distressing story of voting (and marital) irregularity roiling Arkansas. For those of you living under a rock the last 48 hours, here's a recap of the critical details:
* Local bar owner Randy Wooten runs for mayor.
* Roxanne Wooten (his wife) waits at courthouse for official election results: Zero votes tallied for Randy Wooten.
* Roxanne returns home to ask Randy "did you vote for yourself?" He confirms he did.
* Randy Wooten receives reports from numerous others (8 or 9) they also voted for him.
* Unreported, yet much speculated upon, is why Ms. Roxanne Wooten had to ask her husband if he voted for himself to confirm a zero vote count as inaccurate. [Think about it...]
BREAKING UPDATE: ABC9 in Memphis, TN reports Randy Wooten is filing a formal protest.
More background from the original AP article
Poinsett County Election Commissioner Junaway Payne has stated "It's our understanding from talking with the secretary of state's office that a court order would have to be obtained in order to open the machine and check the totals," Payne said. "The votes were cast on an electronic voting machine, but paper ballots were available."
If Randy's protest is unsuccessful, a Nov. 28 runoff will move forward as scheduled between the top two candidates: incumbent William H. Wood and challenger Ronnie Chatman. They were each credited with 18 votes on Election Day.
No further details are available regarding what action, if any, Randy Wooten took in protest of Roxanne's voting decisions.
Voting Issues Background
Based on a picture from a Poinsett County paper (
http://www.tri-citytribune.com/) covering nearby towns I'm guessing the county's voting machines are an
ES&S iVotronic model (scroll down that page for a picture). That's the model my county uses.
It has a printer that display your choices as your make them on the touch-screen. The print-out disappears inside the machine when you're done. To maintain chain of custody a court order may be required to retrieve the paper print-out.
All joking aside, this could become an interesting test case with the potential to identify a major voting machine problem.
Dale Wright of Marked Tree uses the new electronic voting machines to cast his vote in the election Tuesday. The new machines were available at all polling sites in the county as part of a new law passed in conjunction with the Help America Vote Act. (Tribune photo / Desha Smith)