Making Sense of the Closed Polls in Arkansas

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Saturday June 05, 2010 · 8:18 PM PDT

2010/06/05 · 20:18

I was unfortunately away from the computer for most of the day today as the events unfolded in Garland County. ARDem at Blue Arkansas did a great job of keeping people posted. However, there still seems to be a lot of confusion as to what happened today and the days preceding. I hope this diary will clear up some of the confusion over the issue and give a clearer picture of why this is important and what we need to prepare for in the future.

To sum up, the Garland County Election Commission decided some time in March that if a runoff election occurred, they would open only 2 polling locations for the runoff out of over 40 polling locations used for the primary. While I currently am unsure of when anyone in either campaign was aware of this, I do know that this became a hot issue on Friday when word spread of the possible disenfranchisement of thousands of voters in Garland County.

Many people, including people here, made calls to the election commission and asked that they open more polling locations. Bill Halter himself marched down to the commission's office with his supporters and got the commission to agree to open one polling location on Saturday to help the situation. However, on Saturday (today) morning, no polling locations were open as hundreds of voters were unable to vote when they arrived.

The Garland County Election Committee Chairman, Charles Tapp, who had promised a voting location would be open today explained that he was forbade by law from opening the voting location.

Thanks to TheCrey777 at Youtube:

So, after having promised the location would be open and the statement being printed in the local newspaper, they did not open the polling location. If you watched the videos above, you see that he cites a state law that says he cannot hold a poll open on the weekend without 10 days prior notice and while the county clerk's office is not open. Neither of those requirements were met.

That may be the case, but the lack of polling locations and the confusion generated in local voters is causing quite a stir on the ground. TheCrey777 at youtube uploaded a few videos of voters attempting to vote at one of the polling locations today. One elderly lady states that her disabled neighbor usually votes at the church near his house and will not be able to make it to one of the only two polling locations to vote on Tuesday.

An elderly voter talks about the disenfranchisement (video wouldn't embed for some reason).

It may be the case that Tapp made an honest mistake for Saturday. It is also possible that the decision to open only two polling locations on Tuesday is an honest mistake. Perhaps he does not recognize how this is a burden for voters. The problem is that these are mistakes that need to be corrected. It is too late for Saturday, the day is over. However, they still can open other polling locations on Tuesday to alleviate the coming flood of disenfranchisement and to make up for the snafu today. Tapp’s next step needs to be announcing the opening of additional polling places on Tuesday. That is how he corrects the situation, nothing else will do at this point.

Now, to emphasize why this is important I will highlight two main points:

Every time we have some election problem, the Democratic campaign usually ignores the problem until after the election when they are then too scared to say anything because they might be viewed as a sore loser. It is important to do everything we can about voter disenfranchisement BEFORE an election so that we can try to avoid the problem rather than complain about it later. Even though I am very hopeful that Halter will win without Garland County, that does not mean that voters are not being disenfranchised. We should not only fight these problems when they mean we might lose the election, we should fight them anytime some voters are prevented or severely discouraged from voting.

Voters in Garland County will have to put up with long lines and hopefully, the two locations will somehow be able to handle the approximately 7,500 voters on election day. That is what Tapp is banking on. However, it is clear that Tapp is ignoring the other problems associated with only opening two polling locations.

He says that the opening of only two polling locations was not an attempt to hurt minority voters, but declined to answer a question regarding how it does hurt minority voters.

There in lies the basic problem. Opening only two polling locations isn't just about, "Can they handle that many people?" I do seriously doubt that they can. Voters tend to show up before and after work. These locations will have to serve thousands of voters each in just a few hours to avoid amazingly long lines and sending people away without being able to vote.

However, it is also about, "How many poor, rural, disabled, elderly, and minority voters will be discouraged from voting because their local polling locations will be closed?" That is the question that Tapp ignored and it is the main issue with the commission's plans at this point. As we saw earlier in the video, the elderly voter states that her disabled neighbor will not be able to vote on Tuesday because he has no way to make it to one of the two polls that are open.

Keeping our elections fair and ensuring voters are not disenfranchised is a necessary part of our Democracy. People need to have their heads up for issues like this in the future so that we can identify them before the election and do the most we can about them before election day.

For this issue, it looks very unlikely that Tapp will open more polling locations. What we can do is help Halter with his GOTV effort in Garland County to ensure that people know where to vote and have the ability to get there.