County’s election panel drafts polling place policy

The Garland County Election Commission has drafted a new polling place agreement after a campaign worker complained about not being able to be an electioneer at a local church during last month’s elections.

Jim Keary said Crossgate Church told him he couldn’t hold signs supporting Circuit Judge Kara Petro’s campaign for Division 2 district judge. Crossgate, 3100 E. Grand Ave. in Hot Springs, replaced Bates Community Church as one of the county’s 16 election-day vote centers for the March 5 preferential primaries and nonpartisan general election.

Keary said in a letter to County Attorney John Howard that he informed the commission about the prohibition March 14.

“(Commission Chairman/ Election Coordinator Gene Haley’s) response was that the complaint would affect his ability to find polling places,” Keary said in the letter.

Howard said church leadership confirmed Keary’s account.

“(It) did not want to be seen as engaging in politics with the appearance of endorsing any candidate,” he said in a March 19 letter to the commission.

Keary argued that by agreeing to be a polling place, the church had consented to allowing electioneering beyond 100 feet from the building where voters enter to cast ballots. State law prohibits campaigning inside that radius.

Citing a 2011 attorney general’s opinion, Howard told the commission that political speech can be permitted outside the radius if the owner of the private property has agreed to host a polling location. The opinion was in response to the Jefferson County Election Commission asking if campaigning was prohibited outside the 100-foot perimeter controlled by the commission.

“To the extent that the owner of property has acceeded to the designation of property by the election commission as a polling place, that property should be available for the reasonable posting of campaign signs, subject only to the above discussed proscription against electioneering within 100 feet of the entrance to the polling site,” the opinion stated.