Early voting kicks off statewide

Early voting has begun in Union County and throughout Arkansas.

Union County Clerk Shannon Phillips said anyone interested in voting early will need to bring their photo ID to the county clerk’s office in the Union County Courthouse to cast a ballot.

Early voting is available from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. Phillips said on the last day of early voting, Nov. 5, the office will close at 5 p.m.

Phillips said casting a ballot during the early voting period typically takes about five to 10 minutes.

On Monday, Phillips said there were some initial issues because the voting machines had not been programmed correctly and had to be reprogrammed.

“We had to wait for the election commissioners to come in and test them and check them,” Phillips said. “We had maybe 20 people that had to vote a paper ballot and we had one machine, so it was really slow for a little while this morning, but we got it up and running.”

Union County voters will see a several contested local races on the ballot, in addition to a congressional race and several statewide races. Contested local races include:

Union County judge,

Union County clerk,

Union County coroner, and

El Dorado mayor.

There are also races set for the District 1 Union County justice of the peace seat, El Dorado City Council seats in Ward 1 and Ward 4 and several contested mayoral and council races in the other cities in Union County.

Statewide early voting

Arkansas election officials have not predicted how many of the state’s nearly 1.8 million registered voters will cast a ballot in this year’s election.

A Democrat running for secretary of state in Arkansas was left off one county’s ballot as early voting began on Monday, prompting officials to temporarily shutter polling sites as they scrambled to fix the problem.

The four early voting sites in Garland County were temporarily closed part of the morning after complaints that Susan Inman, the Democrat running for secretary of state, was not listed on the touchscreen ballot, County Election Commission Chairman Gene Haley said. Before the problem was discovered, 222 ballots without Inman’s name had been cast. The sites reopened after Inman’s name was added.

“That’s 222 votes I may not have gotten and every vote counts,” said Inman, who’s running against Republican state Land Commissioner John Thurston. “We’re hopeful this has not been a situation in any other county.”

Inman and Haley said there’s no recourse for the voters who already cast a ballot without the name, and that voters need to tell election officials if

something is missing or wrong on the ballot. A spokesman for the secretary of state’s office said it had not heard of similar problems in other counties.

The Arkansas Democratic Party filed a complaint Thursday afternoon with the state Board of Election Commissioners over the ballot mistake and the sites’ temporary closure.

Haley said the problem occurred when officials had to re-enter every candidate’s name after some of the contests weren’t printing correctly. Haley said Thurston’s name had also been misspelled on the nowcorrected

ballots. Haley said the county’s absentee ballots included Inman’s name.

The midterm includes a bid by Democrats to flip to a Republicanheld congressional seat in central Arkansas. Democratic challenger Clarke Tucker is trying to unseat Republican Rep. French Hill in the 2nd District, which includes Little Rock and seven central Arkansas counties.

Rupal Bhakta, a physician from Little Rock, was among the first to early vote on Monday morning. Bhakta, 37, is 37 weeks pregnant and said she cast her ballot early because she wasn’t

sure if she’d be able to on election day.

“What this last set of elections have done for this country drew me out more than anything else,” said Bhakta, who said she voted for Tucker.

Butch Penney, a homebuilder from Roland who also voted in downtown Little Rock, said he voted for Hill “because I don’t need any more Democrats.” Penney said he also voted for a ballot measure legalizing casinos in four Arkansas counties.

“I don’t gamble, but if somebody wants to put their money across the table, let them have at it,” Penney said.