Early voting draws 2,400 in first five hours
First-day turnout on pace to pass ’06
More than 2,400 voters cast ballots during the first five hours of early voting Monday in the Nov. 3 general election, the Garland County Election Commission said.
Commission Chairman Gene Haley said the Hot Springs Convention Center, 134 Convention Blvd., the election commission building, 649-A Ouachita Ave., and LakePointe Church, 1343 Albert Pike
Road, were the busiest of the seven early voting sites, with more than 400 votes cast at each location by early afternoon.
Shortly after 1 p. m., 2,476 voters had checked in on the county’s electronic poll books. The county has more than 60,000 registered voters.
“Downtown we’ve had a line out across the parking lot almost to the road all morning,” Haley, referring to the election commission building, said. “The Convention Center, because it has so much more room, it’s not too bad. LakePointe Church is kind of the same way. There’s a lot of room inside. The three of those are running neck and neck.”
Haley said first-day turnout was on pace to exceed the 2016 general election.
“Our total right now was the total at the end of the day,” he said of
first-day voting in the 2016 election. “I think we’re going to surpass that.”
Turnout at the two northern Garland County early voting sites was also strong, with 340 voter check-ins at Unitarian Universalist Church, 403 Barcelona Road in Hot Springs Village, and 300 at Community Baptist Church, 3518 Highway 7 north, by early afternoon. The former is the first early voting location the election commission has opened inside the Village gates.
The Hot Springs Mall, 4501 Central Ave., and First Baptist Church of Royal, 7402 Albert Pike Road, are also early voting sites. The seven sites are open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays. Hours for the last day of early voting Nov. 2 are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Monday was also the first day county election boards could begin processing paperwork returned with absentee ballots, thanks to the governor’s executive order that allowed election workers to begin processing the forms a week earlier than what’s stipulated in the state election code. Haley said about 3,600 of the roughly 5,200 absentee ballots the county mailed had been returned as of Monday.
Haley said election workers began opening the outer envelopes and processing the forms Monday morning in Room 200 of the Garland County Court House. Ballot-only envelopes are set aside for counting next week if the voter statement forms returned with them are filled out correctly. The state election code doesn’t allow the counting of absentee ballots to begin until 8:30 a.m. on Election Day, but an executive order issued by the governor allowed counting to begin Oct. 27.
“As we receive them at the clerk’s office, we’ve divided them into batches of roughly 100 ballots,” Haley said. “We’re working one batch at a time and verifying our counts after each batch.”
Haley said five of the 200 ballots that had been processed by early afternoon were marked as provisional. Three didn’t include an ID or signature on the optional verification of ID section at the bottom of the voter statement form. The signature on one voter statement didn’t match the signature submitted with the absentee application.
Haley said there’s no time to notify voters by mail that their ballots have been marked provisional.
“The dilemma is just because we happened to open up these batches today and we have time to send them a letter, what happens on the last day when we don’t have time to send them a letter,” Haley said. “We have to treat all votes equally. That’s the problem with absentees. They don’t follow the instructions, and we can’t count it.
“We have to treat every voter exactly the same. We can’t notify one without notifying everyone of them. It’s going to be impossible to do that if they turn in their ballot the day before Election Day.”
Oct. 27 is the deadline for the county clerk’s office to receive absentee ballot applications by mail. Nov. 2 is the deadline to apply for a ballot in person at the clerk’s office and for ballots to be returned in person. Election Day is the deadline for the clerk’s office to receive ballots by mail. Ballots received after Election Day won’t be counted, unless they are sent by county voters living overseas.
Those voters have until Nov. 13 to return their ballots, according to the state’s election calendar.
New election commissioner
Haley said the Democratic Party of Garland County elected Kay Ekey last week to replace Elmer Beard as the party’s representative on the three-person election commission. Haley said Beard resigned.
Ekey is a veteran poll worker who served as a chief judge at polling sites prior to joining the county’s election panel, Haley said. The party that controls the majority of the state’s seven constitutional offices also holds two out of the three seats on county election boards. Republicans have controlled all seven offices since January 2015.