ID ruling prompts updates for polls

State to send out worker guidance

The Arkansas Board of Election Commissioners met Friday to discuss how to respond now that the state’s voter- ID law has been declared unconstitutional.

Board Director Justin Clay said Friday that the staff revised instructions for poll workers that were scheduled to be sent to counties by the end of the day and was updating other forms that would be sent early next week. The board is tasked with promoting fair, orderly elections; assisting candidates, election administrators and others in education and specialized training; and monitoring compliance with state and federal election laws.

“Essentially we’re going to just revert back to ID procedures as they were prior to Jan. 1, 2014, when Act 595 went into effect,” he said. “We’re going to send out replacement pages for our poll-worker guides to reflect what those procedures are.”

A.J. Kelly, deputy secretary of state for elections, legal services, and business and commercial services, said the office has had several staff meetings since the state Supreme Court decision Wednesday to make sure information is sent out to county clerks, election staff and county election commissioners quickly.

“In our meetings, what we are doing is prioritizing our distribution of instructions,” Kelly said Friday. “The instructions for early voting are going to be distributed today without question … and then instructions for counting of election ballots and postelection processing will be distributed in a timely manner,

but not today, more likely Monday or Tuesday.”

In Pulaski County, election officials will mail out new training procedures to the more than 800 poll workers scheduled to work the coming election, along with letters explaining that voters are no longer required to submit photo identification. County election officials have already had phone conversations with each of the election officials presiding over the early voting sites, Election Director Bryan Poe said.

A few voters will still be asked to produce some form of identification, although it won’t have to include the voter’s picture. For example, Kelly said that if a voter registers at a new address and the old address isn’t removed from the registration list, he could be asked to provide an ID at the poll.

Under Arkansas law, voters must produce identification at the time they register to vote. The law allows election staff members to require first-time voters who registered through the mail and did not provide an ID at that time to show some valid form of ID when they vote for the first time.

Those few voters who need to produce ID but are unable to do so will be allowed to cast a provisional ballot, Kelly said.

A voter-certification statement included with absentee ballots will also be altered to remove references to the photo ID requirement, a secretary of state staff member said.

The Supreme Court ruling found that Act 595 violated the state constitution by adding a voter qualification — the showing of photo IDs — to the long- established qualifications set in the constitution.

The state elections board and secretary of state’s office had spent more than a year training county election officials to comply with the new law, which went into effect in January.