County sends out corrected voter registration cards

County Clerk Sarah Smith said Friday her office has nearly finished sending out corrected voter registration cards to county voters, mostly in the Hot Springs Village area.

“We’re working on it. I’ll have the Village finished by this weekend and hopefully we’ll have all new cards out by Tuesday,” Smith said.

Human error and a complex computerized electoral redistricting system are said to be the reasons why the voters were assigned to wrong voting precincts.

According to election commission statistics, there are 26 polling locations covering 175 precincts in the county, and 59,759 registered voters. Some voters were assigned polling places miles from their residences.

Smith said the voter registration card correction effort is on schedule.

“After I do the Village, I’ll start doing the areas around the Village,” she said. “I plan to go back through every precinct.”

Smith did not know Friday exactly how many corrected voter registration cards had been mailed out to affected Garland County residents.

“There were quite a few in the Village,” the county clerk said. “It’s been a couple hundred people for sure but I don’t know the number.”

Smith said most of the voter registration issues occurred in Hot Springs Village because of the “sheer volume of streets” in the community.

She said the revised voter registration cards were not accompanied by information explaining why the initial cards were inaccurate.

“We’re just sending them new cards,” Smith said. “We’re moving right along.”

Smith said her office mailed out the original voter registration cards “thinking that we were sending voters to the right place.”

“We have since found out that there were mistakes and we are fixing them,” she said earlier this week. “To expect that there weren’t going to be mistakes is unreasonable, in my opinion.”

Smith said April 20 was the deadline for county clerks in Arkansas to mail registration cards to voters. The cards must be mailed out 30 days prior to the May 22 preferential primary.

The distribution of the corrected voter registration cards came just over a week before early voting begins May 7 for the preferential primary.