Matthew Moore: Early voting for the March 3 primary begins on Tuesday, Feb. 17.
For Jennifer Price, this has been front of mind for quite a while. She’s the director of elections for Washington County, and she says there will be plenty of opportunities for early voters.
Jennifer Price: Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and then on Saturdays from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. And then the final Monday before Election Day is from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.
And we have still been able to open up 17 early vote sites for the primary election all across the county. So voters have plenty of opportunity, no matter where you live in the county, to take advantage of at least one day of early voting somewhere close to your home. So we’re always happy to be able to do that. This is a non-presidential primary election year, but this is also the biggest primary ballot I think I’ve ever created for a non-presidential year.
Moore: So one of the things that’s fascinating about a primary election is not only is it the largest one that you think you’ve ever done, but there’s three different ballots available for people this election, right? We’ve got a Republican, we’ve got a Democratic, and we’ve got a nonpartisan ballot.
Price: Yes. So whenever a voter comes in, they have the option of taking one of those three ballots. Of course, if you take a party primary ballot, a Republican or Democratic ballot, that will have the candidates for your party on there, but it will also have the nonpartisan judicial, any school measures. And if you are in the city of Fayetteville, it will have the Fayetteville special election on it.
Now, there is the nonpartisan ballot, and that nonpartisan ballot will just have the judicial general election, the school information and, of course, the city of Fayetteville if you’re in the city of Fayetteville.
A lot of times when voters come in, though, they get a little confused by that nonpartisan ballot, because most of our voters in Washington County don’t identify as either a Democrat or a Republican. Over 90% of our voters are registered as optional or nonpartisan. So sometimes they’ll take that nonpartisan ballot thinking that it will have everything on it. You know —
Moore: It’ll have both parties.
Price: It’ll have both parties on it because they’re not aligned with a political party. So they don’t take that option. So if you are looking for a political candidate, you will have to make a decision between the Democratic ballot or the Republican ballot. Just knowing that when we get to the general election is when you will find that ballot with both parties on the one ballot.
Moore: One of the other elements that’s changed for Republican primaries is they are now closed primaries in some capacity. Can you give an explanation of what has changed and what looks different there now compared to previously?
Price: Yeah. So there is, and there’s a little bit of confusion about exactly how this is going to work. So in 2025, the Republican Party decided that if you are a registered Democrat, that you would not be eligible to receive a Republican primary ballot. Now, that was a rule change made at the Republican Party level, at the state level. But you also would have needed a legislative change, because there is no legislation that says when a voter can change their party affiliation.
So with this rule change, when a voter comes in who is a registered Democrat — and this doesn’t mean you are a Democrat, it just means that in your voter registration, at some point you registered as a Democrat — when that voter initially comes into the polling location, when our check-in clerk goes to look you up, you will only have two options at the first glance.
So if you’re wanting a Republican ballot, you will need to fill out a new portion of the voter registration form that allows you to change your party affiliation, leave it blank, be nonpartisan or register with a political party. But to receive that Republican ballot, you cannot be registered as a Democrat. But you do have the opportunity during voting to change that and ultimately receive the ballot of your choice. So there’s just an extra step for those voters who are registered Democrat who want a Republican ballot.
If you’re a registered Democrat and you’re requesting that nonpartisan or that Democratic ballot, no issues. If you’re a registered Republican, when you come in to vote, you have all three ballot options available for you. So we do anticipate that this may cause some confusion for voters at the polling location. But we also recognize, too, in Washington County and across the state, the actual number of individuals who are registered with political parties, both Republicans and Democrats, is actually a very small number.
In Washington County, out of the 147,000 registered voters that we have, less than 10,000 of them are actually registered as Democrats. But that same number holds true for Republicans as well. So we don’t anticipate that this will be a large problem for the majority of our voters.
Moore: So let’s walk through a hypothetical here, if we can, for just a moment. Let’s say that a voter comes in and they were a registered Democrat according to their voter registration. They walk into the polling place on Tuesday, the actual day of voting. They show up. They say, “I would like a Republican ballot.” They will have to fill out a piece of paperwork there on site?
Price: Yes. So we’ve made it as easy as possible as we can for those voters because we recognize that this is new. This is new for both our poll workers who are having to process these voters, and it’s also new for voters who’ve always in the past been told it didn’t matter how you were registered to vote, you get the ballot of your choice. And ultimately, voters will receive the ballot of their choice. So what will happen is this voter comes in, we go to check them in, we ask them which ballot they want. If they are a registered Democrat and they tell us they want a Republican ballot, they will visit with the supervisor.
We already have forms filled out with just the highlighted parts they need to fill out. It’s not the whole thing. And then it’s a quick call to the county clerk’s office. They make that change, and then the voter will receive the ballot of their choice. And it is a regular ballot. They’re not having to vote a provisional ballot. They don’t have to do anything after the fact. But it will be one extra step that that voter will have to take to receive the ballot of their choice.
Moore: Based on the numbers you gave, less than 10% of Washington County voters are registered to any party. I imagine you are prepared for this to happen, but you don’t expect it to be a major issue.
Price: Yes. In fact, I feel like we’ve almost overprepared our poll workers because we have spent a lot of time doing our poll worker training discussing this. What we want to assure voters is that you will get the ballot of your choice, and that is super important. So we’ve talked through with our poll workers and supervisors the exact steps that they need to take, because voters may be surprised at this, and this is not how it’s usually been done.
We do think that the impact of this at the polling location should be pretty small, because that’s the assumption that maybe we’re making — that all of these registered Democrats are going to want a Republican ballot. You don’t know exactly which ballot they’re going to take until they come in to vote. But we have prepared for this scenario, and we want voters to know any time there’s any issues at the polling location, don’t leave without getting the opportunity to vote. Talk to the supervisor or call our office, and we can usually handle whatever situation might be occurring.
Moore: What tips or advice do you give to people who are voting in March elections that may be different from your typical November even-year election time?
Price: So definitely for the March election, it is the party’s primary. I mean, we have the nonpartisan judicial general and the annual school, and the city of Fayetteville has their special. But this is the party’s primary. So one of the things I’ve noticed over the years is campaign signs don’t always say which political party a candidate belongs to. So know who you’re wanting to vote for, and for that candidate, which political party do they belong to?
We see a lot of campaign signs that say, “Vote for someone.” In a general election, you don’t have to worry about it. They’re all going to be on your ballot. But for the primary election, you do need to know which candidate falls into which political party. As always, we tell voters to go to VoterView. Check your voter registration. Make sure it’s up to date. Make sure your address is correct. And you can look at all three sample ballots so you’ll know which one you want to take on Election Day.
Moore: And we’ve had this conversation in the past. It bears repeating. You are welcome and encouraged to print out that ballot yourself, mark up that sample ballot yourself and bring it to the polling place. It’s an open-book test.
Price: Oh, absolutely. In fact, one of the things that we have always been doing is the sample ballot that you find online is the screenshots from the actual ExpressVote that you’re voting on on Election Day. So that sample ballot that you print off of VoterView will look exactly like the ballot that you’re going to see on Election Day.
So no surprises on where the candidates fall on there. One hundred percent. Print it out, fill it out so that when you come into the polls, you know exactly what your ballot should look like.
Moore: Anything I missed, anything we make sure we touch on?
Price: We’ve got one great new law that was passed for voters who live in other counties. They can now actually change their voter registration from one county to another county on Election Day. In the past, we had a large number of voters who, especially in Benton County and Washington County, would move into Washington County, still be registered to vote in Benton County.
They were kind of in this no man’s land of not really being eligible to vote in Washington County and shouldn’t be voting in Benton County because they don’t live there anymore. But because of a deadline of four days before Election Day, there wasn’t anything we could do for those voters. A new law has changed that and now allows voters to transfer between counties once you’ve moved to vote in the county that you’ve moved into. We think that is a great new law.
Moore: Especially for people who live in Springdale. You could move across town, stay in the same town, maybe even the same street, but you’re living in a different county now.
Price: You may not recognize that all of a sudden you’re still living in the city of Springdale or even Elm Springs. A little bit of Elm Springs is that way, too. That new address that you have, you may think, “Oh, I’m still in Washington County,” and you don’t do anything. Come to find out, no, you’re in Benton County and you weren’t really legally allowed to vote. And so now this new law change will let you transfer between those two counties. So it’s a great thing.
Moore: Jennifer Price is the director of elections for Washington County. She joined me last week in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio 2. You can find your sample ballots, regardless of what county you vote in, when you visit VoterView.org.
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