Early voting in Arkansas begins on Monday, Oct. 19. For some counties in Arkansas, their county courthouse may be the only place they can vote early for the two weeks leading up to Election Day, Nov. 3. In Washington County, there will be 19 different locations open for voters to cast their ballot at some point during that two-week period. Jennifer Price is the director of elections in Washington County. She says having this many locations available in early voting makes a big difference on Nov. 3.
Price: Really helps us on Election Day to keep those lines shorter. And the shorter the line is, really, the more accessible voting is. Voters waiting in line is something that just as a nation, we’ve kind of grown weary of having to wait in line.
And so whenever we open up these limited early vote sites, the goal is to make sure that those voters in areas that wouldn’t normally have a two-week early vote site actually have access to early voting, such as Lincoln and Sonora. We’ve even opened up more sites in Springdale and more sites in Fayetteville during that two week, but the goal is to make early voting as accessible as we can to all the voters in Washington County, not just those that live in Fayetteville and Springdale.
And then, of course, by offering that early vote in sites such as Lincoln and Sonora and Farmington, it helps us keep the lines shorter on Election Day because they have the opportunity to vote in their communities.
Moore: For someone who is voting in an election in, say, Lincoln and Sonora, what sort of feedback were you getting from voters, from residents there who said, “Boy, it’d be really nice not to go all the way into the Washington County Courthouse to have to vote early”?
Price: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s the idea, is having voting locations in our communities. That is one of the things that very early on, history of voting has always been in your neighborhoods and your communities, and that makes it accessible. And so offering those voters who live out in other areas of the county the ability to early vote, we see a very positive response for that, and our numbers reflect that.
Moore: Speaking of accessibility, language is certainly something we think about here in Washington County. We have a lot of folks in Springdale whose first language may not be English. Talk a little bit about the sort of accessibility and resources that are available to people whose first language may be Spanish.
Price: Yeah, absolutely. We recognize that there is that large population where English is their second language. And so we are not required currently to have our ballots translated into Spanish. But what we do is we provide different instructions in Spanish, such as checking in, what do you need to vote, the provisional ballot process, the notice of election. We have all of those items translated into Spanish, and the issues, too, that will be on the ballot as well.
And then we make sure that for our big Springdale sites, where we know we have a higher number of voters where English is their second language, we make sure that we have bilingual poll workers available so that they’re there to help and translate. But then we also have a great relationship with Springdale High School. Those students came in and trained, and so they will be available for us at the polling locations in Springdale to help with translations and just help in general as a poll worker.
Moore: And I imagine it’s an added bonus for you, because you get to see young people being engaged in the civic process that maybe they didn’t see themselves getting engaged at otherwise.
Price: Yeah, absolutely. We love seeing that cross generation at the polling location. You have people who are retired in their 70s and 80s working right alongside a 16-, 17-year-old. So being able to bring those two worlds together at the polling location for a common goal of making sure that we have voting available for everyone is definitely great to see.
And obviously, the goal is to show these students how important voting is. When they come into training, we talk about the importance of voting. We talk about how your vote does matter. And so maybe that translates into those students then registering to vote and becoming lifelong voters.
Moore: Talk about the vote mattering. When you talked to Kyle earlier, this is one of the biggest ballots you’ve worked on. You said that there’s going to be a lot of local races in addition to county and state and a federal race as well. When we look at that sort of municipal, or that sort of lower-on-the-ballot kind of races, talk about kind of the importance of that.
Price: Yeah, absolutely. Those are the races where you actually see that your vote matters. When we’re talking about a federal office, that’s going to be a statewide office where your vote is one of a million, one of 10,000, 100,000 votes cast. So you can definitely think, “OK, maybe my vote doesn’t matter as much for those offices.”
But when we talk about our justice of the peace at the county level, when we talk about school board races, we talk about municipal races. The two candidates for the Elkins School District runoff, the second candidate got on the ballot by one vote. That is showing us that your vote does count. We have these small races in the municipals and in the county where five votes wins the race, or 18. Those are very small numbers. So it does show that every vote matters.
And definitely when we’re talking about a non-presidential year, a lot of times voters, we see it in the voter turnout. In a presidential year, you have close to a 70% voter turnout. In a non-presidential year, it drops to about 50%. We’re hoping to break that trend this year and get a higher number, because these are the individuals, when you’re electing them, who determine where your schools go, where your roads are paved, where your tax dollars are spent at the local level, and you will see those impacts daily. So definitely, the bottom of the ballot is so important to think about in those terms, not just those big, first-listed candidates.
Moore: When you make your rounds during early voting and you go to the different polling places, I imagine you’re checking to make sure the equipment’s working right. You’re checking with the supervisors to make sure there’s no issues, anything like that. Do you get an opportunity to just, like, soak it in a little bit and just watch people vote and just think about, like, “I played a role in making this accessible for people”?
Price: Yeah, we do get that. Early voting is so different than Election Day voting. Early voting feels a little bit more relaxed. People don’t seem like they’re in as much of a hurry. And so we do get to kind of visit a little bit with both the supervisors but also the voters as they come into the polling location.
And that definitely is the biggest perk of this job, is that we get to sit back and know that we were responsible for making democracy happen. We are the ones who are making sure that we’ve got polling locations in all the neighborhoods, that we have enough poll workers to be able to do that. That when we’re talking to voters and we’re talking to the public in general, that when we talk about our ballots being accurate, that we’re transparent, all of those different things matter so much. And we work really hard to make sure that the public trusts us, and we hope they continue to trust us.
Moore: Let’s do a little bit of lightning round here at the end. Some quick questions that you can answer for people as they’re headed to the polls. First thing, can people bring their kids to the polls?
Price: Absolutely. We encourage it. It’s a wonderful thing for our future voters to be able to see their guardians or parents participating in the election process. And in fact, it’s an excused absence if you go with your parent to vote. So we definitely encourage students to come and watch their parents vote.
Moore: All right, middle schoolers, you heard it here. If you want an excused absence from school, tell your parents or your loved one that you want to vote with them. OK. Notes. Can people bring, like, a note sheet or something to remind them of where they stand and what they want to vote for?
Price: Yeah. So one of the things that we do, we’re required by law to upload the sample ballot to VoterView, which is by far the best place for voters to get voter information. When we upload that sample ballot to VoterView, we actually upload the images from the ExpressVote, which is, if you’re voting in person, which is 99% of our voters, that’s what you’re going to see at the polls.
So we deliberately upload the images from the ExpressVote so that when you look at that sample ballot on VoterView, you can print it, mark it, and then when you get to the polls, that ballot is going to look exactly the same as what you’re seeing on the screen. And so we encourage voters, if you’re not sure of who you want to vote for, go look at that sample ballot, print it, mark it and bring it into the polling location.
Moore: If people have questions when they arrive at the polls, whether they forgot something or whether they needed an additional piece of information, can they leave and come back another time? If, let’s say, they forgot their ID and they need it, and they left it at home and they want to come back another day and vote again, can they do that?
Price: So they could. But we don’t always encourage that, because we want voters to cast their ballot when they’re in the polling location, definitely, because we know that most likely they might not come back. So for voters where there is a question about their eligibility to vote, such as we can’t find them in the poll book, or they have forgotten their photo ID, they can vote what is called a provisional ballot. It allows them to vote while they’re in the polling location.
And for those who didn’t have an ID, it gives them a week after the election. So basically the Monday following Election Day, they have the ability to return to the county clerk’s office and show ID. But that is a decision the voter would need to make if they want to leave and come back. But we do offer provisional ballots that gives them a little bit more time, especially if it’s Election Day. During early vote, maybe that’s a little different, because you still have two weeks. But on Election Day, you have until 7:30 that evening to return to the polling location. So it might actually be better to vote that provisional, and then you have additional days to come back and show your ID.
Moore: Yeah, that’s a good distinction there. Do you have to make a choice in every single race or issue on a ballot?
Price: No. You can vote as many or as few races as you want. We’ve actually seen voters who want the voting process to happen, and they believe in their right to vote. But sometimes they come in and vote a blank ballot. And that’s their form of voting, but they’re saying, “Well, I don’t want to vote for any of these people.” So absolutely, you can leave as many offices blank as you want, and it will not impact your ballot counting.
Moore: If people have questions when they arrive, who’s the best person to ask questions of there?
Price: So it depends on the question. So our poll workers are trained to answer questions such as, while you’re checking in, your ID that you need to show, all of those different things. But if you have questions about what is on the ballot, who the candidates are, what do the issues mean, our poll workers are not allowed to answer any of those questions. So we definitely encourage voters to look at that sample ballot before you come into the polling location, because we won’t be able to answer those questions.
A lot of times voters will say, “Well, if I vote for, what does this mean? Or if I vote against, what does this mean?” We cannot answer any of those questions. We do have sample ballots available. We do have copies of the issues available, so voters can take the time and read those things. But as a poll worker, we’re not allowed to answer those questions.
Moore: Is there a common question you get, or poll workers get, that I’m missing?
Price: So definitely, I think questions that the poll workers get is, “Will my ballot count?” Definitely when you watch the national news, there’s a lot of mistrust in elections. And so voters will sometimes be like, “Oh, well, does my ballot count?”
And we’re showing them at the polls, because some of the things that they can observe at the polling location just by voting is when you come in and check in, we’re checking you in on a tablet that creates a digital record that you’ve voted. But if you notice, our poll workers have a handwritten list where we’re writing down the name of every voter that comes into the polling location. This is our backup, our checks and balances. And then when you put your ballot into the ballot box, there’s a public count. That public count shows that your ballot went into the ballot box, and it counted. Throughout the day, we’re balancing those numbers to make sure that we actually have a ballot for every voter that has come in. And so those types of things, definitely, we get questions on.
And then just overall, anytime a national news story breaks about something that’s going on in the elections, we get questions about that, because there’s 50 states, there’s 50 different ways to run an election. And of course, there’s national stories about elections. And so we always encourage voters to contact your local election commission office, because they’re going to let you know how it is working in their county, following Arkansas state rules.
Moore: My last question for you here is, are you excited about the new stickers?
Price: Oh, absolutely. In fact, I’m a little concerned that I’ve created a situation, in the sense that voters are going to have to choose which one they want.
Moore: Oh, sure.
Price: Because we opened it up, and we love our stickers. We opened it up to two different age groups, which means that we’re going to have two different stickers available. We’re still going to have some of those 2024 stickers available as well. So when we’re setting up our polling locations, we have to allocate resources. And so we couldn’t order one of every sticker for every registered voter. So we had to kind of divide that. And then we had to divide out where the stickers go and how many polling locations gets a particular sticker.
So we are excited about those stickers. We hope the voters are. Please don’t be disappointed if the one that you’re looking for isn’t at your polling location or they’ve run out. But we just want to encourage voters to come. And if they’re only coming to get that “I Voted” sticker, then that is great. I mean, we love having those. We plan on continuing that process. It just engages our future voters, and also a little bit of excitement at the polling location, getting that “I Voted” sticker. And we love seeing posts where people post those “I Voted” stickers. I love it.
Moore: Well, Jennifer, best of luck these coming weeks. And we appreciate all the work that you do for us.
Price: Thank you very much.
Moore: Jennifer Price is the director of elections in Washington County. She joined me yesterday in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio Two. If you are in search of a guide that covers what is on your statewide ballot in Arkansas, Missouri or Oklahoma and how to cast your vote, you can visitkuaf.com/vote26.
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