The U.S. Department of Justice is planning to send election monitors to Arkansas’ two most populous counties on Election Day. Ozarks at Large’s Daniel Caruth has more.
“Thank you all for coming.”
On Monday, Washington County Election Commission Chairwoman Renee Oelschlaeger addressed an unusually large crowd at the commission’s afternoon meeting.
“We’re not used to this kind of response. So, the first item of business.”
The crowd was there to hear if the commission would approve or deny a request from the federal government to allow poll monitors inside of voting sites on Nov. 3.
Last week, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Secretary of State’s office confirmed that the Department of Justice would be sending election monitors to Washington and Pulaski counties, but allowing them into polling sites is up to local election commissions.
During the nearly two-hour meeting, the commissioners confirmed that the DOJ sent an email request to the county clerk’s office on Oct. 20, just two weeks before Election Day and one day after early voting was already underway in Arkansas. The commission then met over Zoom that week and eventually received a formal letter from the DOJ on Monday the 26th.
The letter included the names of the four election monitors appointed, including two assistant U.S. attorneys for the Western District of Arkansas, Candace Taylor and Brandon Carter; U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas Kevin Holmes; and Elorm Sala, a trial attorney for the Department of Justice Civil Division.
Commissioner Alexis Ward says official election monitors usually go through rigorous training and approval on the state and county level, but the DOJ did not provide any information about how these monitors were trained, selected or certified.
“There were certainly questions that I had, and then I had a lot of other concerns with monitors. Their training, their lack of training, who they’re going to be, if we were going to know who they were. And the fact is that they weren’t being transparent with us, but they expected us to fully open our doors, to be transparent with them and welcome them with open arms. And I just can’t do that if it’s not a two-way street. I have some real issues with that.”
Before voting, the commission opened the meeting up for public comment. Eighteen people spoke in total, all of whom asked the board to deny the DOJ’s request. Brenda Gullett is a former state senator and representative who lives in Fayetteville.
“We do have a big voter problem in Arkansas, and it is not voting more than once, and it’s not illegal voting. It’s not voting at all. In the last election, we were 48th out of 50 in terms of eligibility to people that turned out.
“So I fear desperately any move that would have voter suppression or fear to keep Arkansans away from the ballot box. And so I just implore you to consider denying this request or for certain, denying them being inside the voting booth. Thank you so much.”
Max Deitchler is a former election commissioner for Washington County and currently running unopposed as the Democratic candidate for Arkansas House District 20 seat. He says in his 11 years on the commission, this kind of request never came up.
“We don’t have any issues with elections in Washington County. We don’t have any problems that the federal government and federal monitors would be sent here to observe. Under the U.S. Constitution, states run elections, not the federal government.
“And having DOJ election monitors in the polls in Washington County would have only caused problems. It would not have made any solutions. It only would have caused issues in the polls, not just for poll workers and supervisors, but also for voters.”
Ultimately, the commission voted unanimously to deny the request based on lack of timeliness and no logical reason for choosing. Washington County Commissioner Matt Mendenhall says he supports allowing election monitors on principle but believes this request was not done properly.
“As I said, if DOJ wants to contact us early, we’ll be happy to show off Washington County. Love to. But it needs to be done methodically, and it doesn’t need to interrupt the workflow that’s going on right now.”
And Oelschlaeger says the monitors could still come to the county but would need to be at least 100 feet from the entrance of any polling site. And she also cited the disruption monitors could have on poll workers as a reason for denying the request.
“We don’t want to chase those folks away because of the possibility that somebody’s going to scrutinize their work.”
The group says they trust Washington County’s election process and are not worried about a possible lawsuit from the DOJ.
“If it comes, it comes.”
“Yeah, anybody can sue anybody at any time. There’s nothing to keep them from doing that. And it’s the Department of Justice. They’re overflowing with lawyers. So, but I think we did the right thing. In my mind, it was the right thing for our election commission and especially the people who work here every day.”
“Yeah. There’s 400 different ballots, 40 different polling sites. So take all that. And every one of those ballots has to be letter perfect. We can’t do a thing like put 2024 in a letter or on a ballot. The Department of Justice, I guess, can get away with that. We can’t.”
In the letter sent to commissioners on Monday, the Department of Justice incorrectly asked to monitor the 2024 general election. The Pulaski County Election Commission is set to meet Thursday to make their decision.
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