Garland County polls closed temporarily Monday morning after a voter noticed the Democratic candidate for secretary of state had been left off the ballot for the Nov. 6 General Election.
The Garland County Election Commission said polls at the election commission building, 649A Ouachita Ave., were closed for about 30 minutes during the first day of early voting after it discovered Susan Inman's name was not on the ballot.
The county's other three early voting locations were also closed but had reopened by noon, the commission said.
More than 200 ballots without Inman's name on them were cast and tabulated before the revelation came to light, the commission said.
"As soon as we found out we told people this race was a problem, and if they wanted to vote for the Democratic candidate to please come back," Election Commission Chairman Gene Haley said. "In the meantime, the secretary of state said shut down the polls, which is what we did."
New ballots that included Inman's name were copied onto thumb drives and downloaded to touchscreens voters use to make selections. Printouts from those machines, which are called electronic ballot marking devices, are put into scanners that tabulate results.
Election officials were busy Monday morning putting the new ballots onto thumb drives and delivering them to early voting locations. The secretary of state's office said it advised the commission to close the polls until the problem was resolved.
"We did advise them to temporarily stop voting and fix the ballot error," Chris Powell, spokesman for the secretary of state's office, said in an email. "Garland County programs their own ballots, so they were able to fix the error and are reportedly back up and running."
Haley said the commission was first made aware of the issue after receiving a call from Inman, who learned of the omission from a voter who was at the polls early Monday.
"I received a text from a friend," Inman said. "She refused to cast the ballot because she knew it was incorrect. I called the election commission. They said that's not possible, but after they checked it further, they said my name had been left off."
Haley said the omission was inadvertent and caused by a data-entry error, explaining that the commission had to manually enter all the races after electronic information from the primary elections in May did not transfer in full to the general election ballot. The county has 65 ballot styles for next month's election.
The county's voting machine vendor, Election Systems & Software of Nebraska, told the commission to enter the races manually after the information from the May elections did not transfer. Haley, one of two Republicans on the three-member commission, said he made the error.
"That information copies over, but (the ballot marking devices) didn't recognize the Republican or Democratic candidates because they were listed as partisan," Haley said. "So we had to redo all the candidates, and somehow we had a problem with the secretary of state's race. Susan Inman's name was left off, and the Republican candidate John Thurston's name was misspelled."
Haley said the issue did not affect absentee ballots the commission delivered to the county clerk's office last month, and that the error went unnoticed when the commission did logic and accuracy testing of voting equipment Oct. 10.
Inman, a former director of elections for the secretary of state's office who has served on the Pulaski County and state boards of elections, said the error could have been avoided.
"This is something that someone didn't verify before it went live or before it went out," she said. "Someone didn't do proper testing. Every voter counts. If you receive a ballot and the candidate you expect to appear on it isn't there, do not vote that ballot. Take it back to the election official and say something is wrong with it."
Voters can view the sample ballot assigned to them by clicking the voter view tab on the secretary of state's website.
Inman issued a statement later in the day calling the error a "monumental mistake" that wouldn't have happened if voting was conducted by mail.
"There are constant problems with these election machines and today's error is just another in a long line of examples that prove it's time for Arkansas to adopt a vote-by-mail system," the statement said.
Local on 10/23/2018