BENTONVILLE -- Benton County officials are preparing for next year's elections by addressing a range of issues from voting machine maintenance to poll worker training and expanding early voting locations.
"I'm already in 2016," said Kim Dennison, election coordinator, while she monitored testing and repair of the 261 Ivotronic electronic voting machines Thursday.
Help wanted
Benton County needs poll workers to help staff voting sites for the 2016 elections. Anyone interest in working during early voting or on election day can contact Serena Green with the Election Commission at 479-271-1049. Application forms are also available online at www.bentoncountyar.… under the Election Commission tab.
Source: Staff report
Early voting
Benton County voters cast 63,331 ballots in the 2014 general election. Of that, 30,096 votes, or 48 percent, were cast during the two-week early voting period. Of the 30,096 early votes recorded, 18,370 were cast at the three offices of the county clerk and 11,524 were cast at the county’s six off-site early voting locations.
Source: Benton County Clerk
"It's mostly preventive maintenance," Dennison said. "They're testing every one of the machines to be sure the touch screens are working properly. They're also testing the 650s."
The 650s, the paper ballot counting machines, appeared to be working properly, Dennison said. Two of the electronic voting machines had touchscreens replaced. Those machines weren't used in last year's elections since they had been identified as needing repair during routine testing, Dennison said.
The county is also recruiting poll workers, Dennison said. Benton County has 495 poll workers but needs about 545 to handle next year's large elections, said Serena Green, who oversees the poll workers. The primary is March 1 and the general election is Nov. 8.
"We need 545 for all of our precincts to be staffed adequately," Green said.
Benton County has 94 precincts and 67 polling locations, Green said. Some locations house more than one precinct. Polling places typically have from six to eight workers, depending on the number of voters assigned to the location, Green said. Training for poll workers is scheduled for Jan. 5 -15. The training lasts for about three hours each day and poll workers are paid $25 to attend one of those sessions, Green said.
The county may need even more poll workers if plans to expand the number of off-site early voting locations are pursued by the Election Commission, Dennison said.
The county has early voting in three offices of the County Clerk -- Bentonville, Rogers and Siloam Springs -- plus a number of other locations approved by the commission. In 2014, the county had six additional early voting locations. The commission is looking at adding two or three next year, said Russ Anzalone, chairman. Early voting has been successful, Anzalone said.
"For the general election two years ago we were at 47 or 48 percent of the total votes being cast in early voting," he said. "We feel like if we can expand the early voting sites we can get even more people in early voting and cut down on the long lines on election day."
The commission likely will begin to scout for locations in September, but it could be difficult to find locations suitable, Anzalone said.
"We're asking an organization or company to allow us to use their space for two weeks from 8 or 9 in the morning to 5 p.m.," he said. "That interrupts their business or activities for that time. It's really difficult to find these sites."
County Clerk Tena O'Brien agreed early voting has been popular.
"It's more convenient because of the expanded hours," O'Brien said, adding having two weeks of early voting, including some Saturday hours at the county clerk's office locations, can increase voter turnout.
"On election day they may have something else scheduled or they may have to be out of town," she said "All in all, it's more convenient."
NW News on 08/21/2015