Pulaski County voters who experienced long lines during last year's general election can expect some relief during next year's midterm primary elections.
That's because Saline County plans to donate 160 to 170 voting machines to the Pulaski County Election Commission, bringing the county's stock from 204 iVotronic touch-screen ballots to roughly 370.
On Monday evening, the Saline County Quorum Court approved on first reading the appropriation of $500,000 toward a new stock of voting machines. Those funds, along with a dollar-for-dollar matching grant through the secretary of state's office, will pay for roughly 195 new machines for Saline County, according to Saline County Clerk Doug Curtis.
Recently announced by the governor's office, the grant fund will provide up to $5 million through the secretary of state's office to help counties purchase new voting equipment beginning sometime during the coming fiscal year, according to a spokesman of the governor's office.
The Saline County Quorum Court's approval was passed 9 to 4, with Justices of the Peace Jim Whitley, David Gibson, John Kimbrough and Dawn Creekmore voting against the resolution. If Saline County approves the resolution on its third reading this August, the old stock of electronic voting machines will be given to Pulaski County this fall, county officials said.
Saline County's stock was initially purchased 15 years ago using federal grant funds after the Help America Vote Act was passed by the U.S. Congress in 2002. The machines run on an obsolete operating system, Microsoft's Windows XP, that Microsoft ended support for in 2014, meaning it no longer provides security updates or technical support.
"We've been having a lot of break-downs during elections as far as the mechanical parts of it -- they're just outdated," Curtis said. "And without that support, it really just kind of throws you in jeopardy."
The new system the county plans to purchase will be a touch-screen interface that produces a paper record. The system, called the ExpressVote Universal Voting System, will address many concerns Curtis heard from Saline County voters last year over the reliability of electronic voting systems.
"A lot of people, especially during the last election, want confirmation that 'my vote is going to count,' and that it's marked the way the electronic machine says it's marked," Curtis said. "This one will spit the ballot back out to you where you can visibly look at your ballot, in case there's a mistake on it."
Curtis said he plans on phasing in the new machines in time for the county's next school board election in September.
Saline County's older machines are identical to Pulaski County's inventory, said Pulaski County's director of elections, Bryan Poe. But without the funding to purchase its own stock of new machines, Poe said this is the county's only opportunity to add to its stock.
Replacing Pulaski County's inventory of machines would cost approximately $3 million, split between the county's budget and the state grant, and "we just don't have that type of money right now or in the foreseeable future," Poe said.
With an added 160 to 170 machines, Poe said the election commission plans on moving some of the county's nine voting sites into larger facilities that would be able to accommodate 10 to 15 machines. During last year's general election, many polling sites in Pulaski County provided five to seven machines, causing many voters to wait for hours before casting a ballot.
In West Little Rock, for example, Poe hopes to move one polling location from the McMath Library to West Central Community Center just down John Barrow Road.
"It was just opened last year, and they have a much better facility for getting people in and out," Poe said.
Metro on 06/20/2017