Vote totals for Phillips County had not been sent to the Arkansas secretary of state's office by 5 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, and a member of the county's Election Commission said it would be another day before results are released to the public.
Mark Lynn told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette at about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday that election officials had unofficial totals but that he didn't feel comfortable releasing any numbers to the media at that time.
"I have been working for 10 hours straight, and I haven't gone home yet today," Lynn said. "You can contact me tomorrow and then we can talk."
Lynn attributed the delay in reporting the county's election results to some absentee ballots being "fouled up" and to some provisional votes that had been submitted illegally.
"We had people presenting votes without identification," Lynn said.
Lynn declined to comment further, saying he was busy, and hung up.
County Clerk Linda White said about 10:15 a.m. Wednesday that her office had not received any numbers from the county's Election Commission.
"I have no idea what is happening because it happens in a different place," White said of tallying the votes. "From what I understand, they haven't finished counting, but I haven't spoken with them or anything. This isn't part of my office's duties."
Lynn initially attributed the issue to software problems in Marvell. He told a reporter around 10:30 a.m. that the voting results would be ready by noon.
"We had two machines go down in Marvell," Lynn said Wednesday morning. "We went from four to two machines and it caused some problems. Also our vote tally machine is older, and it was giving us some problems last night as well. We had all the votes tallied except the absentee ballots when I left at 1 a.m. and [Election Commissioner Calvin] Woodridge was counting those."
Multiple attempts to reach Woodridge by telephone Wednesday were unsuccessful.
Lynn called the delay unfortunate.
"I think it's just the nature of the beast sometimes," he said.
Several voters in Marvell said they received the wrong ballots Tuesday. Residents inside city limits said they were given ballots that did not include the mayoral race, which had three candidates, while residents outside city limits were able to vote for the mayor.
Lee Guest, who won the race, said he wanted an investigation and that the Arkansas State Board of Election Commissioners had been called to request one. He added that he'd heard several reports of voters who lived outside city limits asking for a new ballot and being told they couldn't have one and to "just not vote" in the mayor's race.
Guest said he won the race by 92 votes and that 334 total were cast.
"I'm OK with a totally new election if we have to, just to make it right and fair for everybody," he said.
Chris Powell, spokesman for the secretary of state's office, said Phillips County hadn't reported results by 4 p.m. and that no one had been able to contact the election officials.
It was the second time this year Phillips County has had problems with its voting machines.
Harold Wayne Boals, the county's Election Commission chairman, previously told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that paper ballots were put into use in May when a software problem shut down the machines.
Other counties also experienced problems on election night and were unable to have their totals posted by Tuesday night.
[2018 ELECTION: Full Democrat-Gazette coverage of Arkansas races]
Debbie Hartman, the county clerk for Conway County, said officials didn't submit their vote totals until Wednesday afternoon.
"We had to hand count the absentee ballots because we had problems with the system," Hartman said. "Absentee ballots wouldn't run through the machine. We didn't get done until 5:30 a.m."
Drew County Clerk Lyna Gulledge said she hoped to have the county's vote totals submitted by Wednesday afternoon but a series of problems had caused a long delay.
"There is usually four people who count the votes," Gulledge said. "I am usually counting the votes, but I couldn't this year because I was a candidate. We also had a girl get a 103-degree fever and we had to send her home. Now, you can kind of see the problem when you have to count the paper and absentee ballots."
Newton County had reported only some of its totals as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the secretary of state's website. Attempts to contact the county clerk were unsuccessful.
Information for this article was contributed by Ginny Monk of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
State Desk on 11/08/2018