An election tie in the Democratic runoff primary for the open legislative seat in House District 34 was decided Friday evening by a single overseas ballot that lifted Joy Springer over her opponent, Ryan Davis.
The runoff election, held Feb. 11, was stuck in a deadlock after early and regular votes were counted last week.
Over the next 10 days, election officials pored over issues with a number of absentee and provisional ballots that had been cast, but not counted in the original results. Most of those ballots ended up not being eligible to be counted, however, and the decisive vote came down to a single ballot mailed from Sweden that was counted Friday at the Pulaski County Election Commission's office.
With all 11 precincts reporting, the official results certified by the Election Commission were:
Springer 373
Davis 372
Springer now moves on to a special general election on March 3 against independent candidate Roderick Talley.
The winner of that election will serve the remainder of the two-year term of Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, whose death last year left a vacancy in the seat that he had represented for nearly a decade.
At the same time that Springer faces off against Talley, however, she will again be facing Davis and two other Democrats in a regular primary to determine the Democratic nominee to face Talley in the Nov. 3 general election. The four Democrats had first met in the special election for Walker's seat.
Immediately after the final vote was announced Friday, Springer embraced her campaign team. She left the commission office soon after, and was unavailable for comment.
Davis, who had advanced to the runoff after finishing second in an initial round of voting last month, said his campaign had gained momentum heading into the regular primary.
During the campaign, Springer, an office manager at Walker's Little Rock law firm, cast herself as the lawmaker's chosen successor.
Davis, meanwhile, has said he would be a fresh voice in the district.
"We're still in this," Davis said. "There's a heightened awareness about this March 3 race."
Springer and her team had criticized much of the Election Commission's handling of individual ballots in the final days of the election, including the commission's decision Friday to count the overseas ballot that ended up handing her the victory.
The voter statement that was handed in along with the overseas ballot included the voter's address in Sweden, instead of the voter's Arkansas residence, the commissioners said after reviewing the ballot. The commissioners decided to count the ballot after being able to confirm multiple points of the voter's identity with other documents sent to the commission.
Election commissioners rejected 13 absentee ballots for having a variety of problems -- such as failing to include a copy of one's voter ID -- as well as three provisional ballots that were cast at polling locations.
One of the provisional ballots, however, was inserted into an election machine by a voter before it could be stopped by poll workers at Saint Mark Baptist Church in Little Rock, according to commission Chairwoman Evelyn Gomez. Once inserted into the machine, it fell into a box with the rest of the ballots and was counted, after which Gomez said there was no way to identify the problem ballot among the others.
On Wednesday evening, during a contentious commission meeting at which the Saint Mark and other ballots were discussed, election workers conducted a recount of the votes cast, which resulted in 372 votes being counted for Springer and 371 for Davis.
During the recount, however, officials said they noticed that a single ballot from the Immanuel Baptist Church polling site had disappeared.
It was not until Thursday that the Pulaski County clerk's office found the ballot, which officials said had gotten mixed in with a box carrying unused ballots from the election.
"It was secure the entire time," said Bryan Poe, elections director.
The Election Commission voted to count the ballot Friday, again resulting in a 372-all tie. The tie was broken just a little while later when the overseas ballot was opened.
Both the incidents at the Saint Mark and Immanuel Baptist polling locations will be forwarded to the prosecuting attorney's office for review, Gomez said.
In addition, the commission on Friday assigned another worker to Saint Mark for the March 3 election. Poll workers also have been instructed to mark provisional ballots so that they can be identified if mistakenly fed into the vote machine, Gomez said.
"Unfortunately, these issues happen," Gomez said. "No one is happy about it, but we can move forward and we can get better."
Metro on 02/22/2020