BENTONVILLE -- More than 1,800 provisional ballots from Tuesday's election need to be counted in Benton and Washington counties, but it isn't known how they could impact local races, election officials said.
Benton County has about 1,060 provisional ballots to review and count, Dana Caler, county elections administrator, said Wednesday morning.
Washington County has 760 provisional ballots to be reviewed, according to Jennifer Price, executive director of the Washington County Election Commission. Price said the commission will meet at 11 a.m. today at the county courthouse in Fayetteville.
Benton County's Election Commission will meet at 1 p.m. Friday at its office in Rogers to review the provisional ballots and 50 absentee ballots that arrived late Tuesday.
"A provisional ballot is given to someone who wishes to vote and may have been issued an absentee ballot, isn't showing up in the tablet or voter registration records as registered, a poll book shows they already have voted, doesn't want to show identification, has an out of state ID or any other reason that wouldn't allow them to cast a regular ballot," said Kim Dennison, Benton County election coordinator.
Price said Wednesday there was no way to say if the provisional ballots could change the result of any race because it was not known which precincts those voters were in. Russell Anzalone, chairman of Benton County's Election Commission, said the same is true in Benton County.
Sam Slaton, the Democratic candidate for Benton County District 8 justice of the peace, said he was unaware there's still more than 1,000 provisional ballots still out. He lost the race to Republican Joel Jones, but is within 388 votes.
"It reignites the pilot light of hope," he said of perhaps closing the gap.
Slaton also said there's a part of him that has moved on. "I don't linger over things," he said. "The election was conducted in a fair and responsible manner."
Benton County voters cast 119,693 votes in the general election -- a turnout of 70%. Early votes, 88,272, and absentee votes, 14,951, were all-time highs, Dennsion said, and together accounted for 61% of the total votes. The total voter turnout also was a record, Dennison said. There are 170,038 registered voters in the county.
Washington County reported 93,981 votes cast in the general election for a 66.7% turnout. Price said the vote totals were a record, since the county has seen an increase in the number of registered voters, but the percent of votes cast was about normal for a presidential election year. The county has 140,744 registered voters.
Price said 61,879 ballots, or 66%, were cast during the early voting and 11,544 absentee ballots, or 12%, were cast. Both those numbers are records for the county, Price said. Election day turnout was reported at 20,558 or 22%.
Ballots from military personnel have to arrive by Nov. 13, the same day results will be certified.
Tom Sissom contributed to this report. Sissom can be reached by email at tsissom@nwadg.com or on Twitter at @NWATom. Mike Jones may be reached by email at mjones@nwadg.com.