The Arkansas Department of Health urges voters to wear masks, practice social distancing and follow other public health protocols -- while offering assurances that poll workers will be doing the same -- when Arkansans head to the polls starting today.
The guidance for voters issued by both the Health Department and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the coronavirus pandemic recommends that voters take familiar steps, such as separating themselves by 6 feet while waiting in line.
Polling locations have also been urged to comply by reconfiguring their voting areas so that machines are spaced apart and sanitized, and so that voters may leave through a separate entrance once they cast their ballots.
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Several counties, including Craighead, Washington and Pulaski, will provide voters with disposable stylus pens that can be used on electronic voting machines.
But voters cannot be turned away from a polling location if they are sick or refuse to wear a mask, the Health Department said. State officials have recommended that voters flouting guidelines be kept at a distance from others.
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In Arkansas, the enforcement of public health guidelines at the polls will largely be left to a network of county election officials stretching from Texarkana to Corning, and from Lake Village to Bentonville.
Daniel Shults, the director of the state Board of Election Commissioners, said how to enforce health protocols on Election Day is largely left up to county election commissioners, while county clerks are mostly in charge of early voting procedures. In some counties, Shults said, election commissions have assumed duties over both early voting and on Election Day, Nov. 3.
"We issued guidance to that effect," Shults said of the safety precautions recommended by the Health Department. "But we don't have enforcement power."
In Pulaski County, the state's largest with more than 250,000 registered voters, procedures adopted by the county Election Commission call for "line monitors" and a designated person to sanitize voting machines after each use. Poll workers will be required to wear masks and gloves, according to the plan, and will sit behind plastic glass shields where they will be able to view each voter's ID without touching it.
Bryan Poe, the director of the Pulaski County Election Commission, said voters should first raise any concerns they have about the safety protocols with the election judge at their polling location.
"The way we train them is, 'It is your job to make sure the guidelines are being followed,'" Poe said. "At that point, if the judge is unresponsive, then call our office."
In its guidance to county clerks and election commissioners from June, the state Board of Election Commissioners recommended that counties "require all election officials to wear facial coverings when in the poll or at other times when social distancing is not possible."
However, Gov. Asa Hutchinson's mask mandate exempts voters, poll watchers and other election administrators.
Jennifer Price, the executive director of the Washington County Election Commission, said she believed the governor's order prevents the county from requiring poll workers to wear masks. The county will provide poll workers with masks regardless, Price said, adding that she "fully believed" workers will wear them.
"Just because someone saw a voter or a poll worker not wearing a mask, that is not a violation" of the guidelines, she said.
Shults, the director of the state Board of Election Commissioners, said, however, that poll workers serve at the direction of county officials, who can mandate that poll workers wear masks even if they are otherwise exempt from the statewide order.
"It would be the county that sets the parameters, in accordance with state law," Shults said.
In White County, Angie Van Alsdorf said she was alarmed when she arrived for a poll worker training session at the fairgrounds in Searcy recently and saw that about half of the 20 or so attendees were not wearing masks. She said she had been told such precautions would be in place.
Van Alsdorf, 65, said staff members running the training session told the trainees they would have to wear masks at the polls, though she was left with doubts after they were allowed to sit maskless at the training session. She said she left the meeting early after deciding not to serve as a poll worker, and was now questioning whether she and her husband would vote in person or request absentee ballots.
"My husband was injured in Iraq, he's disabled, and we don't need to bring anything in my house," Van Alsdorf said.
Robert Allen, the chairman of the White County Election Commission, said in an emailed statement that "most" of the attendees at the training session were wearing masks, and that they had all been seated more than 6 feet apart. Van Alsdorf left the training session, he said, after expressing her frustration at the guidance that voters would not be required to wear a mask.
"I was sitting in the back as the only election commissioner there and replied to her that the governor of the state of Arkansas had a proclamation directing us in procedures," Allen said. "We are just following the State Board of Election Commissioners and the state election laws."
Allen said all poll workers in White County will be required to wear masks during voting.
In Craighead County, Election Coordinator Jennifer Clack said the county clerk will supervise early voting and the county Election Commission will be in charge of voting on Election Day.
During both election periods, Clack said, poll workers will be required to wear either a mask or a face shield.
Editor's note: The names and contact information for local county election commissioners are available on the state Board of Election Commissioners' website: https://www.arkansas.gov/sbec/election-commissioner
Voters who do not wish to vote in person may request an absentee ballot by mail or electronically by Oct. 27. Voters may request an absentee ballot and return it in person until Nov. 2. Absentee ballots delivered by mail within the U.S. must arrive at the county clerk's office by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3. Ballots from overseas and military voters must arrive by 10 days after the election, according to the secretary of state's office.