The Searcy County election commissioners that were decommissioned during a meeting in June have decided to bring a case in front of the State Election Board.
Initially the three commissioners, L.C. Ratchford, Laura Gross, and Kenneth Weekley, had decided that they would not contest the decommissioned ruling. However, after some thought, the trio has decided to bring their case before the state’s election board.
The Searcy County trio will have their hearing on Aug. 6 at 9 a.m.
Ratchford had stated he thinks they have a good case. “We had witnesses with us back in June that the board never got to hear,” stated Ratchford.
In November, Searcy County commissioners used paper ballots to count the election and was the only county in the state to do so. The commissioners had stated that paper ballots are what the people of Searcy County had wanted.
The county decided to lease audiovisual equipment from the company Arkansas Voting Integrity Initiative (Avii) to show anyone in the building how they were counting each vote. “Transparency to see the ballots was important,” stated Laura Gross, Republican commissioner of Searcy County.
To count the votes, 40 individuals were divided into tables of four people. One person was the enunciator. Another person watched the paper ballot to verify the enunciator read the ballots correctly. Directly across the table were two individuals that tallied the count as the ballots were read. As each of the individuals tallying the ballot reached the fifth vote, they were required to say, “tally” to ensure that there were no discrepancies in the count. Ratchford stated that the counting they did manually came out to be 100% correct when all the ballots were scanned.
The only rule that the county had was that they could not accept donations. “We signed a contract with a company to lease the equipment for $100. It was an open agreement for any county that wanted to use paper ballots,” said Gross. The commissioners felt as if the state elections board had a problem with the dollar amount that was spent.
Weekley believed that the decommissioning in June was due to the use of paper ballots.
With being decommissioned, it means that the trio would not be able to hold any type of role in elections in Searcy County for 14 years.
This year alone has had many cases in front of the State Board of Election Commissioners. Drew County, Ouachita County, Searcy County, and Izard County have all had cases with the election this past year due to complaints from election officials.
