Get Loud Arkansas was using snail mail to register people to vote. Sounds simple, but it proved to be tricky. Most voter forms, sent through the mail, weren't being filled out and sent back.
“We had a huge drop off at that point,” she said. “We sent them out their applications and the applications never got turned in. About 33% actually made it all the way through the process.”
That's Kristin Foster, Deputy Executive Director of Get Loud Arkansas. The group's main purpose is to get more people signed up to vote. In 2022, she went to the polls to cast a ballot, and got an idea.
“I signed my poll book electronically,” she said.” And I thought, how am I allowed to do that. Because I know that for us we have been registering voters on paper.”
She started to wonder: Can we use this at work? Would it be legal? So she gathered together a few lawyers and started researching.
And she found that yes, actually, there was a 2001 state law that allowed Arkansans to use the internet to register to vote.
There is an amendment to the state constitution that only says you need a “signature or mark made under penalty of perjury,” but it's unclear if that means the signature has to be “wet” meaning it was written out by hand.
This finding was good news for Foster. Arkansas could maybe join dozens of other states in letting people sign up to vote through a computer or on a phone.
For around three months, the small team at Get Loud Arkansas worked to create a portal registering people to vote online.
Last January, they launched the service, which they refer to occasionally as “The Portal.”
Get Loud says The Portal was successful. You fill out a form on a computer, and then Get Loud mails it to the county clerk for you.
“And we were reaching people in green county in Chico County in very rural areas,” she said. “We would go to high schools and we would get 30-40, 50 registrations sometimes. Whereas when we were going with paper forms we I really good day we might get 10.”
This whole time Foster was excited because she believed the law was on their side, that it supported online registration. She even double checked the legality of the project with the secretary of state's office. In a February email she asked QUOTE: “should digital signatures be treated differently than "wet" signatures?”
Josh Bridges from the secretary of state's office responded no.
“While this is a sensitive issue,” he replied. “The secretary of state does not see how a digital signature should be treated any differently than a wet signature.”
“And I was so excite that they agreed with us,” she said
But a few days later, the office reversed course. The secretary of state sent out a letter to all the county clerks saying he strongly recommended against online voter registration.
Attorney General Tim Griffin backed him up in a letter of his own, saying Get Loud was a third party that couldn't register voters using their own portal. To Foster, this was a confusing change of pace seeing as earlier the state seemed inclined to accept the electronic forms.
“It was very upsetting,” she said. “We worked so hard to build this.”
In May, another state office made moves to regulate “The Portal.” The Arkansas Board of Election Commissioners got the legislature to approve a ban on wet signatures.
At a meeting, Director Chris Madison agreed with a state Senator who said preventing electronic signatures created fair elections.
“The board, nor us, as election officials,” he said. “Want registrants who are registering through this process to have problems when they go vote in November.”
When asked if it was possible to tell if a signature mailed to a county clerk was written with a handheld pen, Madison said he was open to more rules in the future to clean up any confusion.
“This is an area of law that is not specifically clarified,” she said. “But in the short term the emergency rule is hey lets all keep doing what we've been doing and work through these nuanced issues.”
Nick Cartwright works for the Pulaski County Clerk’s office. At a public comment meeting, he argued that the rule was so vague that he wasn't sure how he was supposed to enforce it.
“Is every person who processes a voter registration application at a county clerk office must be trained like a forensic document examiner,” he asked. “Why is the signature the only thing that must be wet on a voter registration application?”
At the same meeting, 15 other people spoke against the rule change. 200 people wrote into the commission voicing their disapproval. Many argued that health care fields use electronic signatures on documents without issue, and some said that it felt like a veiled attempt to prevent voting.
Another group said it could discriminate against disabled people. Thomas Nichols, legal counsel for Disability Rights Arkansas, says his group thought the rule change could inadvertently hurt people who have trouble filling out a voting form.
“People with disabilities might not be able to see the document that they are signing,” he said. “They could benefit from assisted technology signing devices. An individual that doesn't have the use of their hands may require some kind of device to sign.”
Right now, Get Loud is in the middle of a lawsuit against the secretary of state's office and the election commission. The suit focuses on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prevents regulations meant to stymie the vote. Get Loud argues this rule change is an example of voter suppression.
In the meantime, Kristin Foster from Get Loud plans to keep helping people register to vote.
“We will now email a copy of it to their county clerk,” she said. “So if they don't have a printer they can go to their county clerk's office.”
She says this isn't as effective as putting the whole process online, but it's still something.
Secretary of state John Thurston and Election Commission Director Chris Madison both chose not to comment for this story, citing ongoing litigation.
