Arkansas Secretary of State Cole Jester held a press event Monday morning to share the results of a “top-to-bottom” election security review he announced just over three weeks ago.
The six-page report was compiled “after interviewing Arkansas’s top election officials,” though the officials are not named within the report. The report also reviewed quote “key historical data” regarding the state’s past elections.
While the report found that election security in Arkansas is strong, it also claimed that the state’s petition process is severely lacking, giving it a “D” letter grade. Jester named one case in particular.
"In a single amendment, there was over 5,000 duplicated signatures of people who signed more than once," said Jester. "Some on accident, but I'm guessing the person who signed the marijuana petition six times, that was not an accident.”
Taking questions from reporters, Jester said there is room to prosecute people in cases where petitions have been signed multiple times.
"If they are doing it on purpose repeatedly, the legislature has already decided that that is a crime, but there is an intent there. It can't be on accident. It has to be on purpose."
Jester did not clarify how the state prosecutor would prove intent. He suggested that if someone signed a petition 15 times, that could be evidence of intent.
The election security assessment report card asserted that many petitions included tens of thousands of invalid signatures and that the secretary of state cannot ensure all signatures counted are valid without reform.
While the lowest score was given to the state’s citizen petitioning process, other areas identified by the report as being potentially problematic were voter registration and absentee voting.
Nathan Lee, chief legal counsel for the secretary of state, said steps are being taken to address this.
"We're in the process right now of working with the federal government and with the Social Security Administration in having secure access to the master death files, as an example, so that our county officials can kind of, clean up their rolls so to speak," he said.
Speaking on recently investigated incidents of fraud, Jester said there was one known instance of electioneering in Union County.
"In Union County, I believe, where the person was going to be prosecuted federally, and he passed before the indictment was issued. So there was that, but thankfully we have not had any serious prosecutions recently.”
Jester said this instance was from several years ago.
The report suggests that the individual, who was running for office, pleaded guilty to election fraud by requesting multiple absentee ballots sent to a vacant mailbox near his house. Further details were not provided.
You can view the full report here.
