From the Arkansas Advocate:
Arkansas’ State Board of Election Commissioners voted Tuesday to decertify two Phillips County election workers, one of whom did not show up to the hearing, and issue them letters of reprimand for failing to fulfill their duties.
The board decertified Phillips County Election Commissioner John Dalencourt for four years and poll worker Dennis Jasper for 14 years after hearing testimony from others who worked at the voting site in the small town of Elaine during the November 2024 elections.
Delancourt faced sanctions for not being present at the polling place at 6:45 a.m. on Election Day, which was Nov. 4, at the direction of the state board after a similar issue in 2022. The board also held Dalencourt responsible for the polling place not being open at 7:30 a.m. as required.
The board initially considered decertifying Dalencourt for 14 years but reduced the punishment after hearing objections from Dalencourt and from commissioner James Harmon Smith.
Dalencourt said it was “impossible” for him to be present at the polling place at the requested time because he had to ensure that Phillips County’s other polling places had adequate internet connection in time for voting to begin.
“I was not there at exactly 6:45… With the notion that it was a dereliction of my duties, no,” Dalencourt said. “I think I have a greater duty for the entire operation of all the polling centers in Phillips County.”
Harmon Smith was the only one of the six commissioners to vote against Dalencourt’s sanctions, saying he believed decertification should not always be the punishment for election law violations.
He was also the sole vote against decertifying Izard County election worker Kay Holland in July. Other poll workers had levied several allegations against Holland, including failing to remove obstacles to poll watchers’ view of the Horseshoe Bend voting site in a timely manner.
Harmon Smith said he had no problem supporting Jasper’s decertification after the poll worker did not show up to his own hearing Tuesday.
Charlie Morris, the state board’s election administration supervisor, and Phillips County election monitor Alexi Thomas both corroborated the allegations against Dalencourt and Jasper.
Thomas said Jasper did not follow the proper procedures for recording voters’ identifying information and “got loud and started making a scene” when Thomas approached him about it. Commissioner William Luther said Jasper’s “animosity” toward Thomas went “beyond the pale.”
Tuesday’s board meeting was the first of three scheduled this week. On Wednesday, the board will discuss its decertification of all three members of the Searcy County Election Commission.
The board issued the 14-year decertification in June over allegations that the county commission accepted equipment in violation of state rules. The equipment came from the Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative, a nonprofit connected to President Donald Trump that advocates for replacing voting machines with hand-counted paper ballots during elections.
Searcy County was the only county to count ballots by hand last year after its quorum court voted in late 2023 to adopt the procedure. The effort resulted in some counting errors, which were among the reasons the state election board sanctioned Searcy County officials in October 2024.
The Voter Integrity Initiative unsuccessfully sued the state last year to get approval of a ballot measure that would require all elections in Arkansas to be conducted by hand-counted paper ballots. Attorney Clint Lancaster represented the nonprofit in the lawsuit and will represent the Searcy County election commissioners at Wednesday’s hearing.
On Tuesday, Lancaster asked state election board members to postpone the hearing and to recuse themselves from the proceedings, but the board refused both requests.
Lancaster claimed the board’s decisions violated his clients’ due process rights and criticized commissioner Bilenda Harris-Ritter when she said she could not attend Wednesday’s hearing.
“Every vote counts, and her not seeing my clients in person is very important to their right to a fair hearing, which it doesn’t appear they’re going to get,” Lancaster said.
Harris-Ritter rebutted Lancaster’s statement and said she had a family emergency preventing her from attending.
Lancaster will also represent a poll supervisor in a hearing before the state board on Thursday, according to the meeting agenda.
