WASHINGTON COUNTY, ARKANSAS, Ark. — Monday (Nov. 2) was the final day to early vote in Arkansas, and every county had record numbers of voters come out to cast their ballots.
In Benton County, more than 80,000 people voted early, breaking the record set in 2016. That’s almost half of the registered voters. They sent out more than 16,000 absentee ballots and have had all but around 2,000 returned.
“We started canvassing since the first day of early voting, and that means making the voter statement signature with the signature that was on the request for absentee ballot,” Channing Barker said.
Benton County Communications Director Channing Barker says to count all those absentee ballots, 30 extra people will be just counting absentee ballots starting early Tuesday (Nov. 3) morning.
“We will count as long as we can until it’s necessary, but we really have had a really good response as far as people returning their ballots, which is very, very good because that means it’s a lot easier on the election commission to count them in a proper and timely way,” she said.
Washington County also broke records with the number of early voters and absentee voters. More than 61,000 people have early voted, and Monday, with the courthouse being the only early voting site, the line was wrapped around the parking lot all day.
Washington County Election Commission Director Jennifer Price says 13,000 people requested absentee ballots, and just under 2,000 haven’t been returned yet, but they think one factor may change that number.
“We have seen at the early votes sites is a significant number of people who have come in and voted a provisional ballot because they either wanted to vote in person or never received an absentee ballot and do we have a significant number of those, so we are yet to determine the exact amount,” she said.
Price says like Benton County; they will also have people dedicated to counting absentee ballots Tuesday once the polls are open.
“We have a team of about 20 people who will be helping us canvas all those absentee ballots tomorrow, and that includes opening up the ballot envelopes and starting to run those through the machines. So, we feel like we are in really good shape to have results election night even with the large number of absentee ballots,” she said.
If you planned to turn in your absentee ballot yourself, that deadline has now passed. A designated carrier can return an absentee ballot on election day by 7:30 p.m. And if you mailed it, it has to be at the county clerk’s off by election day.