The 2012 General Election will be the first in Faulkner County that will have several early voting sites in Vilonia, Greenbrier and Mayflower. Early voting will begin on Oct. 22.
Early voting sites will include the county clerk’s office, the Faulkner County Library, the Greenbrier City Events Center, the Vilonia First Baptist Church and Mayflower City Hall. The courthouse times are: 8 a.m.-6 p.m., Oct. 22-26 and Oct. 29-Nov. 2; 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Oct. 27 and Nov. 3; and 8 a.m.-5 p.m. on Nov. 5.
Early voting for all other sites will be 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Oct. 22-26 and Oct. 29-Nov. 2; and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. on Oct. 27. Early voting at off-site polling places will close at 6 p.m. on Nov. 2. All five locations for early voting will cover all precincts.
The Election Commission confirmed Tuesday that election law requires a poll worker to ask for identification from the voter, but the voter does not have to provide the identification in order to vote.
Poll worker training will take place at 6 p.m. Nov. 1 and at 10 a.m. Nov. 3.
All sample ballots are available on the Faulkner County website. All absentee ballots have been sent out. County Clerk Melinda Reynolds said more than 1,000 have been sent, and if there are any problems with the ballots, voters should contact the clerk’s office for a replacement.
Comments (16)
Add commentNo ID
Sounds like the old Marlin Hawkins slogan in Conway County of "vote early and vote often" is alive and well. Without requiring photo ID, there is no way to keep someone from voting at every polling place using different names. If someone votes under a deceased person's name is there anyway to know? If someone votes in Vilonia using my name, will that keep me from voting or possibly I could vote at every location using my real name? Even if it were caught laer, there would be no way to know for sure who I voted for and all my votes would still count. No ID is a bad idea.
Got to Love
Those days!!!!
I was in 1st grade living on Petit Jean and a girl that worked for the parks, she was either 21 or 18 which ever but it was her 1st time to vote and when she got to the Conway County polling place.
They told her she had already voted which means they voted for her they way they wanted it voted.
Not limited to Conway County...
...the county where I grew up (a very small county), each polling place was less than a 30 minute drive to the courthouse (where all the votes were counted).
Despite the polls closing at 7 PM, NEVER did a single box containing the votes (paper ballots folks) arrive at the courthouse before 10 PM and most didn't arrive until after mid-night.
I always wondered why a 30 minute drive took took 3+ hours on election night. Guess no one will ever figure that one out.
well
"I always wondered why a 30 minute drive took took 3+ hours.."
Ever been on I-40 between Conway and Little Rock?
Almost every week day...
...for the past decade, but it's never taken me over 3 hours (thanks to the traffic report every ten minutes). :-)
I know why...
It's because the votes are counted at the precinct before they are taken to the courthouse. I spent 10-1/2 years working at a small newspaper in a small north Arkansas town, and we printed the ballots. The process of counting the ballots requires two people to "tally", and if you don't "tally" at the same time, you have to start over. In a lot of voting precincts, the officials are older, because the younger people don't want to take off work for the small amount of pay you receive for being an election official. One time my ex-mother-in-law was an election official. Two elderly ladies were in charge of making slash marks on their respective papers, and when you get to "5," you say "tally." One woman was always off from the other by one or two votes. Finally she said "can't we just skip tally?" and I thought my ex-mother-in-law would faint. When you have to count every vote on every paper ballot, it can take hours to do if there is a discrepancy. That is why it can take hours to get from the precinct to the courthouse.
Isn't the voting in Faulkner County electronic?
The sample ballots appear to be what would be used with electronic touch screens. If that's the case, there really isn't much excuse for 3 hours from polling place to courthouse for tallies. (I don't totally rule it out, after seeing a new system in Georgia that started out with a lot of bugs that had volunteers, election officials, candidates and press all pulling their hair out as the poor software guys were scrambling to get the machines fixed).
Way back when...
DJB specifically said "paper ballots" and "small county" and "when I was growing up" and about how long it took the ballots to make it to the courthouse back then. I assumed that meant years ago, and my knowledge is from years ago in a small county that used paper ballots. As for how long it takes for the vote counts to make it to the courthouse now, I don't have a clue, but I do know that absentee ballots are still on paper, and I don't THINK they start counting those until the polls close (but I may be wrong there). If it takes several hours to count those ballots, the true vote counts wouldn't be in until the wee hours of the morning. When I worked at the small county paper, someone would stay at the newspaper until the votes were all in (they were all paper back then), and that person would write the election results story because the paper went to press the next morning. Usually, that employee didn't get the final count until midnight or 1am, then they still had to write the story and get everything ready for press the next morning. My experience is from working 10-1/2 years at the newspaper in Marshall, Arkansas, from Jan. 82 - June 92. For most of my employment there, general elections up to state level were every 2 years. The county didn't have voting machines until the last few elections, and they didn't have enough machines for every precinct so lots of precincts were still using paper. And the machines were these huge monstrosities that looked like something out of BBC Dr. Who; they were not electronic.
absentee ballots are
absentee ballots are typically done at the courthouse and opened in front of the Election Commission for verification. Early Vote Totals numbers can not be released until the polls close on Election Night although they would be know quickly due to electronic nature of Early Vote.
The precinct locations will bring back the cards for verification of vote tallys and should be quick, although the polls close at 7:00 there will probably be lines.
Well....
A great Democrat that Marlin was. He knew how to treat a woman too. "Keep ' em barefoot and pregnant" as I recall it.