Arkansas Board bans electronic signatures on voter registration forms, sparking criticism
There's been a lot of confusion over whether electronic signatures on voter registrations are allowed under Arkansas law.
On Tuesday, the State Board of Election Commissioners temporarily disallowed electronic signatures on voter registration application forms except those submitted through the department of motor vehicles, drawing fierce criticism from a nonprofit group called Get Loud Arkansas, led by former state senator Joyce Elliott.
By: Andrew Mobley
KATV
There's been a lot of confusion over whether electronic signatures on voter registrations are allowed under Arkansas law.
On Tuesday, the State Board of Election Commissioners temporarily disallowed electronic signatures on voter registration application forms except those submitted through the department of motor vehicles, drawing fierce criticism from a nonprofit group called Get Loud Arkansas, led by former state senator Joyce Elliott.
The Board says that the emergency rule and declaratory order it passed are to clarify the existing voter registration law, Amendment 51, and to enforce the same standard throughout the state.
Some counties, like Pulaski County, have been accepting electronic signatures while the majority have not.
"The declaratory order is a describer of the law and then the rule is drawing a line in the sand, so to speak,” Director of the State Board of Election Commissioners, Chris Madison said. “The proposal is to address a conflict that's occurred—we have some county clerks that are accepting electronically signed voter registrations, and you have other county clerks that are not. What we are trying to do is create uniformity throughout the state so that all clerks are accepting the same thing, so that applicants are filling out the paperwork the same, so that everybody's being treated the same."
Get Loud Arkansas, a nonprofit which helps new voters register and until now provided an online voter registration form that allowed for electronic signatures, says the emergency rule amounts to voter suppression.
"They had this emergency meeting today for an emergency rule,” said former State Senator and Get Loud Arkansas founder Joyce Elliott. “There is one emergency in this state right now as far as I'm concerned when it comes to this and the emergency we have is we've got to stop people from implementing their well thought out voter suppression, because that's what this is."
Elliott and her organization say that the Secretary of State's office has given them mixed messages on the validity of electronic voter registration signatures. They cite a recent Attorney General decision that says that electronic signatures are generally valid under Arkansas law.
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