Perhaps someday the state of Arkansas will join the modern era and permit online voter registration, but not today.
Instead, a committee of legislators voted Thursday in favor of an emergency rule that definitively blocks the use of electronic signatures on voter registration forms, except on-site at certain government agencies. You’ve got to move a pen across paper and either mail in or hand-deliver your application to be eligible to vote in Arkansas.
The restrictive rule was an easy sell in a legislative committee that includes only one Democrat, but it unfolded in front of a tough crowd. A couple dozen voting rights advocates turned out, including Pulaski County Clerk Terri Hollingsworth and former state Sen. Joyce Elliott, who is now the executive director of the voter engagement group Get Loud Arkansas.
But because the “wet signature” measure was being considered as an emergency rule, no public comment was required, and none was granted.
The ink-signatures-only rule comes after months of back and forth among the Arkansas secretary of state’s office, the attorney general’s office and Get Loud, the group aiming to update a clunky process that’s off-putting to young people.
The secretary of state’s office gave contradictory guidance to Get Loud Arkansas in February when the group reached out to make sure their efforts aligned with state law. Get Loud devised a system that allowed prospective voters to upload their information to the state’s voter registration form online and sign it electronically, after which the form could be printed and mailed or hand-delivered to county clerks’ offices.
The secretary of state’s office initially gave its qualified blessing, telling Get Loud that electronic signatures on voter registration forms were probably fine. Later that month, though, Secretary of State John Thurston sent a message to county clerks across the state telling them not to accept applications signed electronically.
Some county clerks opted to keep accepting registrations with electronic signatures; most followed Thurston’s suggestion to reject them.
In March, the attorney general weighed in, issuing an opinion that said electronic signatures are legal, but that he had questions about whether the online voter registration form Get Loud was using was the state-issued form that’s required by law.
Before Thurston’s message to county clerks, 63 of Arkansas’s 75 counties accepted voter registration applications that had been filled out and signed online, Get Loud Arkansas Deputy Director Kristin Foster said.
Austin GelderChris Madison, staff director of the State Board of Election Commissioners, told lawmakers Thursday that he’s not trying to disenfranchise would-be voters by declining to honor electronic signatures. He and state election board members are simply trying to clear up confusion and make sure voters across Arkansas are being treated the same, he said.
“This is what we’ve been doing for the last 20 years,” Madison said.
Madison also touted the usefulness of actual pen-to-paper signatures as a tool to prevent voter fraud.
“The signature on an application is more than just an affirmation that I’m a qualified voter,” he said. “It’s also used for the purpose of identification. In the absentee voting process, when you submit an application for an absentee ballot, the clerk is to compare the signature on the application to the signature on the voter registration application to satisfy himself or herself that the person that’s requesting the ballot is that person. Frankly, we’ve done some investigations where those have been forged and where we caught it was in the signatures.”
It’s true that Arkansas trashes more absentee ballots than almost any other state, although documented cases of fraud are very rare.
Arkansas rejected about 1,100 out of the 15,000 mail-in ballots it received in the 2022 general election. That’s a rate of 7%, more than four times the national average. Only one other state, Delaware, rejected a higher percentage in 2022.
In 2020, as absentee ballot use surged in the pandemic, Arkansas had one of the highest rejection rates in the country, tossing around 5% of the roughly 118,000 mail-in ballots it received. In 2018, its rejection rate was between 8% and 9%, second only to New York’s.
Forty-two states, plus Washington, D.C., and Guam, allow online voter registration, suggesting such a thing is possible.
Rep. Joy Springer (D-Little Rock), one of the handful of legislators not on the Arkansas Legislative Council subcommittee who showed up to the meeting anyway to ask questions, asked Madison if he thought this rule would be a deterrent to voting. He said no. Most voter registrations in the state happen at the state revenue offices (the equivalent of the DMV in other states), where electronic signatures must be accepted under federal law, and this emergency rule does not affect those registrations, he said.
State law allows online registrations at revenue offices and at agencies that provide public assistance or disability benefits.
Austin GelderThe declaratory order that goes along with Thursday’s emergency rule prohibits the use of “computer processes” to complete voter registration applications. Rep. Andrew Collins (D-Little Rock) asked if this language requires voters to forgo electronic shortcuts altogether. Does it mean someone can’t fill out their form online, print it out, sign it and send it in?
Using a computer to fill in the boxes is fine, Madison said, it’s just the signature that has to be done by hand.
It’s unclear how that squares with this language from the order: “A voter registration application completed and submitted, other than through an identified Registration Agency, cannot include the use of computerized signatures or marks.” (Emphasis added.)
The rule passed easily and the committee took a break before taking up the rest of its agenda. But heated debate continued as Rep. Springer and others pitched Madison questions as he made his way to the door.
“Will those voters be removed from the voter roll?” one person asked, referring to the unknown number of electronically signed applications that county clerks accepted earlier this year amid conflicting information.
“We haven’t gotten to that part yet,” Madison answered.
While the wet signature emergency rule can remain in effect for 120 days before lawmakers consider a permanent rule, Springer asked for some definite answers now. Madison said he doesn’t have the power to call a meeting and force the issue, but that he would ask to the state elections board chair, Secretary of State Thurston.
Speaking to reporters after the vote, Elliott challenged the claim that requiring ink signatures instead of electronic ones is about election integrity. Arkansas’s election systems are already secure. Piling on rules that make it harder to vote isn’t about preventing fraud, she said.
In recent years, Arkansas’s Republican supermajority Legislature has passed a passel of laws that make the process of voting more unwelcoming and more of a hassle. Those include stricter voter ID requirements, signature matching protocol, a new voter fraud hotline, earlier absentee voter deadlines and more.
“We keep adding one thing, one thing after another,” Elliott said. “There is no problem with integrity in voting in Arkansas. We are making up stuff. We’re suppressing the vote. That’s the bottom line.”
Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, Madison said the state Board of Election Commissioners is stepping up its game with Act 620 of 2023, which grants the panel more power to detect and prevent voter fraud.
Asked for examples of such fraud, Madison pointed to a case in south Arkansas in 2022, when a man submitted multiple absentee ballot requests under different names. While he only has that one example so far, he said he has no doubt there’s more fraud out there to be found.
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