PULASKI COUNTY, ARKANSAS, Ark. — More than a thousand people voted Tuesday in Pulaski County during the first day of early voting for the Arkansas Primary Election.
This will be the last one in which they use old-fashioned equipment.
Pulaski County is becoming one of the many Arkansas counties to overhaul its voting machines.
“These machines we currently have are anywhere between 14-18 years old,” explained Joshua Price, a Pulaski County Election Commissioner.
The Pulaski County Election Commission received an appropriation of $1.56 million from the Arkansas Secretary of State’s Office and approximately $300,000 more from the county to help with the purchase of new voting machines and electronic poll books.
“That’s really gonna help expedite the process,” Price stated. “They’re a lot more efficient machines, more memory.”
The electronic poll books will make it easier for each voter to check in, reducing wait times during busy days. Price added that the new voting machines will make the process much easier for voters who are most likely to struggle at the polls.
“They have some additional features that make them ADA compliant,” Price explained, “so if someone has special needs—difficulty hearing or seeing—they’ve got some special features in there that will assist with that. They also have some different languages built in. So, if you’re not a native English speaker as your first language, you can plug in some headphones, and it’ll speak to you in another language and the screen will change to reflect that language, as well.”
Voters in Pulaski County will have to wait, however, to experience the difference. Price said the new equipment has been ordered, but workers will not begin training on them until April. He mentioned that he and the other members of PCEC have no appetite for the risk of a botched roll-out like the one experienced by the Iowa Democratic Party during its caucuses two weeks ago. While the new technology will be nice to have, Price said the most important thing is, “to train all our poll workers properly, and make sure that they’re going into the November election fully-trained and be able to answer any questions the voters may have.”
While the new voting machine is high-tech, Price said it maintains some of the old-school features that will ensure the purity of our elections. “It’s not WiFi enabled, so there’s nothing that’s being transferred across the internet, or anything like that,” he said. “So, there’s no opportunity for there to be any type of issues with security.”
While touting the promise of the new equipment, Price said the PCEC still needs more humans, too. He mentioned that the number of poll workers in its system is smaller than he would like. He mentioned that there are still training opportunities available for anyone who would like the job during this Primary Election, but they should apply quickly.