Above: Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman (center) and attorney Clint Lancaster (right) listen to testimony before the Arkansas Legislature’s Joint Performance Review committee on Monday, October 21, 2024. Gableman and Lancaster said they would not answer committee members when asked if they knew who altered several documents with signatures collected in support of allowing counties to vote on whether to conduct elections solely with hand-counted paper ballots. Lancaster represents two organizations that support using paper ballots instead of voting machines. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
State legislators have questioned supporters of a hand-counted paper ballot initiative about allegations of altered petition signatures.
On Monday, an Arkansas legislative panel called for an investigation into alleged illegal alterations of petitions for a ballot measure requiring hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots.
Independence County is the only county in Arkansas with a paper ballot initiative on the ballot. A Cleburne County initiative is under consideration by the Arkansas Supreme Court.
Here’s a comprehensive look at the hearing and history of the paper ballot measure from Tess Vrbin of the Arkansas Advocate.
By Tess Vrbin, Arkansas Advocate
An Arkansas legislative panel agreed Monday that state authorities should investigate potentially illegal alterations of petitions collected for a ballot measure proposing elections be conducted with hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots.
After questioning witnesses for three hours about redacted and changed addresses on signature collection sheets from Conway, Faulkner and Saline counties, the Joint Performance Review Committee voted to refer the matter to the Arkansas attorney general, the state ethics commission and a prosecuting attorney.
Arkansas law requires canvassers for ballot measures to be residents of the state and to provide the address of their current residence on the pages in which they collect signatures. Eighteen canvassers from other states collected signatures for the Hand Marked, Hand Counted Paper Ballot Ordinance of 2024, and 14 blacked out their current residence addresses and substituted the address of the Home2 Suites hotel in Conway, according to documents provided to the Joint Performance Review Committee.
County clerks in nine counties have faced recent lawsuits seeking to put the proposed measure on countywide ballots after they rejected the efforts.
Lawmakers asked Clint Lancaster, the attorney representing the lawsuits’ plaintiffs, if he knew who altered the documents. Lancaster also represents Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative (AVII), a group that has been encouraging counties to switch from voting machines to paper ballots after its statewide efforts failed.
Lancaster said he would not answer the question due to attorney-client privilege, which protects confidential communications between attorneys and their clients. He made the same statement to the committee earlier this month.
Petitions for ballot measures are required by law to be notarized. Amanda Berry, Crystal Hatfield and David Williams notarized petitions in Conway, Faulkner and Saline counties, respectively, according to the petition documents.
Hatfield and Williams testified Monday that they saw no alterations on the petitions when they notarized them. Berry was not present Monday but provided the committee a sworn affidavit with similar testimony.
Stephanie Johnson and Lorri Justice, unpaid canvassers for Saline County signatures, said they did not alter the documents before submitting them to county officials.
Joint Performance Review issued subpoenas on Oct. 1 to the two canvassers, the three notaries and Home2 Suites’ manager, Cameron Wiley, ordering their presence at the next hearing about the county-level petitions, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.
‘Witch hunt’
Wiley testified Monday that AVII paid for several people to stay at the Conway hotel for several weeks during the summer. Most of the stays were booked under AVII CEO Conrad Reynolds’ name and a Conway address, Wiley said, with one exception being Gail Golec of Arizona. Golec has publicly supported right-wing conspiracy theories, including election fraud.
Former President Donald Trump’s false claims that his 2020 election loss was “stolen” have fueled nationwide efforts, such as AVII, to replace voting machines with hand-counted paper ballots. Lancaster was a member of Trump’s legal team hired to fight back against his loss in swing states that year.
Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who questioned the validity of the 2020 presidential election results in his home state, joined Lancaster at the committee hearing Monday to defend his fellow attorney’s decision not to reveal who altered the documents.
Lawmakers asked Gableman if he knew the answer to their question.
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” said Gableman, who faced multiple ethics complaints over his investigation of Wisconsin’s 2020 election results.
Committee vice chairman Rep. David Ray, R-Maumelle, said Monday’s meeting was necessary to determine whether canvassers made false statements on petition forms, which is a class D felony.
Gableman said the committee should not be concerned with potential criminal charges and accused it of “weaponization of [its] legitimate political purposes” in seeking answers about the altered documents.
“That appears to be a witch hunt in order to intimidate the supporters of paper ballots,” Gableman said.
Several Republican lawmakers said they supported giving voters the option of choosing paper ballots but took issue with Gableman’s accusations of misusing the committee’s power. Joint Performance Review’s responsibilities include investigating “specific problem areas” of government, according to the Legislature’s website.
Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, and Rep. Jim Wooten, R-Beebe, both said they saw irony in the issue at hand arising from a group that supports “integrity.”
“The same group that wants paper ballots is okay with altering notarized documents before submission,” Dismang said.
Statewide ballot initiative efforts
In addition to AVII, Reynolds is also chief operating officer of the ballot question committee Restore Election Integrity Arkansas.
Ballot question committees raise funds to advocate for or against the passage of proposed ballot measures. Lancaster said he became Restore Election Integrity Arkansas’ treasurer and general counsel this past weekend but was unaware that his legal work previously included representing the committee.
The committee submitted two proposed constitutional amendments to Griffin’s office twice last year with the goal of putting them on November’s statewide ballot. One measure would have required all Arkansas elections be conducted with hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots, and one would have limited absentee voting to people who can prove their inability to vote in person.
Griffin rejected the paper ballot measure twice and certified an altered version of the second version of the absentee voting measure. AVII responded by asking the state Supreme Court to certify both proposals as submitted the second time so supporters could collect signatures.
The high court rejected AVII’s request in May, less than two months after upholding a lower court’s dismissal of AVII and Reynolds’ 2022 lawsuit that argued voting machines do not comply with state law.
AVII and Restore Election Integrity Arkansas then shifted their focus, collecting signatures in individual counties for a local measure that would prevent the use of voting machines when counting ballots, with an exception for people with disabilities.
County officials cited a misleading ballot title as their reason for rejection or noted the petitions did not meet the signature threshold because those collected by out-of-state canvassers could not be counted. Citizens in all nine counties, represented by Lancaster, filed lawsuits with their local circuit courts asking them to put the measure on the countywide ballots.
The initiative will appear on the ballot in Independence County. The Arkansas Supreme Court last week affirmed a lower court’s order directing Independence County Clerk Tracey Mitchell to certify the measure as sufficient. Cleburne County has also been appealed to the state’s high court, which has not yet ruled on the case.
Judges have dismissed cases in Conway, Perry, Saline, Sharp and Van Buren counties. No rulings have been made in the lawsuits filed in Johnson and White counties.
Cleburne County decided to switch to paper ballots in January 2023 but later reversed the decision.
The plaintiffs in the cases from Independence and Johnson counties — Bryan Norris and Daniel Roumbanis, respectively — chastised Joint Performance Review during a public comment period, saying that paper ballots are the will of the people and that many Arkansas voters do not trust existing election systems.
Norris and Roumbanis are two of the clients whom Lancaster said he could not betray by revealing information about the altered petition documents. The other clients in question are Reynolds, John Bailey, Jan Bailey and Will Huff, Restore Election Integrity Arkansas’ four board members, Lancaster said in response to questions from lawmakers.
The Searcy County Quorum Court voted in late 2023 to hand-count paper ballots, though voting machines are still available for voters with certain disabilities or for anyone who wants to use them, county election commission Chairwoman Laura Gross told Joint Performance Review in June.
A State Board of Election Commissioners audit into Searcy County’s handling of the 2024 primary elections found inaccuracies in its hand-counting processes. Gross said that she and other election officials had learned from the errors SBEC found. She also said computers in voting machines could be hacked and manipulated.
Jon Davidson, SBEC’s educational services manager, said there are no computers in voting machines. Other SBEC officials, as well as Saline and Garland county officials, have also defended the security and integrity of using voting machines to conduct elections.
Studies have shown that ballot scanning machines are more accurate than hand counts, including a 2018 study co-authored by the director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab and a separate study from the early 2000s.
Act 350 of 2023 requires counties that switch to paper ballots to pay the associated costs themselves. Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, who sponsored Act 350, represents part of Saline County and is co-chair of the Joint Performance Review Committee.
Arkansas Advocate Deputy Editor Antoinette Grajeda contributed to this article.
The Arkansas Advocate is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to tough, fair daily reporting and investigative journalism that holds public officials accountable and focuses on the relationship between the lives of Arkansans and public policy. Image: Screenshot Arkansas Legislature via Arkansas Advocate
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