Tom Wiktorek, of the county election commission, recently visited the Lions Club at the Blytheville Country Club. Wiktorek has served on the commission since 2004, and provided best practices on preparing for the upcoming election.
Early voting began on Oct. 24, with the polls opening at 8 a.m. Early voting will continue until Nov.7, prior to the general election day on Nov. 8. The polls will close each day at 6 p.m. during early voting. Wiktorek noted that any registered voter can get a copy of their own sample ballot by visiting sos.arkansas.gov/elections. Additionally, voters can locate their voting locations and gain knowledge on each of the four statewide ballot issues.
“It’s only going to ask for your name and your date of birth. Then you can click search and it will bring up the printed version of your ballot,” Wiktorek said. “But before you vote, you need to study those issues and know what you want to do. Don’t wait until you get into the voting booth to read the issues. You have a five minute time limit in the voting booth. If somebody is standing there forever and ever, we have to move them along.”
To further ensure the voting process doesn’t become a hindrance of time, Wiktorek noted the importance of confirming addresses are up to date.
“If you go on the website and see that your address is wrong, you need to call the [county] clerk’s office and let them know what it is. Because if you show up and tell them you live on Main Street and the tablet says you live on Ash Street, you’re going to have to fill out a change of address form,” Wiktorek . If you can keep your address up to dates, it will speed up the voting process tremendously.
He went on to explain the strength of election security to ensure voting integrity. He noted that no election booth is connected to the internet until results are being sent to state officials. For any reason, if a voter mistakenly votes for the wrong candidate, voters can fix their mistake before submitting the printed sheet into the official booth.
“Your votes are printed out and you can read what you voted for. Now the machine will say after you hit print, you can’t change your ballot, that’s incorrect. After you print the ballot, and start reading and think ‘my gosh I didn’t want to do that’, you go to an election official to spoil the ballot and start over again,” Wiktorek said.
“You haven’t voted until you go over to the DS200, which is a [machine] that collects the ballots. The card will slide in and that machine will read all the bar codes. Each bar code is associated with a name that’s on the ballot. When you submit that, it’s too late to make any changes at that point.”
He went on to mention that early voting results will not be released to the public until the polls are closed on general election day. Absentee ballots are double checked with the signature of the application to receive one, and they also require a photo ID. Application to request an absentee ballot can also be found at sos.arkansas.gov, the same website to locate a sample ballot.