After a slew of legislation, the State of Arkansas now ranks #1 in the nation for election integrity according to the Heritage Foundation’s Election Integrity Scorecard. At the beginning of the year, Arkansas ranked #8 in the country and rose in the ranks after the most recent legislative session.
The new state policies include joining the federal SAVE program to check voter registration against Department of Homeland Security records, partnering with credit bureaus to make sure individuals live where they say they do when registering to vote, establishing voter IDs for initiative petitions, checking for voter registration anomalies, such as individuals registered at industrial addresses or several individuals with the same name at the same address, auditing the remakes of damaged ballots, requiring a witness who must leave contact information for absentee voting and requiring federal juror coordinators to the Secretary of State when they find jurors who are non-citizens but registered to vote.
Secretary of State Cole Jester says, “As Secretary of State, I have said from day one we would have the most secure elections in the country, I’m proud of the work my team has completed implementing new procedures and technology. None of this would be possible without the great work of Governor Sanders and the men and women of the Arkansas legislature.”
Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders says, “My goal this session was simple: make it easy to vote and hard to cheat,I was proud to work with my friend, Secretary of State Cole Jester, to make Arkansas ballot boxes the safest and most secure in America and end petition fraud to protect our Constitution. Today’s announcement shows that all our hard work paid off.”
Arkansas received perfect scores on Voter ID Implementation, Access of Election Observers, Verification of Citizenship, Identification of Voter Assistance, Vote County Practices, Restrictions on Same-day Registration, Restrictions on Automatic Registration, Restrictions on Private Funding of Election Officials or Government Agencies and Restrictions on Ranked Choice Voting.
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