Runoff early vote set June 1
Early voting in the June 8 runoff election from the May 18 preferential primary elections in Arkansas will begin June 1, Hempstead County Clerk Sandra Rodgers said this morning.
“Early voting will be from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., regular hours, and will not be extended,” Rodgers said. “It won't be on Saturday, either, this time.”
She said early voting will continue through June 8 at 4 p.m. in the first floor conference room of the Hempstead County Courthouse.
“It worked very well for the last time, and everybody had plenty of room,” Rodgers said.
The races which will be featured locally on the runoff ballot include the contest between U. S. Senator Blanche Lincoln and Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter for the Democrat nomination to the U. S. Senate. The winner will face Republican Congressman John Boozman. In the primary election, Halter polled 1,949 votes in Hempstead and 864 votes in Nevada County, winning Hempstead County by 52.07 percent, but taking only 47.45 percent in Nevada County. Lincoln garnered 1,260 votes in Hempstead County and 658 votes in Nevada County.
The third candidate in the race, D. C. Morrison, failed to draw more than 16 percent of the vote in either county. The Associated Press reported Friday that Morrison has refused to endorse either Lincoln or Halter in the runoff.
In the only local race on the ballot, Eighth Judicial District-North Chief Deputy Prosecutor Christi McQueen won both Hempstead and Nevada counties in the primary, but failed to obtain a majority vote in Hempstead County in the three-way race with attorneys John Collins and Mark Gunter. McQueen won Hempstead County with 1,579 votes (41.34 percent) in Hempstead County and 912 votes (50.19 percent) in Nevada County against 1,501 votes in Hempstead and 517 votes in Nevada County for Collins. Gunter polled a total of 1,128 votes in the election.
Turnout in the May 18 primary was disappointing to Hempstead County Elections Commission Chair Scott Brown.
“I think it's safe to say that, even with the local race in the prosecutor's election, I don't see a better turnout,” Brown said.
Countywide, 4,117 votes were cast May 18, or about 37.8 percent of the 10,844 registered voters in Hempstead County. Brown said some 2,500 early votes were cast in the 2008 presidential election, while 832 early and 234 absentee ballots were cast in the May 18 primary election.
Brown said polling places for the June 8 runoff will be the same as the primary election.
“They are all the same; they have to be, because there isn't enough time to make any changes,” he said. “If we made any changes, we'd have to notify the voters by mail of the changes, and we don't have time to do that.”
