Tuesday night, the Baxter County Quorum Court met for their regular scheduled monthly meeting.
Towards the end of the meeting, presentations were given for those in favor of paper ballots, along with the results of the recent election audit held on May 16.
Baxter County citizen Catherine Grace gave a presentation to the court in favor of paper ballots and presented information to the court to consider with examples from two counties, Lee and Cleburne counties in Arkansas which had formed committees to look into paper ballots, voter id, one-day holiday voting, and video hand counting. She also presented information shared from Osage County, Mo. where hand counting was successfully completed 25 minutes after the machines finished counting. Grace asked the court to look into this issue as there are a majority of people who do not trust the voting system or the machines.
Election Commission member Bob Bodenhamer then gave the findings report from the recent voluntary election audit. Bodenhamer stated the commission wanted to find out some facts about counting paper ballots. The audit was completed by Baxter County citizens including Republicans, Democrats, Independents, some of the J.P.’s, Election Commissioners, employees of the Clerk’s Office and two representatives from the Arkansas State Board of Election Commissioners out of Little Rock.
Bodenhamer stated the State Board representatives commended the group on the procedures for counting the ballots. Twenty people were divided into four groups of five to complete the hand counting of 6,700 ballots. The process took seven hours to count the ballot and several had to be counted twice to get the count to match. Bodenhamer reported there was a 3% margin of error in the hand counting to the machines. Representatives from the State Board said typically they see a margin of error of 5-8%. With only two issues on the May ballot, the audit cost the county just over $2,000. Bodenhamer expressed concern if the election was a primary or general election, the time and cost would be considerably more. Another cost to consider would be the paper ballot themselves with the required watermarks.
In regular business, the court approved an ordinance to establish a fund for federal grant money to be received for the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office new system call eCrash/eCite. This program will allow deputies to write citations and reports from their vehicles instead of writing them in a ticket book. The grant was awarded the Highway Safety Subgrant from the Arkansas State Police for the program in the amount of $107,160. A local match of 10% is required by the grant, but those funds have been paid by the Baxter County Sheriff’s Foundation so the county will not be responsible for the project.
Funds in the amount of $12,000 was approved to be appropriated back to the Road and Bridge to reimburse the department for funds used to maintain a property the county owned before the sale to a private builder.
The court also approved an ordinance to appropriate $9,857 from the K9 and $16,500 County Detention Facility fund into the Jail Maintenance and Operation Fund and Sheriff’s Project budgets to go towards supplies, uniforms, small equipment and electronic monitoring.
Two full-time Certified Law Enforcement officers were approved for their stipend in the amount of $6,532 each for a total of $12,297. These two officers completed their certification program by the cutoff date to be eligible. A portion of that amount will cover matching costs of APERS which includes Social Security and Retirement.
The court approved an ordinance appropriating grand funds in the amount of $19,500 received from the Arkansas Supreme Court Committee on Security and Emergency Preparedness for expenses related to an Emergency Generator Transfer Switch at the Court Complex.
Resolutions were passed to re-appoint Ben Strider to the Cotter/Gassville Rural Fire Protection District Board of Commissioners and Marvin Hardin and David McQueen to the Hand Cove Fire Protection District Board of Commissioners through 2026.
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