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LONG LINES LINGER AT COURTHOUSE

By Ray King/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Tuesday, November 4, 2008 9:28 AM CST

The final day of early voting at the Jefferson County Courthouse on Monday was marked with the same long lines that county employees have seen since Oct. 20, the first day voters could cast ballots in advance of tomorrow’s general election.

Christopher Wayman Sr. and his son Christopher Wayman Jr. wait for Wayman Sr.’s girlfriend to finish early voting Monday afternoon outside the Jefferson County Courthouse. Pine Bluff Commercial/Ezra Mann

County Clerk Elect Patricia Royal Johnson said Monday that just over 800 people had voted by 3 p.m., an average of more than 100 per hour, and with the office scheduled to close at 5 p.m., predicted that at least another 200 or more would go through the office on their way to the voting machines.

Despite lines that stretched from the door of the courthouse through the parking lot and down the sidewalk Saturday morning, and computer problems that slowed down the voting process, especially in the morning, Johnson said 713 county residents cast ballots.

According to the Secretary of State’s Office at Little Rock, a total of 10,527 early votes had been cast in the county through Saturday, as well as 767 absentee ballots, for a total of 11,294 votes cast, with one day of early voting remaining.

“With the absentee ballots, we’re going to be well over 12,000 (votes cast before election day itself),” Johnson said.

Deputy County Clerk Katherine Wooldridge said Monday afternoon she had logged in approximately 850 absentee ballots so far, and still had a large stack of ballots that had not been logged in yet.

Jefferson County Clerk Trey Ashcraft predicted about a 50 percent voter turnout this year. With more than 50,000 registered voters in the county, Ashcraft said he expects between 30,000 and 33,000 to cast ballots in this election.

In the last presidential election in 2004, reports show 29,701 people voted in Jefferson County.

“What early voting has done is make it more convenient, especially being able to vote on Saturday for people who work during the week,” said veteran advertising agency owner Joe Dempsey. “It’s expanded the opportunity for people to vote.”

Although he is not working with any political candidates this year, Dempsey has handled the advertising for a number of candidates in the past, and said early voting has changed the way advertising agencies and candidates approach their races.

“The theory in the media was that you would spend most of your dollars in the last three weeks before an election,” Dempsey said. “You would really start bearing down the Monday before the election the following Tuesday, and by that Friday, you would be at a fever pitch.

“With early voting starting two weeks before elections now, you’ve got to start getting ready earlier,” he said. “Early voting has changed the way you set up the media to promote your candidates.”

While Dempsey said the theory behind early voting was to avoid people standing in lines on election day, the practice has created some problems at the county courthouse, according to some of the people who work there.

“We’re just not equipped to handle this kind of volume with the available parking and a place where people can stand without interfering with the other offices in this building,” said Kim Taylor, who works in the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

April Jennings, who also works in the Prosecutor’s Office, said that while she appreciated people getting out early to vote, “I wish they would have respected the signs posted on the parking lot across the street where we’re supposed to park because there have been several days when we got to work or came back from lunch and our parking places were taken. Of course there would have been more parking spaces if some of the candidates and their supporters hadn’t taken them.”

Through Saturday, the Secretary of State’s Office reported that nearly 368,000 people had voted early statewide, almost 22 percent of the 1.68 million registered voters in the state, a figure that Dempsey described as impressive.

He was even more impressed with the turn-out in Jefferson County.

“There are probably close to 48,000 registered voters in Jefferson County, and if I had to guess, maybe 12,000 of those have never voted, moved, or are deceased and for one reason or another didn’t get removed from the rolls,” he said. “That would bring the total down in the neighborhood of 36,000 and with an average of almost 1,000 people voting a day, that’s nearly one-third of the entire total.”

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