Poll workers got more than they bargained for on Election Day as they worked until midnight.
There were four electronic voting machines and only 120 paper ballots provided for the polling site in the community room at the Pea Ridge Emergency Services building. Election Sheriff Jerry Nichols said he has asked the Benton County Election Commission for more machines and many more paper ballots, but was not able to receive more.
He said the paper ballots wereall used very quickly.
The last vote - his - was cast shortly before midnight. Everyone who was in line and registered by 7:30 p.m. (when the polls officially closed) was allowed to vote.
“This was unthinkable. This should never have happened,” Nichols said, clearly frustrated by the situation. Early on the morning of Election Day, one of the machines was not working. That same machine went down later that evening as well, so there were only three machines to use.
Early in the day, voters waited about an hour to vote, but the lines grew longer and the waittime increased until the last 100 people waited five hours.
As it grew dark and temperatures dropped, city officials expressed concern about people waiting in the cold. The line stretched from the building out to Slack Street. Mayor Jackie Crabtree asked the firefighters to move the fire trucks out of the bays so people could wait inside.
At 10:30 p.m. there were still about 100 people waiting to cast their votes in the community room of the Pea Ridge Emergency Services Building.
The line wound back and forth across the room, but at least everyone was now inside.
More than 1,332 votes were cast in Pea Ridge.
“We’ve told them of the need - we need six to eight machines to do a good job with the number of people we have,” Nichols said.
“One machine malfunctioned right off and we got behind. The second biggest problem was that we only received 80 ballots for voters inside the city limits.
That’s just a fraction of what we need; 400 would have been better.
Nichols said he knows the Election Commission officials are trying to be economical as paper ballots cost about 35 cents apiece, but he said it is imperative thatthey send more paper ballots if they won’t send more machines, for him and his staff to meet the needs of the community.
“That’s what distresses me the most, that they didn’t provide what we needed,” he said. “We had a strong turnout, which is something we should be celebrating.”
Nichols said most people were very gracious, although there were a couple of instances of people getting angry and leaving.
One man threw a piece of paper at a book registrar and cursed before leaving.
“For the most part, people were far more gracious than we could reasonably expect them to be,” Nichols said, adding that even in the later hours, people waiting were joking and visiting.
There were 10 poll workers; all except two are in their 70s. They worked Monday setting up and demonstrating the voting process to first-grade students who visited, then worked an extremely long day Tuesday.
News, Pages 1 on 11/14/2012