Several things concerning our recent November nation-wide election prompted some questions in my mind and they may be of interest to someone else. Everything in this article is available on the internet so there are no secrets being revealed here. It does take time to research some of this information and make some judgements, or ask questions about the meaning, if any, of the results. Whether my assessment is correct of course, is your decision to judge.
Were you aware that an Independent has been elected governor of Alaska? He was formerly a Republican who chose to run against an incumbent Republican and had a registered Democrat as a running mate to seek the position of lieutenant governor. I don't have the vote totals because they apparently have not certified the election numbers at this writing. However, as I noted last week, it is difficult for a "true" Independent to win in an election opposing a primary party choice, but Independent Bill Walker apparently found a way to accomplish exactly that. His running mate had been the Democratic Party candidate for the position of governor until he dropped out of the race and joined candidate Walker on the Independent ticket. Where there is a will there just might be a way depending on your view of ethical political activity.
In light of my comment last week and the results of the election in state-wide offices in Arkansas, I felt our results deserved some exposure if for no other reason than our own education. The Arkansas Secretary of State's website gives totals for the positions discussed in this article and you can check my numbers there. These numbers may not be 100 percent correct because the final count had not been certified at the time I visited the Secretary of State's website. However, any changes would be minimal since the figures represent all preliminary precinct totals.
The website reports there are 1,690,577 registered voters in Arkansas and 851,019 ballots were cast giving us a voter turn out percentage of 50.34 percent. As a side note, Benton County has a reported 129,175 voters in its 73 precincts and 48.98 percent,63,266 voters, cast ballots in the election.
I looked at the results of the U.S. Senate race and seven state offices, all won by Republicans, just to see how strong the Republican party is state-wide. In the U.S. Senate race Cotton won with 56.59 percent of the total vote recorded in the final accounting. He had 477,851 votes out of 845,852 that were counted in that contest. His total vote of almost 478,000 is only 28.3 percent of the registered voters in the state. Pryor's total was 19.73 percent of the eligible voters and the three minor party candidates combined for a total of about 2 percent of eligible voters.
We can safely surmise that only half of the eligible voters cared enough to get involved and less than 30 percent of our state's potential voters sent a new senator to Washington to make some kind of change happen. We cannot determine how many of those votes were cast because they knew Cotton personally, were influenced by his Congressional voting in the House, supported him for his military record, were impressed by his Harvard law degree or simply voted Republican. Could he have achieved the Alaskan success without the "R" behind his name? We will never know, but common sense suggests "no."
Asa Hutchinson was elected governor by almost 14 percentage points over his Democrat opposition. He had almost 8,000 fewer votes than Cotton although there were essentially four candidates in both races. Democrat Mike Ross had almost 8,000 more votes in the governor's race than Pryor tallied in the senate race. Could that indicate we see the problem in Washington being more critical to change than the problems facing our beloved Natural State so some crossed party lines to support Cotton?
Even though the Republicans prevailed in the Senate, the governor's race and lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor and land commissioner, the largest margin of victory was in the race for secretary of state. The incumbent, Republican Mark Martin had a 25 percentage point victory over Inman (Democrat). The smallest margin of victory was for attorney general where the Republican, Rutledge, won by slightly over 8 percentage points and the Libertarian candidate recorded 43,164 votes or 5.18 percentage.
With all the national publicity concerning the Senate race and the outcome of Arkansas' vote being a factor in control of the Senate, it is difficult to ignore the fact that the outside attention on the Senate seat and the governor's position probably influenced Republican voter turnout. The outcome, however, can't be denied and it brings a lot of attention to Arkansas as a Red (as in Republican) state.
The number of votes cast on the five issues on the ballot was interesting and reflected the results of legislation passed or proposed by our state legislators or initiated by voter petition. The most votes favoring any of the issues was for the minimum wage with 547,708 supporting the raise in the state's minimum wage. The issue that really surprised me was Issue 3, which changes our current term limit law to allow a person to spend a total of 16 years in either legislative body. That will change Arkansas' House for years to come because now a member of the State House (of which there are 100 districts) need not term limit out when their eight years end and it conflicts with an incumbent senator (there are 35 Senate districts) from their area.
The only loser in the Issue category was No. 4, an attempt to make alcohol sales legal in the entire state, taking away the county option. A 61.8 percent majority rejected this proposal.
•••
Editor's note: Leo Lynch is an award-winning columnist. He is a native of Benton County has deep roots in northwest Arkansas. He is a retired industrial engineer and former Justice of the Peace. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Editorial on 11/26/2014