Colonel Conrad Reynolds

Tina Peters is coming home!

Under the guidance of legal counsel and others I trust, this morning the Norris for Arkansas campaign filed for emergency relief and asked the court to preserve election materials and withhold certification of the Saline County election results while major issues are reviewed.

This filing is not about bitterness, and it is not about attacking the local election workers who may have been doing the best they could with the training and direction they were given. It is about whether the election and recount process in Saline County complied with Arkansas law, and whether the ballots reviewed can be reliably verified as the same ballots cast by the voters.

That is a serious matter. It deserves a careful, lawful, and orderly review.

From the beginning, my campaign for Secretary of State has been centered on a simple principle: elections should be secure, documented, transparent, and worthy of public trust. Laws on the books are important, but they only have meaning when they are enforced. Procedures only matter when they are followed. Records only protect the public when they are properly created, maintained, and available for review.

In the filing this morning, we asked the court to preserve the election materials, prevent certification until these issues can be reviewed, and ensure that the legal process can move forward in an orderly way. The proposed order submitted by counsel asks that election materials be secured and that certification be withheld pending further order of the court.

The filing raises concerns about whether the standards required by law were met in Saline County. At the heart of those concerns is chain of custody.

This issue is larger than a recount alone. It goes to whether there is a reliable and documented process to establish that the ballots seen later are the same ballots that were cast in the election. Without proper transfer records, proper seal verification, proper observation, and proper handling procedures, the public is left with uncertainty where there should be confidence.

That is not an allegation of fraud. It is a request for verification.

In any serious institution, chain of custody matters. In finance, missing records would not be brushed aside. In the military, secure handling would not be treated as optional. In any other important area of government, documented procedures would be understood as essential. Elections should be held to that same standard.

This is also an issue of training, supervision, and enforcement. The deficiencies we have identified do not simply raise questions about one worker or one table. They point to a broader need to ensure that election officials across Arkansas are properly trained in what the law requires and are held to a uniform standard of compliance.

A sworn affidavit filed with the case states that Saline County’s election coordinator advised that the tape used on ballot boxes came from a roll, that there were no numbered seals, and that the county had not been instructed to do otherwise. If true, that does not suggest bad faith by local workers. It suggests a deeper problem: a failure of training, procedure, and enforcement. Election integrity depends not only on having laws in place, but on making sure the people responsible for carrying them out are properly instructed and held to a uniform standard.

For some time, Arkansans have heard that our state ranks highly in election integrity. But rankings based on whether laws exist on paper are not enough. The real measure of election integrity is whether those laws are faithfully carried out in practice at the county level.

If Arkansas is going to claim a gold standard, then Arkansas must be willing to meet a gold standard.

There is also an important lesson in what we have seen in counties across our state. Washington County, Baxter County, White County, Grant County, and Saline County have all demonstrated that hand counting ballots as an audit process is both feasible and affordable. More importantly, it provides voters with greater peace of mind.

That is the standard Arkansas should strive for: hand-marked paper ballots protected by proper chain of custody, counted once by machine for efficiency, and then verified by human beings to ensure the machine was accurate.

That approach is not extreme. It is prudent.

It is similar to the way a bank operates. A machine may count the money, but a teller verifies the count before completing the transaction. The machine offers speed, but the human verification is what provides assurance. Elections deserve no less.

These hand-count audits have shown that when ballots are properly secured, when chain of custody is documented, and when human beings verify the machine totals, voters have greater confidence that the final count reflects the will of the people and that the ballots being counted are, in fact, the ballots that were cast.

That is the kind of confidence the public deserves.

This filing was made because the law should mean something. It was made because procedures should matter. It was made because voters should not be asked to accept uncertainty when the state has promised security, transparency, and accountability.

Long before I ever ran for office, I was fighting for the rights of Arkansans and for a government that follows the law and respects the people it serves. That commitment does not begin or end with one campaign or one election. It is a matter of principle, and it will continue.

I remain committed to pursuing this matter in a respectful and lawful manner. My goal is not to create division, but to insist on a system that is worthy of the trust of the people of Arkansas.

The voters of this state deserve elections that are not merely declared secure, but proven secure. They deserve elections that are not merely certified, but worthy of certification. And they deserve an election system that gives them confidence that the ballots counted truly reflect the will of the voters.

That is the standard I have fought for throughout this campaign, and that is the standard I will continue to defend.

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(Please refer all media questions to counsel)

Apparently hand-counts are accurate, quick, and cheap!

We need to make sure these types of hand-count audits are done after every election in Arkansas. It gives a peace of mind to everyone.

If the ballots had been marked by hand, these would be gold-standard elections.