My Plan

I get asked often where I stand on paper ballots versus voting machines.

My answer starts with the law. The Secretary of State’s job is to administer Arkansas election law and support counties in carrying it out.

Regardless of the lawful system a county uses, my responsibility is to make sure election officials have the training, resources and support they need to administer secure elections voters can trust.

When we’re considering new technology or processes, my standard will be straightforward: Is it lawful? Is it secure? Is it verifiable? Is it practical? Is it scalable across 75 very different counties?

And we should listen to the people actually doing the work before we make those decisions.

Counties shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel. When something works well in one Arkansas county, we should share it. When another state has developed a better practice, we should study it and decide whether it makes sense for Arkansas.

And when the same problem keeps showing up — whether it’s equipment, training, technology or a vendor — track it, find the cause and fix it. That’s what the evidence is for.

I want Arkansans to have more opportunities to ask hard questions and see our election systems firsthand.

If someone questions a voting machine, show them how it works. If they want to understand how ballots are protected or results are verified, walk them through it.

Questions aren’t the enemy of election security. Secrecy and confusion are.

I don’t want Arkansans to trust our elections because the Secretary of State tells them to.

I want us to build systems worthy of their trust — and then lift up the hood and let them see for themselves.

I want the Secretary of State’s office to pay attention to the questions Arkansans are actually asking about our elections: Can a machine change my vote? What happens to my ballot after I cast it? How are voting machines tested? How are voter rolls maintained? What happens if equipment fails? How are results verified?

Those questions deserve answers. We’ll regularly identify the questions and concerns we’re hearing from voters and create simple ways to answer them — through short videos, demonstrations, diagrams, public information and opportunities to see election processes firsthand.

You ask. We’ll show you.

I support Arkansas’s voter ID requirement. But a security measure only works well when voters understand it and eligible voters have a clear path to comply.

The Secretary of State should make sure every Arkansan knows what forms of identification are accepted, what to do if they don’t have one, and where they can get the identification they need.

Arkansas provides a path for eligible voters who need identification for voting purposes, and that information should be easy to find and consistently communicated across the state.

I want clear information available online and through counties — including the optional social media and voter-education materials we provide to local officials.

Secure elections and accessible elections are not competing goals. We should be committed to both.

I’ve spent much of my career supporting teams across multiple locations, and I’ve learned that the people doing the work usually know where the problems are.

I want regular opportunities for county officials to tell us what’s working, what isn’t and what they need from the state. And I want that feedback to matter.

We shouldn’t build a solution in Little Rock and then find out whether it works in all 75 counties. We should build it with them.

The Secretary of State is a statewide office. It shouldn’t feel like a Little Rock office.

I plan to spend meaningful time in the field — regularly visiting counties, sitting down with clerks and election officials, and hosting Secretary of State office days in communities across Arkansas.

I want to see the systems where they’re actually being used, hear directly from the people doing the work and understand the challenges that may look very different from county to county.

Some problems are difficult to see from behind a desk in Little Rock. I intend to go see them for myself.

Partnership also means looking for practical ways the state can take work off counties instead of adding to it.

Not every county has communications staff or the resources to create voter-education materials for every election. The Secretary of State can create optional, editable social media graphics, voter-registration reminders, early-voting information, voter ID explainers and other materials counties can use and customize if they choose.

If we can build something once at the state level that saves 75 counties time and money, we should.

Some of the best ideas will come from county clerks, election commissioners and staff who have spent years figuring out how to make elections work in their communities.

I want the Secretary of State’s office to help find those ideas, recognize them and share them across Arkansas.

Listen. Support. Share what works. Give people the tools to succeed. And never forget that the people closest to the work should have a voice in how the work gets done.

Voter registration is one example.

When an Arkansan registers through the DMV, information moves between state and local systems. I want to evaluate that entire process and identify unnecessary manual entry, duplication, delays and opportunities for systems to communicate more efficiently.

Technology should reduce work and errors, not create another layer of complexity.

I support Arkansas’s current absentee-voting framework. Arkansas does not have universal vote-by-mail, and changing who qualifies to vote absentee is a decision for the legislature.

But administering the process well is the responsibility of election officials, and I believe we can look for ways to make that process more accessible while maintaining its security.

That means evaluating the experience from beginning to end: requesting an absentee ballot, understanding the requirements, meeting the deadlines, returning it correctly and knowing whether it has been received.

Other states use technology that allows voters to track the status of their absentee ballot. I want to evaluate tools and best practices like that for Arkansas — not because another state does it, but because secure technology may give voters better information while reducing questions and administrative work for counties.

Listen to voters. Listen to counties. Map the process. Find the breakpoints. Look at the information. Determine what can be simplified or improved.

Is it lawful? Is it secure? Is it practical? Is it scalable? And does it actually solve the problem?

Some improvements can be made administratively. Others will require technology investments, partnerships with other agencies or action by the General Assembly.

My job isn’t to change Arkansas election law from the Secretary of State’s office. My job is to administer it well — and make the systems around it work as well as they possibly can.

I want to evaluate Business Services the same way I would any other major process: from beginning to end and from the user’s point of view.

Where do people get confused? Where do they abandon the process? What generates the most calls? What gets rejected most often? Where are people entering the same information twice? Which instructions aren’t clear?

Those are data points. Use them to find the breakpoints and improve the process.

Someone starting their first LLC shouldn’t have to understand the internal structure of the Secretary of State’s office to figure out what to do next.

Organize information around what people are trying to accomplish: I want to start a business. I need to file an annual report. I need to make a change. I want to search for a business. I need help.

Use clear steps and better navigation so people can get where they’re going without having to become experts in state government first.

For a large company, an inefficient government process may be an inconvenience. For a small-business owner or farmer already working long hours and watching every dollar, it can be a real burden.

The goal isn’t to eliminate requirements that exist in law. It’s to make complying with them as simple and understandable as we reasonably can.

I want us measuring the things that tell us whether Business Services is actually improving: processing times, common errors, repeat contacts, customer questions and where people are struggling.

Good government shouldn’t be measured by how many processes we have. It should be measured by how well those processes serve the people who have to use them.