More Voting Problems in Garland County
Arkansas Business Journal, By Jan Cottingham 07 November 2006
 
Charles Tapp, chairman of the Garland County Election Commission, said Tuesday that voting "is not going smoothly" and that three technicians and three commissioners are working to correct problems.

Tapp, during a Tuesday afternoon a phone interview with Arkansasbusiness.com, said “voting is going fast and furious and not smoothly but OK.”

“There’s lots of little computer problems with different machines. … We’ve got three technicians and three commissioners going out to the 39 [voting] locations,” Tapp said.

Garland County uses two kinds of machines, both sold by ES&S: the optical scanning machine, which reads a paper ballot, and a touch screen device.

Voting is “not going smoothly,” Tapp said. “It’s not going the way it should. … We put out one fire and we head to another one. It’s not the kind of election I’d like, but we’re working on it. And it’s going to get better in the future. I think they’re good machines. There’s just some kinks we’ve got to work out.”

Tapp, sounding harried as phones rang constantly in the background, said turnout in Garland County was “brisk.”

Garland County had experienced problems during early voting last week. The county election commission was one of the few in Arkansas to handle its own programming of the touch-screen machines. In an interview late last month with the Morning News of Springdale, Tapp, speaking about early voting problems, was quoted saying, “We want to be in full charge of our elections here in Garland County.”