Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.

Hello again, everyone.

Thanks very much for being with us.

Across Arkansas, across the nation and even abroad.

It's down to the wire and the presidential contest.

While closer to home, there are statewide races and issues in all manner of local offices at stake.

And in a moment, some thoughts on election 24 with a pair of Arkansas political pros.

First, though, the mechanics of elections in Arkansas and any questions of public confidence in those elections.

The state attorney general has once again established an Election Day hotline for any reports of irregularities or other issues.

And Attorney General Tim Griffin joins us now.

General, thanks very much for coming aboard, as always.

The Hotline, based on past patterns.

Is this hotline really necessary?

Are you anticipating it's going to be used a great deal?

Well, it's necessary because we have a great track record in Arkansas as it relates to running our elections, But it's necessary to ensure that people have confidence.

If someone sees something that they think is inappropriate or illegal or what have you, it's great that they can call our office.

And it's particularly helpful even when there's nothing, nothing to the allegation, because then we can then indicate to those individuals and in some cases to the public that we looked at it, we investigated it, and there's nothing to be concerned about.

So it's not just about having reports of genuine wrongdoing.

It's about being available for the public to call and inform us of what they're seeing.

And then for us to be able to look at it and communicate what we what we find.

And I want to say again, I have the highest level of confidence in our elections here in Arkansas.

We've got a great track record.

And that's that's due to a number of people, the secretary of state and their staff, secretaries of state over the years are the county officials.

You know, elections are by definition, are operations that are spread all around the state, with each county playing a critical, critical role.

We've got a great track record, but we want to maintain the confidence that just a person who at one brief moment just got a release and I'm sure you've seen it, too, from the Department of Justice, DOJ, as always, will be monitoring our says it will be available on Election Day and even during early voting for any reports of Ms.. Mallon or nonfeasance.

So is it duplicative at all for the state to step in here?

No, we I mean, we have state laws and our federal law.

We have a role.

They have a role.

Here's the thing.

There are two critical components here.

State number one, that we have integrity in the process and that things run smoothly.

That's obviously front and center.

That's important.

Critically important.

But there's another side to this.

People have to know and believe in that integrity and that and have confidence in those go together.

So you not only want things running smoothly.

You won't vote for Bush.

Do you have confidence that the laws are being followed, followed and that it's running smoothly?

And so that's what our election integrity hotline is about.

It's it's to some degree what our Election Integrity unit is about.

We have had several prosecutions that we've taken to completion recently.

Several, I think I checked the other day, I think so far in the last couple of weeks, we've had a approximately or we've had approximately 30 calls to our to our hotline.

And a lot of times we'll see see the same allegations reported where people are a number of people are saying something.

Just because it's reported doesn't mean that there's anything going on wrong.

But it just says, hey, we need to just take a look and make sure that that everything is consistent with answers, Just some glitches that are reported.

And we often will call and check on them.

And county officials in one case that I'm recalling will say, hey, yeah, we did have that glitch.

We identified it, we fix it.

That's not happening anymore.

So it's a healthy part of the process.

Would you and to state the obvious, is the presidential election there and ballot integrity, election integrity has been an issue that it's been widely addressed by both candidates.

Okay.

But would you a based on that on the on the emotions running high as they are this year, would you expect an uptick in complaints this year?

You know, so far I have.

I haven't seen that.

But look, we in this this state, which is my responsibility and the officials, the elected officials and others and others here in the states responsibility, we've got a great track record.

Our elections, no election is perfect.

There's going to be mistakes.

There's going to be things that happen, glitches here or there.

But overall, we have a great system in this state.

And my goal is to make sure working with the others that play a really big role, as I've mentioned before, to ensure that it stays that way.

Again, I vote here in Little Rock where I live.

I have complete confidence that my vote counts exactly the way I expressed it.

And if I didn't feel that way, I would let people know.

I try to never miss a vote, and I take it very seriously.

And I have the utmost respect for the process and I have the utmost confidence in the way that my vote, my I my personal vote, my wife's vote is handled.

And I feel good about where we are as a state.

And so I think that people ought to focus on how they want to vote and obviously, if they have any concerns, concerns, let us know.

But I would tell people they can have confidence that that overall we have a really good system.

Does your confidence extend to early voting as well, sir?

It's always been the early voting is pretty popular in Arkansas.

Absolutely.

I really vote every time I had a concern with early voting.

I say every time, almost most every time, if not every time.

I really voted already.

Yeah.

If I can.

One final question, sir, before we run out of time.

You and a couple of dozen other state AGs got a victory on Wednesday from the Supreme Court, which temporarily allowed the state of Virginia to purge, I think, fewer than 2000 individuals from its voter rolls.

And the court emphasized it was a temporary action.

But you filed an amicus in that case, I think.

Are you aware at this time of any similar action in Arkansas, similar to what Virginia has undertaken in terms of a voter purge?

No, and I've had some conversations about that.

But I'm I am personally not aware of that.

And I've been in that work case.

It was about who has who holds the fundamental right to vote.

I think the it's really clear from our our constitutional from our Constitution and the related documents and the case law that the that citizens hold that fundamental right, not non-citizens.

And that's what that case was about.

But I have not I am not aware of any mass review, review or purging going on in the state.

Got to end it there, sir, because we're simply out of time.

We thank you, as always.

We thank you for yours.

Come back soon.

Thank you.

You stay.

All right.

Take care.

And we'll be right back.

Well, we are back.

And as promised, or maybe threatened the dynamic duo of democracy.

Republican strategist Bill Vicary.

And from the left, Democratic strategist Michael Cook.

Well, guys, Election Day, there's an election coming up, maybe.

Yeah.

All right.

Who wants to start here?

Why don't we let Bill?

Why don't we start?

Well, crazy is what?

Where do you start?

This has been one of the most unique presidential elections in history.

Everybody says that all the time.

But you have a sitting president who bows out after being the party's nominee.

You've got one president, former President Trump.

He gets others an assassination attempt, maybe two.

And and we're not even now down to what, the last ten days.

And we've seen a flurry of a flurry of name calling all the way around.

That's that's unfortunate.

It is.

It's the undecideds.

How someone remains undecided until five days out is beyond me.

But it happens and it happens in three big swing states.

And and that's unfortunately, I think that's where the race lies.

Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Yeah.

Michael shades of 68 it is this rate is tied as a tick.

I mean we don't know who is going to win.

Anybody who says they do is wrong, which could be frustrating as time just as an American citizen, it seems like it's the same 150,000 knuckleheads in four states that determine the future of our country.

It's, you know, the same people that we're waiting on to see how they're going to vote in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and so on.

So the race, you know, these they're both having their closing message.

I think Kamala is closing stronger than she is.

That's not to say I think she's going to predict she's going to win.

I think she has a a stronger message and is making a better case for herself.

But this is like nothing we've ever seen before.

As Bill was saying, we've never seen the changes in the in the nominees.

It's just been you look back on past presidential elections, in retrospect, they've all been pretty standard, right?

The Democrat and Republican fought it out.

One you know, one person won.

But this one, you know, and we're not going to know till a couple of days, I don't think, until.

Who actually won these these critical swing states?

Yeah, No, I think it's a state.

The state.

This is where we are as a country.

This is not just presidential races that are this tight.

We're going to have an evenly divided Senate.

I think Republicans will control probably a 5248 Senate.

Somewhere in there, we're going to have a House of Representatives.

Either party that's in charge probably will have a 5 to 7, maybe ten vote majority, which is not really a a governing majority.

So we are we have there are many reasons for this, but we're clearly an evenly divided country when it comes to kind of who we want to see running things.

Well, there's not a great deal of suspense about who's going to carry Arkansas, the presidential level.

And all six of our delegates would seem to have the edge.

I mean, things can happen, but they would seem to have an edge Now for the larger country, though, what are we looking at for two or four years of not much.

It might.

It depends.

I mean, if if if Vice President Harris wins, but yet the Republicans take the Senate, which I think unfortunately they probably will.

You know, what could she of her agenda, could she get passed?

You know, if they had the House but not not the Senate or if, heaven forbid, Trump wins, and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that he takes both houses, both the House and the Senate, That could happen as well.

You know, these are things that we just don't know yet.

In fact, the House, we probably won't know to a week later when all of the California votes are coming in via e-mail.

He would still need 60 on the Senate, but.

Right.

Yeah.

Again, I go back to this.

I mean, neither candidate has long coattails.

They are their own self-contained units and they vote.

And I think you'll see ticket splitting in a number of states.

You know, we're very proud of that in Arkansas in the past.

But I think you see it now happening in Big Ten country now more and more than ever.

So it's it's you know, there's no there's no momentum necessarily for one movement as much as each individual campaign has its own sort of cult of personality.

And that holds true in a Senate race in Pennsylvania between two guys or in in a House race in Nebraska or wherever it might be.

It's there's all their own self-contained campaign units.

And we really don't see coattail effect personality.

Yeah, but there's also a strain of ideology that's pretty pretty in this in this campaign, too.

You witnessed both sides playing or playing with ideas.

Sure.

Yeah.

With Kamala, with her message in terms of how she's going to be fighting for the middle class while at the same time she believes Trump is just all about grievances, all about trying to get retribution against his perceived well, there's abortion issues and the abortion that is a major issue, especially in some of these swing states.

Abortion is on abortion rights is on the ballot in both Nevada and Arizona.

Those two critical states that one issue could decide those two states in terms of Democrats getting out their vote are people who are just angry that their rights have been taken away from them.

Economy and immigration are pretty intense issues in this cycle.

And, you know, they break for they break toward the Republicans relative to those issues, the economy being sort of an overriding thing.

I will say this.

Undecideds, when they do break, they typically don't break 5050.

They typically all fall one way or the other.

That's why I think the intense belief with both campaigns inside the last few days, once early voting starts, that's another dynamic that's changed the the barometer of how we how we measure things.

How is this shaping Arkansas?

Can you point to a race and the issue and saying, wow, I mean, this is I mean this is what I would bet the House on who wins Arkansas in the presidential race.

I mean, literally and you know, Harris will probably get, you know, 34, 35% here, maybe a half a point better.

So it's not going to have much of an effect.

I wonder, you know, her candidacy has energized Democrats here in Arkansas and got them more motivated and more organized.

But I think, conversely, sadly, it's probably energized Republicans in their in their dislike of her.

So I think it could just be a wash in the.

Yeah, not likely, Bill.

Big, big, big changes aren't likely in the fire engine red state.

We're going to stay a fire engine red state big super majorities in both the state House and the state Senate.

Obviously all the congressional delegation stays the same all across state.

Just our state treasurer is up because of a, you know, special election.

But John Thurston wins that.

You know, it's nothing nothing changes here.

It's it's it's it's ruby hard red top to bottom mile one that everyone is kind of looking at, particularly in the legal and the business community as well and the political class, of course, Supreme Court.

We've got to associate justice.

Yeah.

With with Supreme Court Justice Karen Baker versus Rhonda Wood.

Both of these these women are on the Supreme Court.

Whoever wins becomes the new the new chief justice.

How that race is going to go, you know, who knows in the Democratic is that today they noted that Governor Sarah Sanders gave money to Rhonda Wood, sending a clear message of who they support.

So I think it could flip.

You know, what's what's fascinating about these Supreme Court races is that we pay close attention to them and how much of the candidate raised and somebody, you know, Newport, Arkansas, was going to go into the ballot, I don't know who the either.

I'm just going to vote for a name that sounds familiar.

Maybe.

Maybe it's Karen Baker.

I think I know what Karen Baker did.

I go to high school whether that kind of.

Who's got judge on it.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

So that's it.

It turns into a coin flip in a lot of these races confuse me because, you know, we elect we elect our judges in Arkansas, but we don't really allow them to campaign because we say we don't want to know how they stand.

One know how they're going to stand on issues.

But we really do want to know that they can't know who gives them money, but they read their contribution and expenditure reports that we've got to really elect judges and let it be an actual campaign of ideas or we've got to have some sort of hybrid system.

This this what we go through now, I think is is a is a lesson in hypocrisy in American political campaigning.

All of that said, I would make the undervotes that slip all the way down.

When you look at the presidential count and ultimately the state Supreme Court count, you know, big delta in between there in terms of number of voters who don't vote.

And this is a court that can have massive impact on everything that happens in your day to day life.

Sure.

And yeah, already.

Well, this is it fair to say this already is Governor Sanders Court?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And is not?

It will be.

Well, in some ways she's already won in this context.

No matter who wins this Supreme Court race, she gets to appoint a replacement that is going to be on the court for two years.

So in some ways she can't she can't lose one way or the other.

She's going to get another another vote on the bench for two years and then maybe try to move that person that they she appointed into another judgeship, maybe appeals court or circuit judgeship somewhere.

So in some ways, she does have an upper hand regardless of what happens.

It's a great point by Michael.

In a very short period of time, she used to put a stamp, her stamp on the Arkansas State Supreme Court and mold it to her way ideologically thinking.

You know, we'll see what happens in the races.

But I just wish we let these guys campaign the way that we would want them to campaign.

And and I do like the work that we as a voter gets to vote for, Judge.

I mean, I do like that aspect of it to an extent, though.

They kind of are campaigning.

Oh, they are.

But it may be this is the this the old school with me.

I'd like to have them I'd like to see a debate.

I'd like to see some back and forth.

I'd like to see them get into it, which they're prohibited from doing now.

Yeah, and maybe that's just the the old school, Paul and me.

I want to see a mix it up on 18.

Not too long ago, they were partizan up until 12.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bring it on.

But you know, we talked about it, There's not going to likely to be much change anyway.

The membership or the ideological shift or inclination in the General Assembly.

Michael.

No I mean Democrats did do really tough legislative race.

Yeah, I mean Democrats did a fantastic job in recruiting a good number of quality candidates, the most that they've recruited in many, many years.

So we've got some really good candidates out there fighting it out for the state House and state Senate seats.

Maybe Democrats have a net gain of a couple of seats.

Maybe it stays the same.

It's too you know, we won't know till election night.

But the good thing for Democrats is they are fighting on every front that they can with good candidates and pushing their message about how Arkansas learns is horrible for four Arkansas students in how this tax cuts are always geared toward the rich folks and not the middle class.

Yeah, yeah.

I tend to think that it's going to be a Republican, probably a Republican windfall.

They're not that many seats left.

And so we're going to pick up maybe a couple.

And that's But look, Democrats have the state for 150 years and the infighting was inside the Democratic Party.

Now that's flipped.

The infighting is inside the Republican Party and the varying shades of red that exist inside the party.

And that usually plays out in a legislative session.

And so we're just we're knocking on the door one of those.

So budget hearings are happening as we talk and oh, we'll see where we go after that.

Yeah, and there's another statewide race, and that's for the state, which I guess because it is a special election.

Yeah, it's a lot of attention.

It's getting some attention in part.

You know, we have a great candidate in John Pagan, a former state senator from from Little Rock.

I think Thurston has caused himself some look, I mean, look, John Thurston and the incumbent look, it's I can't argue with Bill.

It is a red state.

We kind of know how the results are going to go.

But I think with with Thurston and how he was playing cute with kicking off the abortion rights amendment and how his paperwork and just every excuse in the book he can think of hurt him a little bit.

In fact, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette the other day endorsed John Bacon.

You know, a progressive Democrat from Little Rock.

That kind of tells you right there that they're not all that happy with Secretary of State John Thurston.

Yeah, yeah.

Thurston went 6040, if not higher and the Democrat-Gazette endorsement or couple of homeless guys on the street they all carry about the same weight in Arkansas politics now as well.

Add to this is another appointment that thing exactly the governor will have.

Well, all right.

Full disclosure.

All right.

We're going to do the casino amendment.

All right.

Do your full disclosure For full disclosure.

We work for the for side for a we being your coming out.

My company.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

For us, Michael, we'll go to you.

I mean, with all respect to Bill, I kind of think the no vote probably wins in terms of voting against the amendment because when, when, when it's too confusing and you get all these mail pieces and the TV ads, people go to the vote, you know what?

I'm just going to vote no.

I'm not going to hurt anything if I vote no.

I think a lot of people are going to go to the ballots that way and just go, yeah, you know what?

Let's let's just let's just have a casino in Russellville and vote no.

The opposition has has pushed that in terms of a message down the stretch.

The idea, though, of local voters being in charge does resonate throughout the entire state.

It runs very deep.

There's been a there's a lot of affinity for that message.

And this is an idea that, you know, folks in Russellville woke up one day and many of them that didn't want it, now they can't do anything about it.

And so the concept of really pushing to have folks have a local say in what goes on in their community is one of those classic Arkansas messages that has resonated.

And I'm I'm I'm excited not to miss one quick point, though.

Republicans no longer believe in local control, the state legislature.

There we go.

No, no, no, no.

The state legislature time and time again has as literally passed laws that stop cities and counties from doing their own thing.

So when it comes to local control, I don't I don't buy that argument based on this.

This Republican legislature that does everything they can to cut out the legs from speaking.

Look, I had a couple of minutes left.

This is not to be parochial, but it is Arkansas's capital city and there's a sales tax thing on on the ballot and the stakes would appear to be pretty high for the mayor.

This is second level that it, Bill.

Yeah, this campaign seems to be all about voter turnout, that it's a highly targeted campaign.

It's not it's not really been a high profile campaign in the city of Little Rock, but very targeted to getting the voters that they want the message.

They want to get them to show up and vote and have the undervote sort of carry the day so that you're able to really affect the overall turnout.

But by getting your promises right.

Yeah, it's a coin flip.

I mean, both sides have have money to push their message out.

And Mayor, the mayor, I think, has done a good job in terms of putting points of why it needs to be passed.

But the other side, the opposition has, you know, who wants their taxes raised no matter what it's for.

So I don't know what's going to happen until Election Day.

Well, it's a it's a it's a significantly different package, though.

A notably different package than the first one that he went.

A lot of public safety law to drainage and streets, a lot of that sort of meat and potatoes stuff that kind of everybody can relate to in terms of city government.

Yeah, got to end it there because we are out of time.

I have a feeling that you guys will be back.

We'll see what happens Tuesday night.

All right.

And as always, we thank you for watching and we'll see you next week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.