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Hello again everyone.

Thanks very much for joining us.

It is women's History Month and later in the broadcast we'll remember in Arkansas woman who made literary and civil rights history and will speak with the leader of a committee that could make still more history.

First elections and Arkansas Circuit Judge last week struck down four laws enacted by the legislature this year involving elections.

One would eliminate sworn statements as a substitute for photo ID in casting provisional ballots and require photocopies of the ID within a week of the election, or the ballot would be nullified.

A second would ban individuals other than election workers from standing within 100 feet of a polling station except to vote.

Yet another mandated cross checking the signatures on absentee ballots with the voter registration application.

The two signatures.

And the 4th shortened by three days, the deadline for mail in ballots.

Now advocates say the issue is election integrity.

The statutes were challenged in court, though by a handful of individuals and organizations, including the League of Women Voters who allege the laws were both unnecessary and discriminatory.

The state is appealing asking the Arkansas Supreme Court to keep the laws in place until it can review the judges decision.

Joining us now.

A sponsor of two of the four laws in question, Senator Kim Hammer, Republican of Betton.

And a colleague in opposition, Senator Joyce Elliott, Democrat of Little Rock, Sir Madam, thanks very much for coming in and be with us.

Senator hammer.

Let's let's begin with you.

While the issue is pending now before the Supreme Court, either the the Supreme Court will say or the yay or nay to its appeal.

To a stay anyway, the necessity of these laws, Sir.

I think the necessities driven out of testimony by some of the Commissioners that were involved in some of the elections, and some of the counties.

But then also I think you have to look across the nation and see some of the situations and some of the events that occurred across the nation during the last election cycle.

It is not unusual for the legislature to come in after an election cycle when they detect and see things happening in order to make the adjustments to the law to address those situations.

So as far as the necessity.

It was driven by testimony of those that had had some adverse situations or adverse events at the polling site here in the state, but also looking at the trends across the nation and things that happened in other states.

Well, let's take the Arkansas situation first, so they were comparatively few and and essentially minor across the broad spectrum of the of the election, were they not.

I'm sorry repeat that question please.

Incidents in Arkansas to which you refer were comparatively few.

Given the given the scope of the election, or.

Or not.

Well, in some cases they were minor.

If you would compare them to what happened in other parts of the country.

But again, I think one of the jobs of the legislature is that if you see things happening in other parts of the country you want to be proactive and look at what you have in place in the laws with regards to the election guidelines or rules or laws and you go ahead and do pre emptive you you do pre pre emptive measures in order to make sure that it doesn't happen here in the state.

So there were some things that happened in some counties including Pulaski.

County that testimony was given in committee meeting the substantiated.

The reasoning behind the bills.

All right.

Senator Elliot.

Well, there are two things here I understand doing something based on maybe what happened in other parts of the country.

If we could legitimize it and we we know from so much testimony and reporting that so many things that were fantasies that people just made up.

Whether or not these things happen or not is is really problematic, and for us to change our laws based on spurious and and and unverified.

Issues that did not happen in other parts of the country and change our laws in conflict with the Constitution that says that we should be doing everything we can to make voting easier for folks who were eligible and doing the right things because the wording in the Constitution is that access to the ballot should be under.

Impaired and what we've done is change for laws enacted for laws to do, just exactly that, to impair the vote.

For some reason that we don't have a good evidence to do so if if we were.

If we were a state where we had demonstrative.

Veering away from from whatever is what the lawful way to cast your ballot.

That would be that would make some sense to me, but in all the testimony and and the discussion on the Senate floor that was just not the case.

I don't know anybody who's against voter integrity, but voter integrity in Arkansas is simply not an issue and we pass laws in conflict with the Constitution, especially about impairment, but we didn't have to.

Arkansas ranks the.

Lowest in the country for the percentage of people who are voting and the lowest in the country, but the number of people who are registered to vote.

And among those that are registered.

The lowest where they're going to the polls.

So we need to be going in the other direction trying to figure out a way to get more people to come vote and not feel as if somehow the voting is going to be impaired.

Well yeah, the advocates of these law indicate that public or contend that public confidence in the election process.

Has been so shaken that statutes such as these are necessary to ensure public confidence in in the political process.

You disagree.

I absolutely just I. I do disagree because we don't have the evidence of that now.

I will concede.

I will absolutely concede that we have manufactured ways to try to create a lack of public confidence, but manufacturing something that is simply not there is not a good enough reason to impair something as important as the vote.

But that's what's happened.

And that has happened across the country.

This.

This manufacturing of reasons.

I talked to pass laws that are not necessary and we don't have the evidence to prove that they are necessary.

Senator hammer let me quote from from the judges.

Judge Griffin's ruling that the trial judge who who declared the statutes unconstitutional, he referred to the the rationale behind him as conjecture, surmise, misinformation, fearmongering.

I suspect you don't agree with that.

Yeah, you would suspect right?

Because I want to go back to a point that Senator Elliot made.

Go ahead if this.

If this was just conjuncture.

If this was just things that were designed around conspiracy theory theories, that would be one thing, but all you have to do is grow up and look at once conson and what's happening and what's conson the legislature.

And once Conson is pointed, a special committee that was led by a justice who went in and did an investigation.

Those findings came out two weeks ago.

Some of the issues that you find up there, whether they are present in Arkansas or not.

Gives warrant to the reason why we need to make sure that our laws are not providing not only easy access but also providing safe access to make sure that the vote is secure with yards to Judge Griffin we all knew before it went there, at least those of us on this side of the issue that these laws would probably be stricken down.

It was just like the announcers during the Razorback game.

Their mind was already made up before the game was played, but when it was all said and done, we realized that the Razorbacks won, and I think that we will win whenever it gets before the Supreme Court.

You mentioned Senator Wisconsin and I'm looking at the latest that I could find from Wisconsin and well over.

I think 2,000,000 votes cast there and 16 cases have been brought so far and it is.

It's not clear whether the intent there was to violate the law.

It.

Are we overstating it then when you when you use the example of Wisconsin or some other states?

Well, I think what you'll find is that as we move through the states because with regards to getting the vote certified.

Unfortunately because of the time frame with which a vote is certified, it doesn't always allow for the investigative portion of the election.

And what happened around the election?

So I think that what you see in Wisconsin is just a taste of what will be experienced in other states as they begin.

If the states are willing to do so so that we can take a look at it thoroughly without the constraints of the time of getting the election certified.

In the case of Wisconsin.

The justice in his report and given in testimony and interviews identified 2 specific areas that they felt that maybe or maybe not change the course of the election, but yet they certainly did not stand up to the scrutiny of of election integrity.

And those are the areas that I think they'll be looking at as far as laws to change it in the future.

Senator Elliot, that the the the structures that the four statutes and mentioned would impose if they were sustained at at the state level at the Supreme Court level.

Are they truly that onerous?

Well yes, yes they are because they are onerous based on and I I don't want to be pejorative and say they're based on nothing, but they're certainly based on something that's manufactured and we get back to what happened in Wisconsin.

I kept up with what was going on in Wisconsin, is there there was there were all kind of shenanigans to make sure that in Wisconsin they got to some kind of some kind of investigation, not based on anything that was really solid, but somebody was determined to do an investigation.

And when it comes to Wisconsin and whatever kind of investigation they have, if it's not something that is an issue in Arkansas, why are we making up something to pretend it is?

I'll bet you there's some other investigation going on in Wisconsin right now that if we wanted to take it and superimpose it on Arkansas, we could do that.

Just because Wisconsin did it.

If we did our elections, and apparently we did a lot better than the people in Wisconsin are saying.

And not everybody is saying it, why are we beating ourselves up over this?

We've done it correctly and and you take some of the laws we have for.

For example, with the absentee ballot, or people having a another day to get their votes to get their votes in used to be, you could get your your absentee ballot in on the Monday before the election.

And if it's mailed in and now that's been changed to where it's got to be the Friday before it's got to be the Friday before and we have, we have a another.

A law that says you cannot be within the spec that 100 feet of the entry for voting for only for lawful only.

For lawful reasons.

There are a lot of reasons somebody might need to be in that space, not not to a campaign.

You might be standing in the rain of Steve, and I might want to bring you an umbrella, but I'm not to enter that space.

There is no reason for that.

There may be somebody standing in line who's a diabetic and might need some kind of food, but I'm not to enter that space.

There's no reason for that one.

What is that helping?

And and when what we've done is made it harder even for the people who are who are.

Taking a look at and and looking at our absentee ballots.

My signature now has to match the signature that I had when I registered to vote.

Everybody who knows me knows that was a lot of years ago that I registered to vote, and when I have a signature right now, I had a bad fall in in 2019 and and hurt my writing hand.

My signature is never going to look the same way again.

And somebody, somewhere who is not a writing expert has to look at these two signatures and decide whether or not I'm legitimate.

There's no reason for that force for heaven.

That kind of onerous placed on anybody who is not an expert in in this kind of area, because we have other?

Yeah, let me go to your colleague.

Well, Mr Hammer, go ahead, but I wanted to ask also as well, is the net effect of this almost certainly to be a a fewer votes cast?

I don't think so.

Go ahead.

Senator Hammer, I think you can go your turn.

I think Senator Hammer I think thank you.

Thanks, Joyce the No I don't think it is.

In fact, I think what discourages voter turn out is when people feel that if they go and vote and their vote is not going to be counted and they hear things in the news like ballot boxes being found later, or maybe some tampering that occurred with regards to the absentee ballot, I think that whenever people hear of those kind of things that are not just fiction but in some cases most cases fact once the investigation is done what discourages people from going out and voting is if they think that their vote.

Is not going to count.

The laws are not water prohibited.

The laws are not water prohibiting people from getting out to vote.

What is prohibiting people from getting out to vote?

Is their decision a conscientious decision not to put forth the effort and if they put forth the effort to go out and vote, we want to make sure that those votes are protected both for Democrats or Republicans for independents, for Green Party, for whatever party we want to make sure that those votes count.

No, I made my might, I might I add to that what keeps people from going to vote are laws that are suppressive because right now we just assume based on our experiences, everybody else has the same experience.

There is a reason that we do everything we can to make voting accessible to everybody.

As the Constitution says, without impairment we do.

Certainly we are Senator Elliot.

We are impaired by the clock.

I've got into it and I, and I apologize for doing that to both of you.

Senator Elliot, senator hammer.

Thanks very much for coming on.

We'll see you next time.

Thank you for being here and we'll be right back.

And we are back first Arkansas Commission on the status of women was created longer than 1/2 century ago and it has had four earlier incarnations now.

A fifth impaneled by Governor Hutchinson last month in reconstituting the Commission, Mr Hutchinson specifically charged it with examining barriers to women in the workplace and to direct the effort he looked to his own workplace.

Allison Williams is the governor's chief of staff.

And now chair of the Commission.

And she joins us here in the studio.

Now, as William Sykes, very much for coming in in the governor's proclamation, he's he said that women are a profound fundamental.

They're fundamental to the economic and social and cultural and political stuff of Arkansas.

And then he goes on to say, but research is needed to analyze that the role they play.

Why, I mean.

It ought to be obvious then, well right, and it's obvious that women make up half of the of the population of the state.

I mean, that's normal and human relations, right?

But it is clear that there remains a pay gap.

Still, that there are more women employed in lower wage jobs than are relative to men, both here and in Arkansas, but also in the rest of the country.

And so we and then with COVID we have some additional responsibility to look at what are those impacts that were particularly called out child care, family care?

And then healthcare and mental health that were called out because of COVID-19 that's also in the executive order.

You had well, one of the barriers that that, as we mentioned, up top one of the barriers that he's.

Seem to emphasize anyway.

The proclamation was the situation of single moms and and we inextricably tide to.

That, of course, is child care.

What can you do, legislate how to approach that?

Yeah, well, that is exactly a huge part of what we're going to be looking at and talking with women throughout the state to get their impact their their feedback on that.

So, of course, if you have a partner, if you're married or you have a strong family network in in a community in which you live, perhaps childcare and family care is a little bit.

Easier to address if you're a single mother or without a support network or without family around, that becomes much more untenable, and so he specifically wanted to look at not just what does it mean for child care and family care?

For for all women in Arkansas?

But what does it mean when, when there's very little support, network around some of those women?

Well, another thing that he mentioned also was the entry of women into the scientific, technical, and scientific profession for longer than a decade.

Now I think women have enrolled in.

Law School, for example, have far outnumbered men and they are claiming a good, justifiably so.

A greater share of the seats and legislative bodies, executive branches.

But there does seem to be a lag in the scientific professions, perhaps absent Med school itself.

How to address that?

Well, I think you'll also see research research that shows that after 8th grade, girls in STEM fields Excuse me, engineering and math and science and technology really start to drop off, and so our partner with the women.

Yeah, with with Women's Commission, the Women's Foundation has done a lot of work in research around this over the last 25 years, so looking at ways to make sure that we don't lose those girls in middle school to go onto those technical fields, we want to see the same success that we're seeing in law school and in higher education in general.

Continue in these other specific fields.

Well, your employer is going to leave office.

The man who commissioned this Commission will leave office in January.

How do you know that this can?

Can you maintain the momentum your your chart?

The Commission is charged with reporting its findings, I believe by December that's right, December 1st, and so it's a great question and one that we talk about amongst the Commissioners quite a lot.

And so looking at ways to not only make recommendations that are actionable to a future governor and two future legislators, but also to look at all of the different levers that we can pull across the state, whether it's nonprofit or education or other arenas so that our work, the findings of our work can continue.

And that we're not just relying on politically elected leaders to carry that forward.

Well, to get a great deal done, it would seem to be if you need a General Assembly search any, any governor would.

What's the political temperature here?

Well, we have had great response from the legislature already on this.

Of course, the governor asked the speaker and the Protem to name, to name appointees from their bodies, either current or former.

So we have a two former and especially the minority leaders of both houses to do the same.

So we have two members of the House and two members of the Senate, either current or former, also participating in that, and we hope that that's going to ensure.

We have success with the legislative recommendations as well, though that that's the leadership you've got.

You've got approximately 125 other members that you have to worry about as well.

Yeah, but Steve, I don't know that anyone would argue when you have women who are making $0.79 on the dollar for men here in Arkansas.

When you look even further into that data and black women, Hispanic women, Asian women making even less than that, it's hard to argue that there that there aren't barriers to entry or retention in the workforce and.

And making sure that women are equally represented in some of these more technical fields.

Well, how much of this do you envision at the outset is going to require legislative action?

I hope not much, and not because I don't think the legislature is important but but because so much of this can be already accomplished through some of the work that's already being done in other in other entities.

So the 1973 report, for example, really got to lean into some things about the legal restrictions, whether they were considered, quote protective or not.

We don't see those same sort of barriers that would require statutory change now, so.

To continue, yeah?

Well, I think we're that's one of the things that we're really wanting to hear from women throughout the state.

And so we're doing these regional meetings all over the state.

We have at least five scheduled and and based on the level of interest, I think we'll see more of those and really hearing from those women, what are the barriers that they've experienced and what needs to be addressed by the legislature?

And what needs to be addressed by policy?

And what can be addressed in the communities that they live?

You've had your initial meeting already.

What we've had two meetings, so we had our initial meeting in February.

And then we had our first regional meeting in Fayetteville, and the thing that struck me the most in the regional meeting in Fayetteville was just the the layers of complexity that we had for women in those in that Community.

In particular, Northwest Arkansas.

But also, you know, one of the things the threat common threads was just the number of times that women were saying, I just made it work.

And that is not a sustainable path.

Just making something work whether it is dealing with COVID related child education at home or child care, we have to find ways to allow these women to be part of the workforce to be part of the fabric of the economy of Arkansas and contribute their talent and so just making it work is not sustainable.

You just starting out now and as a professional woman yourself.

What's the biggest barrier that you see two other women in in it?

Was it political, cultural, social, economic?

My personal opinion is that it is largely cultural and social, and so these are things that are not necessarily in the purview of of, you know, political legislation or political approach, and So what I would like to see.

And what I believe has been barriers in the past, is this resilience of women, us continuing to try to make things work and not asking for the things that would bring us up to par.

Whether it's making sure that we are demanding from our partners equal sort of work at the home, or demanding that we are paid equally to men for the same jobs we have, we have a responsibility to make sure that women have the confidence.

And and not expect that they're going to just have to make it work.

Have you consulted with the state Chamber on some of this?

Not yet, but I expect that they will be a significant portion of a of the conversation as well.

What would you talk about how this is not necessarily amenable to legislative or political solutions?

Social and cultural problems for the past have in fact required legislative or political or even judicial intervention.

What's different?

I think the work that's been done before has made it different.

We don't see the laws in place and there we did have had some conversations about some specific areas.

In.

For example, I think well, I won't say specific laws because I haven't seen them, but there have been references to certain areas where laws still exist.

For that, women have to have their husband sign off, for example, or a man has to sign off for them to be able to do certain things.

Those have largely gone away, and so the the the things that remain we certainly want to approach those and attack them.

But the societal norms that we see, and frankly, where in Arkansas we've been so blessed where the cost of living is low and we don't have to have both parents working in order to sustain a family for the most part, those sort of things are going to change as we get deeper and higher into the.

You know the higher technical skills that Governor Hutchinson, for example, is looking for with computer science education and with I'm now one of the great things that came out of COVID, I think, is the ability to work from anywhere for anyone.

Allison Williams chair of the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you, Steve.

Thank you very and come back soon.

Thank you.

Another installment now in our observance of Women's History Month, we take note of an Arkansas native, of whom the world took note and still does.

Here's a thumbnail from our Jennifer Gibson.

I know why the caged bird sings begins here at the colored Methodist Episcopal Church in stamps, Arkansas.

Maya Angelou's first book, an autobiography, includes a black child experience in the segregated South.

We had to cross the pond and adventure the railroad tracks.

We were explorers walking without weapons and dominating animals territory in 1931 at about the age of three.

Marguerite Maya Angelou arrived in stamps with her older brother, Bailey junior, to live with their grandmother.

Angela is rough beginning led to an incredible life, she was known to say that her childhood formed her ideas about fairness and lead to her award-winning work for human rights.

After her death in 2014, she was recognized with her name on this, the only park in stamps, Arkansas, near the Colored Methodist Episcopal CME Church.

And that's it for us for this week.

Thanks for joining us.

As always, see you next week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and QR FM 89.