Arkansas has the worst voter registration rate. Republicans are pushing to make registration harder.

This story is being published in partnership with American Doom, a newsletter that focuses on right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy.

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In February, organizers with an Arkansas voting advocacy group were registering first-time voters at a high school in rural Camden when they got word that those registrations would not be accepted. The organizers were with Get Loud, a group founded by Democratic state Sen. Joyce Elliott, and they had been registering students, mostly Black, by using an online form with an electronic signature. For months, Get Loud had been registering voters across the state online and had been told by Secretary of State John Thurston, a Republican, that electronic signatures were acceptable. 

But after the publication of a news story detailing Get Loud’s success in registering hundreds of voters — most of them young and Black — Thurston changed his mind. In the coming months, the state’s Republican attorney general issued an opinion that electronic signatures were legal and valid, only to have Thurston apparently ignore that determination and force through an emergency rule that made electronic signatures invalid — thus negating the hundreds of new, young, Black voters who Get Loud had registered. 

Now, Thurston and his State Board of Election Commissioners (SBEC) are looking to make the rule permanent against the objections of Get Loud and voting rights advocates and amid a lawsuit filed by the organization. At a meeting on June 11, the SBEC heard from scores of commenters during one of just two meetings it held before making the rule perminent. All who spoke opposed the rule, which Get Loud says will make registering to vote more difficult for many citizens, but especially lower-income voters in rural areas, according to advocates who attended the un-televised meeting.

The story of the emergency rule, say Get Loud and others, is one of simple voter suppression. Thurston’s office did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the office of Attorney General Tim Griffin. SBEC director Chris Madison defended the prohibition on electronic signatures, in part, by referencing a past voter fraud case in which the defendant had forged signatures, resulting in the use of six fraudulent ballots. 

Since January, Get Loud had been registering young Arkansans solely through its online form. Organizers with the group arrived at Camden High School to continue that work, registering mostly Black high school students to vote. Then, on February 26, the Arkansas Times-Democrat reported that Get Loud had successfully registered 358 people to vote across the state. Following the publication of the article, Thurston flipped on his decision to accept electronic signatures and advised county clerks like the one in Camden to refuse to accept any registrations that didn’t come with a physical, “wet” signature. 

“He did not communicate anything to us,” Get Loud deputy director Kristin Foster told Popular Information and American Doom, noting that the organization had been in contact with Thurston for months regarding the electronic signature issue. “We did not know this was happening.”

Now, the SBEC, led by Thurston, plans to make a permanent rule prohibiting the use of electronic signatures, preventing the type of easy-to-use online registration process Get Loud had been so successful in implementing. Thurston’s change of heart came as a surprise to Get Loud. That’s because Thurston’s office agreed in February on three occasions that electronic signatures were no different than wet ones.

“[...] our attorneys looked into this last week and came to the same conclusion [as Get Loud] about the wet signature,” Thurston’s office wrote to Get Loud in a Feb. 5 email obtained by Popular Information and American Doom.

Then, on Feb. 14, Assistant Director of Elections Josh Bridges reiterated Thurston’s support of the use of electronic signatures. 

“While this is a sensitive issue that is not clear in law, the Secretary of State does not see how a digital signature should be treated any differently than a wet signature,” Bridges wrote.

Bridges added that the issue of electronic signatures “is a grey (sic) area in the law.” However, Get Loud believed that gray area was cleared up when Attorney General Tim Griffin, also a Republican, wrote to Thurston directly in a letter on April 10. 

“I believe that an electronic signature satisfies,” requirements of state law, Griffin wrote, in part. 

“That was a big win,” Foster said. “We were very excited that the AG agreed with us.”

But Griffin’s ruling was apparently dismissed by Thurston and the SBEC, which Thurston oversees. In late June, the SBEC issued an “emergency rule” prohibiting the use of electronic signatures on voter registration forms. Now, they’re looking to make that rule permanent. Get Loud is suing over the issue, and Griffin’s office has chosen not to represent the SBEC in defense of the lawsuit, Get Loud told Popular Information and American Doom. (Court documents show the SBEC is represented by a private law firm in Springdale, Arkansas.)

“The AG issued that opinion, and then they just turned around and did what they wanted,” Foster said of Thurston and the SBEC. 

Arkansas ranks last in the nation in voter registration, an issue raised during Thurston’s campaign for Secretary of State in 2022. Thurston’s opponent, Democrat Ann Beth Gorman, called online voter registration “low-hanging fruit.” During a debate with Gorman, Thurston said he was “not opposed” to online voter registration and that, if “done correctly, I think it would be convenient and a good thing.”  

Arkansas is one of just eight states that does not provide some form of online voter registration — all of which, by definition, accept electronic signatures. Arkansas, like all states, accepts electronic signatures for driver’s license registrations because that is required by federal law.

Get Loud’s registration practice was legally sound in every way, the organization and its lawyers contend. Voters would fill out a form approved by the Secretary of State, sign it electronically, and the organization would print the form and mail it to the voter’s respective county clerk as required by law. Once there, clerks could choose whether to accept the form and officially register the voter. Some did, and some did not, Foster said. After Thurston’s directive, however, many county clerks began to tell Get Loud that they would not accept their registrations.

Why Thurston apparently changed his mind after Get Loud successfully registered less than 500 voters is not clear. Thurston’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but Uzoma Nkwonta, a lawyer for the Marc Elias Law Group, who is representing Get Loud in its lawsuit against Thurston and the SBEC, said the timeline of events itself shows why Thurston cracked down on electronic signatures.

“The facts and the events are pretty straightforward and right there for everyone to see,” Nkwonta told Popular Information and American Doom. “This type of arbitrary reaction to the enfranchisement of a large number of individuals is precisely what the Civil Rights Act is intended to address.”

Foster said a “majority” of the voters Get Loud registered were Black, from rural areas, and under the age of 20.