After an investigation into switched voter precincts that only impacted four voters but might have disenfranchised 132 others, a former employee of the Pulaski County Clerk’s Office was arrested on Thursday for felony voter fraud.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin issued a news release accusing Deborah Smith, 57, of moving 132 votes from North Little Rock to Maumelle precincts in advance of the 2024 general election.
In the news release, Griffin stated, “We found during our investigation that Smith purposefully changed the voter registrations while working at the clerk’s office.” She faces a Class D felony charge of one count of violation of voter eligibility. The least serious felonies in Arkansas are Class D offenses, which carry a maximum sentence of six years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,000.
From Griffin’s news statement, it was not obvious if his office thought the swap was made with the goal of influencing election results.
However, Smith’s lawyer claimed that his client is being utilized as a political pawn.
In October 2024, Smith sent in her resignation. According to Griffin’s press statement, she willingly turned herself in to police last week so that she may face charges. Records from the Pulaski County District Court show that on July 31, she pled not guilty after being released from the Pulaski County Detention Center.
According to the announcement, at the end of March, the Arkansas Board of Election Commissioners reported the matter to Griffin’s office.
Smith’s attorney, Austin Porter, stated that he thinks she will be found not guilty. Porter told the Arkansas Times that Smith was a longstanding, devoted employee of the Pulaski County Clerk’s Office and that the lawsuit is a political witch hunt.
She spent more than 33 years working there. Porter claimed that she had never, as far as I knew, been in difficulty in her life.
Porter claimed that Smith is a casualty of the culture battle over election integrity.
Porter stated that there is absolutely nothing at stake in this case. I firmly believe that Mr. Griffin is attempting to curry favor with the White House in order to support allegations of election fraud [and] to support his unsupported suspicion that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Smith has been depressed about these unfounded accusations, according to Porter.
Porter claimed that this disaster compelled her to leave her job. She is clearly concerned.
According to an affidavit for Smith’s arrest, four North Little Rock voters received ballots with Maumelle municipal elections on them rather than North Little Rock city elections as a result of the precinct alteration.
Four of the 132 voters who were impacted by the street file change were given the incorrect ballot, according to an email from Ternesha Womack, a spokesman for the Pulaski Circuit and County Clerk. We corrected the mistake and carried out our own internal investigation as soon as we learned what had transpired. We self-reported the event to the Pulaski County Election Commission, and the employee who made the modification was promptly relieved of election-related duties.
The Arkansas Advocate reported in November that although the issue was discovered and fixed during early voting in October, the four voters who cast incorrect ballots were not permitted to make corrections because ballots lose their names after they are cast and processed.
From the Advocate:
Voters who were supposed to cast ballots in Arkansas Senate District 12, House District 66, Congressional District 1, and two North Little Rock seats did not because of the precinct change.
Congressional District 2 and House District 69 were substituted as their possibilities. A circuit judge race was added in place of the other races.
Residents of Hansfield Circle in North Little Rock were impacted by the precinct shift.
According to the affidavit, officials learned of the modification after a voter in North Little Rock noted that Nicole Hart, a candidate for a seat on the North Little Rock City Council, was missing from her ballot.
Hart informed the county clerk’s office after receiving notification from the voter. According to the affidavit, clerk’s office staff concluded that Smith made the modification on October 21, 2024, the day Pulaski County voting started.
A voicemail asking for Hart’s thoughts on the situation was not immediately answered.
Employees at the county clerk’s office were interviewed by the AG’s office as part of its inquiry, which started on April 1. They all concurred that the precinct number change is a multi-step procedure that could not have been done accidentally.
According to Womack, voters should talk to the chief judge at their voting place if they realize they have the wrong ballot.
We self-reported the event because we take elections very seriously, Womack stated. It is regrettable that this occurred. Ensuring the integrity of our elections is a top priority for my office since it is essential to citizens’ trust in our democracy and voting process.
Concern over election integrity, an increasingly partisan issue, has its roots in the 2000 presidential election, when a dispute over recounting votes in Florida led to a Supreme Court case that effectively decided the election in George W. Bush s favor. (Coincidentally, AG Griffin was a deputy research director at the time for the Republican National Committee and served as legal counsel for the Bush-Cheney 2000 Florida Recount Team. )
The issue rose to national prominence again with the Russiagate conspiracy during the 2016 election cycle and hit critical mass after the 2020 election, when Trump claimed the election was stolen and encouraged his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.
Since then, critics say Trump and Republican lawmakers have been using election integrity as a political cudgel toreshape and seize control over the election process.
This is just a situation where you have politicians who are trying to appease Donald Trump, Porter said. They have this so-called election integrity division when the evidence has demonstrated that it s been the Republican Party who s been committing election fraud. They ve done everything to try to suppress the Black vote. They tried to make it much harder for people, especially people of color, to vote. To me, that s fraud within itself.
Griffin established theElection Integrity Unitunder the Arkansas s Attorney General s office in March 2023.
Arkansas Secretary of State Cole Jester, who chairs the Arkansas Board of Election Commissioners, issued a statement last week commending Griffin s arrest.
Intentional violations of election law should always be met with criminal charges, Jester said in the statement.
Here s Griffin s full statement on Smith s arrest:
LITTLE ROCKAttorney General Tim Griffin issued the following statement announcing the arrest of Deborah Smith, 57, of North Little Rock on an election-integrity charge:
Investigators in my Election Integrity Unit, along with Prosecuting Attorney for the Sixth Judicial District Will Jones, received a referral from the State Board of Election Commissioners at the end of March, asking us to investigate the matter of 132 voter registrations having been switched from North Little Rock to Maumelle ahead of the 2024 general election. Today, Deborah Smith, a former employee of the Pulaski County Clerk s Office, surrendered herself to the court after my investigators had obtained a warrant for her arrest.
We determined during our investigation that Smith deliberately switched the voter registrations while employed at the clerk s office. She faces a Class D felony charge of one count of violation of voter eligibility.
Smith resigned from the clerk s office when her actions were discovered, spurring an internal investigation at the clerk s office. After being processed at the Pulaski County Detention Center today, she was released on her own recognizance. While I am pleased that we were able to make an arrest, our investigation continues.
Preserving the integrity of our elections is foundational to maintaining our democracy. Instances like this in Arkansas are rare, but to keep them from becoming more frequent, the response of justice must be swift and decisive. I am grateful for the excellent work of my Election Integrity Unit and for the support of the State Board of Election Commissioners and Prosecutor Will Jones.
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