I’d been hearing about the $500,000 Secretary of State Mark Martin has invested over the next two years to improve on-line tabulation of Arkansas election results.
I wish him the best.
But remember the old computer cliche — GIGO — Garbage In Garbage Out?
Make this one NINO — Nothing In Nothing Out.
For this system to work, 75 county election operations will have to either create files to upload to the secretary of state system or, in three cases, manually report them. From personal experience in the state’s largest county, I can tell you the wait for results can be long and frustrating. Pulaski got nothing, Mark Martin got nothing.
In time, this will work. This week, it probably won’t be Mark Martin’s fault if the Associated Press reporting system continues to run ahead of an official vote tallying effort.