Obama-appointed Judge Timothy L. Brooks has potentially paved the way for voter fraud in Arkansas.
On Thursday, Judge Brooks decided that Arkansas election officials must accept online voter registration applications signed with digital or electronic signatures for the upcoming election. This ruling overturns a previous requirement that called for handwritten signatures to verify voter authenticity.
This ruling comes as a slap in the face of Arkansas’s legislative efforts, where state lawmakers approved an emergency rule mandating a “wet signature” for voter registration, Arkansas Times reported.
Arkansas Senate wrote in June:
The deadline to register to vote in the November 5 general election falls on Monday, October 7.
Keep in mind that county clerks may not accept voter registration forms signed digitally, unless they are submitted by certain state agencies.
The state Board of Election Commissioners has approved an emergency rule concerning digital signatures and it has been approved by the Executive Subcommittee of the Legislative Council.
Previously, some county clerks were accepting electronic signatures and some clerks were not. The emergency rule is meant to clarify that all 75 county clerks in Arkansas should only accept a “wet signature” on voter registration applications. That means it was signed with an ink pen.
In response to the emergency rule, advocacy groups have sued the Secretary of State and the Board of Election Commissioners in federal court. They contend that the rule amounts to voter suppression, and they argue that people can use electronic signatures to finalize financial statements, loan applications, mortgages, legal papers and various documents required by banks and corporations.
The attorney general issued an opinion in April that said “while an electronic signature or mark is generally valid under Arkansas law, the registration form must be created and distributed by the Secretary of State. A third-party organization cannot create and use a different form of its own to register voters.”
However, Judge Brooks, aligning with far-left advocacy groups such as Get Loud Arkansas (GLA) and Vote.org, chose to block the rule. In his decision, Brooks argued that the “wet signature” requirement could potentially violate the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“The Court then ORDERED from the Bench that Defendants, (and their respective agents, officers, employees, and successors, and all persons acting in concert with each or any of them) were PRELIMINARILY ENJOINED from enforcing the wet signature rule AND from rejecting or refusing to accept any voter registration application on the ground that it was signed with a digital or electronic signature,” Brooks said in its ruling.
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