Ex-felon’s voting rights restored after being mistakenly canceled

When Berryville resident Stuart Stroud cast a provisional ballot on the morning of Monday, Oct. 21, the first day of early voting in the 2024 general election, it was a significant moment for a man whose voting rights had been mistakenly taken away more than a year and a half earlier.

••• Stroud was convicted of two drug-related felonies in 1996 and 1997 in Logan County Circuit Court. He was fined and sentenced to 10 years’ probation, he said. Stroud said he paid all his fine and completed his probation without incident. On the day he completed his probation, in Pulaski County, he followed the necessary steps to have his voting rights restored and voted in the 2008 primary.

Stroud moved to Carroll County in 2009, he said, and voted here without incident until March 2023, when he received a letter from Carroll County deputy clerk Lauren Saab.

“Dear Stuart,” reads the letter from Saab, dated March 8, 2023. “We have recently received notice that your voter registration must be canceled because you have been convicted of a felony. You will need to contact the Circuit Clerk in the county of your conviction in order to receive the paperwork to restore your voting rights. If you obtain this documentation, you must provide a certified copy of it to County Clerk’s Office along with a new Voter Registration Application.”

Stroud, who said he no longer has the original documents he received when he completed his probation, said he tried contacting the Logan County Circuit Clerk to obtain the necessary paperwork but was told the clerk’s office didn’t have those records. He said he also made multiple attempts to contact the Arkansas Department of Corrections’ Division of Community Correction, which oversees the state’s probation program, but was never able to speak directly with anyone or have a call returned.

An employee at the Logan County Circuit Clerk’s Office said Thursday, Oct. 24, that the records from Stuart’s cases there would be “archived and in storage.”

“We’d have to go and dig that up,” she said.

Multiple attempts by the Carroll County News to speak with someone at the Division of Community Correction were unsuccessful.

••• Stroud’s case is not unique, except perhaps for his efforts to regain his voting rights.

As long ago as October 2016, the ACLU of Arkansas contacted then-Secretary of State Mark Martin regarding more than 7,000 voters being flagged for removal from the statewide voter registration list based on flawed data obtained from the Arkansas Crime Information Center since June of that year.

“Improperly removed voters include ex-felons who have paid their debt to society and successfully had their voting rights reinstated, some who have been pardoned or had their records sealed, as well as roughly 4,000 people who have never been convicted of a felony,” said the 2016 letter, signed by ACLU of Arkansas legal director Holly Dickson.

Stroud said Martin and his successor, current Secretary of State John Thurston, have not addressed the issues raised by the ACLU of Arkansas.

“I appreciate all the letters they’ve sent to the secretary of state, but they’re not doing anything,” Stroud said. “Those letters are not going to produce fruit because (Thurston) is covered in a very comfortable red blanket provided by Gov. Sanders.”

In fact, Stroud said he believes state officials have broken the law.

“Mr. Thurston and Mr. Martin have violated federal law,” Stroud said, citing both the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the National Voter Rights Act of 1965.

“What they’re doing does make them criminals. Federal criminals. Right now, Mark Martin, John Thurston and, I believe, Sarah Sanders should have warrants for their arrest for breaking federal law for using information they knew was flawed, knew when they used it and just went: ‘Ah, it’s an easy purge. Let’s do it.’ And I’ll say this. They picked on felons, felons who had served their sentence. And then after they did that, took the trouble to go reregister to vote. You lose that while you’re serving your sentence. They took the trouble and felt it was important after they served their sentence to go back and register to vote. And they did, obviously, or they wouldn’t have been on the roll to ever purge. Most of the people they picked on are poor, poverty income or right in there. Most of them are black. And most of them, I would think, when they got that letter they went: ‘Oh s**t, maybe I do owe the state some money. Maybe I do owe them some time. Well, I’m not going to follow up on that.’ They’re easy targets. They’re easy victims. Most of them won’t go through what I went through the last year and a half with lawyers, ACLU people, the Department of Justice.”

••• After he was unable to obtain the required documentation from the Logan County Circuit Clerk’s Office and the Division of Community Correction, Stroud said the Logan County Sheriff’s Office provided him with proof that he had completed all the necessary steps to regain his voting rights.

According to Stroud, Doss initially refused to accept that documentation.

“The county sheriff’s office sent me that list and she wanted something from the county clerk,” Stroud said. “When I contacted the county clerk down there, she said: ‘All I have is what you were convicted of, and what you were sentenced to. That’s all the information I could find.’ ” Doss denied that she refused to accept the information from the Logan County Sheriff’s Office.

“I wouldn’t tell him that I’d only take information from the circuit clerk,” Doss said. “I’ve taken paperwork from the governor’s office, so why would I say that?”

Stroud said Doss relented on Oct. 7, the deadline to register to vote in next week’s general election.

Doss said ACIC periodically will download information regarding felony convictions to the secretary of state’s office, which then checks that information against the state’s master voter registration list.

“Somewhere in that process, he ended back up on the list,” Doss said. “So it’s no error of ours, not necessarily no error of the secretary of state’s office. Unfortunately, it just happened.

“The VR, the voter registration system, will not allow us to register someone if it pops up with ACIC and this one, something had to have prompted it,” Doss said. “And so as a result, we have to list them and cancel their vote. And so, what he has to do in turn is, he’s got to dig up all that paperwork, which he did.”

Doss said she exercised her discretion in accepting the documentation Stroud provided on Oct. 7.

“He had it on his phone,” Doss said. “I would have preferred to get it on paper, but he had it on his phone. He pulled everything. I took it. I made that decision and I took it and reinstated it so he could go and vote.”

Doss encouraged anyone with similar issues to contact her office at 870423-2022.

••• Stroud went to First United Methodist Church in Berryville on the morning of Oct. 21, the first day of early voting. He was surprised when a poll worker told him that he was not listed as a registered voter. An employee from Doss’ office went to the polling site and ultimately told Stroud that he would be allowed to cast a provisional ballot.

“I went to vote the very first day, because I wanted to get’er done before Mr. Thurston took my voting rights illegally, as he’s proved he can do and is willing to do and will do,” Stroud said. “Because when I got my letter in 2023, it wasn’t Mark Martin doing it. It was John Thurston, and Sarah Sanders. So, I went to vote — not on the voter rolls. They couldn’t find me.”

Election coordinator Dorothy Brackney advised Stroud to cast a provisional ballot, which he did.

Stroud said the provisional ballots will be reviewed by the Carroll County Election Commission on Tuesday, Nov. 12. He said he was advised that the meeting is open to the public.

“She said ‘you can come and witness and we will either count or not count your ballot and we will give you the reason if we don’t,’ ” Stroud said.

Stroud said he’s confident his vote will be counted, and Doss said it will be. She explained that although Stroud had registered, that information hadn’t yet been entered so that it was visible to the poll workers.

“It’s like a check and a bill passing in the mail,” she said. “His vote will count.”

And that means a great deal to Stroud.

“I’m not naive enough to think that my ballot will swing this election that much,” he said. “But it’s important. It’s important to me that my vote gets counted.”