An Arkansas county clerk who canceled the voter registration of the GOP candidate for attorney general defended his actions Wednesday, saying the candidate filled out the wrong form when she re-registered.
Pulaski County Clerk Larry Crane, in a phone interview with the Washington Examiner, said that attorney general candidate Leslie Rutledge filled out a change-of-address form when she returned to Arkansas from Washington, D.C. in 2013, rather than a voter registration form.
Crane said the voter registration card Rutledge has been tweeting out is sent to everyone who fills out a change of address form and is meant for people who switch addresses within his county. On the form Rutledge filled out to obtain that card, which Crane provided to the Examiner, the candidate lists a Little Rock, Ark., address as her previous address.
The old address listed, according to Crane’s office in a follow-up question, is from 2006, before Rutledge moved to Washington and registered to vote there in 2008.
This is where the confusion comes in. At the top of the form it clearly states that it is “only valid for address and/or name changes within Pulaski County.” But the bottom of the form states: “When moving to Pulaski County from another county or state, you must complete a new voter registration application.”
Because Rutledge moved to Pulaski County from Washington, she needed to fill out an additional form, which she did not according to Crane.
“Had she done that, there would be no issue,” Crane said.
Rutledge’s campaign did not respond immediately to The Washington Examiner’s inquiry.
