The official in charge of Arkansas’ elections probably was elected Tuesday by a little more than 2.28% of the state’s registered voters.

State Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, narrowly defeated Bryan Norris in the Republican primary runoff for secretary of state. The vote was 50.57% to 49.43%, with Hammer receiving 40,920 votes and Norris receiving 40,002.

Hammer and Norris made the March 31 runoff after placing in the top two in the three-candidate primary March 3.

Hammer advances to the November general election, where he will face Democrat Kelly Grappe and Libertarian Michael Pakko. He will be a heavy favorite because he’s the Republican nominee in a Republican state. 

Statewide, 5.13% of the state’s almost 1.8 million registered voters cast ballots in either the Republican or Democratic runoffs.

Voter turnout in the March 3 primaries was much higher – 24.25% between the two parties. Even higher percentages vote in November general elections: 65% in the 2024 presidential election and about 51% in 2022.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates Arkansas’ population was a little more than 3.1 million as of last July 1. Hammer’s 40,920 votes means that 1.3% of the state’s total population voted for him.

Of course, many Arkansans were ineligible to vote, including convicted felons and people under age 18. Under a new Republican Party rule, anyone who cast a ballot in the Democratic primary was ineligible to vote in the Republican runoff.

The fact is, few Arkansans voted because few Arkansans cared. The secretary of state is an important statewide position, but it’s not a high-profile one. The office is in charge of elections, of maintaining and securing the State Capitol, and for handling business filings. It was the only statewide race on either the Republican or Democratic side.

The reason we have runoffs in party primaries is to ensure that the nominee has majority support in a multi-candidate race. If enough people are running, a candidate rightly viewed as unacceptable by many voters could win if all the acceptable candidates split the vote. 

But Hammer’s win in such a low-turnout race hardly qualifies as majority support. And I mean no disrespect to him by saying that, because he’s a fine individual.

He was helped by the fact that his home county, Saline County, had a sheriff’s runoff race that helped attract an 8.48% turnout. Hammer won Saline County, where he’s well known, by more than 2,000 votes in a race he won statewide by 918.

Are there other ways of doing this without having primary runoffs that don’t attract many voters and cost counties time and money to administer? Actually, there are are two worth considering.

One would be “top two” primaries. In those, all the candidates are on one ballot in the primary election. The top two finishers advance to the general election. In a heavily Republican state like Arkansas, those two often would be Republicans if more than one were running. Louisiana uses this method for some offices.

An advantage of the top two system is that it encourages the candidates to try to connect with all the voters in both primaries and general elections. Under the current system, a Republican in many Arkansas races focuses on winning half of the Republican primary voters and then, if necessary, half the small percentage who will vote in the runoff. He or she doesn’t have to be too concerned about the November general election when a lot more people will vote. They will have already won the primary race they needed to win.

Another option is ranked choice voting – also known as “instant runoff” – where voters rank the candidates. If no candidate wins a majority, then second choices start coming into play, and there’s no runoff. Alaska and Maine have such a system. Arkansas does as well, although only for military and overseas voters. Lawmakers last year otherwise made it illegal everywhere in Arkansas, even for local races.

For now, we have the system we have, and it works decently well. Hammer has said one of his goals as secretary of state will be to encourage more people to participate in it. 

This being Arkansas, he’ll very likely have a chance to do that. The election that probably determined the winner has already occurred, and the people – the 2.28% – have spoken. 

© 2026 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Steve Brawner’s column is syndicated to 24 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com.