Updated to include Bryan Norris' statenent on the lawsuit.
Secretary of State Republican candidate Bryan Norris filed an election contest lawsuit and emergency motion Wednesday in Pulaski County Circuit Court.
His attorney, Clint Lancaster, seeks to block the certification of Saline County's results in the race for Arkansas Secretary of State, citing what he calls widespread and fatal irregularities in both the election and the subsequent recount.
The suit, filed as Case No. 60CV-26-4396 by Little Rock attorney Clinton W. Lancaster, names the Saline County Board of Election Commissioners — members Robert Scott, Claudette Zuber, and Tamme Adams — as well as presumptive Republican nominee Kim Hammer as defendants.
A Close Race
Norris and Hammer faced each other in a March 31, 2026, Republican primary runoff for the party's nomination for Secretary of State, a constitutional office.
According to the complaint, Hammer won the statewide race by fewer than 1,000 votes, with Saline County among the counties where she allegedly prevailed.
Norris subsequently requested a recount. The Saline County Board of Election Commissioners has indicated it intends to certify the results on Friday, April 10 — prompting Norris to seek emergency relief from the court before that certification can occur.
Alleged Irregularities
The complaint and accompanying motion for a Temporary Restraining Order allege a broad range of violations of Arkansas election law during both the original runoff and the recount, including:
- Ballot boxes that were not sealed with secured, numbered seals as required by state law
- No dual attestation for absentee or provisional ballots
- The candidate's designated representative was blocked from observing the recount within the three-foot minimum distance required by Arkansas law
- Missing transfer affidavits for ballots
- Single-person ballot transport, in violation of the "transport team" requirement under the Ballot Security Act of 2023 and A.C.A. § 7-5-617
- Ballots stored in filing cabinets rather than approved storage
- One poll worker who failed to take the required oath before handling ballots
- The Executive Director of the State Board of Election Commissioners allegedly directing the recount and handling ballots without taking the required oath
The complaint also alleges that the Saline County Election Commission is operating without legal authority — ultra vires — because the Republican Party of Arkansas dissolved the Saline County Republican Committee and did not properly appoint any election commissioners.
The Affidavit
A sworn affidavit from Margot Hertzel, an Arkansas resident who attended the April 7 recount in Saline County, is included in the lawsuit.
Hertzel states she personally observed ballots stored in cardboard boxes sealed with tape and inquired of Saline County Election Coordinator Allison Cain whether the tape's item number served as a distinct serial number for numbered-seal purposes.
According to the affidavit, Cain told her the tape comes off a roll and that there are no numbered seals, adding that this has always been Saline County's practice and that the county had never been instructed otherwise. Hertzel states she believed Cain was being truthful and that election staff were doing their best, but concluded that storing ballots without numbered seals constitutes a legal violation because it provides no chain-of-custody documentation.
Emergency Relief Sought
In his motion and supporting brief, Norris argues that allowing certification to proceed Friday would cause irreparable harm because once ballots and election materials are altered, certified, or dispersed, meaningful judicial review becomes impossible. He argues that money damages cannot remedy the loss of a valid election result.
The brief invokes Arkansas Rule of Civil Procedure 65 and cites Arkansas Supreme Court precedent, including Baptist Health v. Murphy and Thurston v. Safe Surgery Arkansas, in support of the TRO standard. Norris argues he need only show a reasonable probability of success on the merits — not certainty — and contends the documented irregularities are broad enough to make the true election result "genuinely uncertain" under Arkansas law.
Norris is asking the court to block certification of the Saline County results, preserve all ballots and related election materials in secure custody, and schedule an emergency hearing on a preliminary injunction as soon as possible.
He also requests that the court ultimately declare the Saline County runoff results null and void and order a new election, with defendants required to comply with all Arkansas election laws.
Recount
Norris filed for the recount in the March 31 primary Secretary of State runoff on April 2.
Recounts occurred in several counties including Grant, Baxter, Washington, White, Miller and Saline.
Hammer has not yet responded to the lawsuit, and no hearing date had been set as of the time of filing.
Norris' Statement
Under the guidance of legal counsel and others I trust, this morning the Norris for Arkansas campaign filed for emergency relief and asked the court to preserve election materials and withhold certification of the Saline County election results while major issues are reviewed.
This filing is not about bitterness, and it is not about attacking the local election workers who may have been doing the best they could with the training and direction they were given. It is about whether the election and recount process in Saline County complied with Arkansas law, and whether the ballots reviewed can be reliably verified as the same ballots cast by the voters.
That is a serious matter. It deserves a careful, lawful, and orderly review.
From the beginning, my campaign for Secretary of State has been centered on a simple principle: elections should be secure, documented, transparent, and worthy of public trust. Laws on the books are important, but they only have meaning when they are enforced. Procedures only matter when they are followed. Records only protect the public when they are properly created, maintained, and available for review.
In the filing this morning, we asked the court to preserve the election materials, prevent certification until these issues can be reviewed, and ensure that the legal process can move forward in an orderly way. The proposed order submitted by counsel asks that election materials be secured and that certification be withheld pending further order of the court.
The filing raises concerns about whether the standards required by law were met in Saline County. At the heart of those concerns is chain of custody.
This issue is larger than a recount alone. It goes to whether there is a reliable and documented process to establish that the ballots seen later are the same ballots that were cast in the election. Without proper transfer records, proper seal verification, proper observation, and proper handling procedures, the public is left with uncertainty where there should be confidence.
That is not an allegation of fraud. It is a request for verification.
In any serious institution, chain of custody matters. In finance, missing records would not be brushed aside. In the military, secure handling would not be treated as optional. In any other important area of government, documented procedures would be understood as essential. Elections should be held to that same standard.
This is also an issue of training, supervision, and enforcement. The deficiencies we have identified do not simply raise questions about one worker or one table. They point to a broader need to ensure that election officials across Arkansas are properly trained in what the law requires and are held to a uniform standard of compliance.
A sworn affidavit filed with the case states that Saline County’s election coordinator advised that the tape used on ballot boxes came from a roll, that there were no numbered seals, and that the county had not been instructed to do otherwise. If true, that does not suggest bad faith by local workers. It suggests a deeper problem: a failure of training, procedure, and enforcement. Election integrity depends not only on having laws in place, but on making sure the people responsible for carrying them out are properly instructed and held to a uniform standard.
For some time, Arkansans have heard that our state ranks highly in election integrity. But rankings based on whether laws exist on paper are not enough. The real measure of election integrity is whether those laws are faithfully carried out in practice at the county level.
If Arkansas is going to claim a gold standard, then Arkansas must be willing to meet a gold standard.
There is also an important lesson in what we have seen in counties across our state. Washington County, Baxter County, White County, Grant County, and Saline County have all demonstrated that hand counting ballots as an audit process is both feasible and affordable. More importantly, it provides voters with greater peace of mind.
That is the standard Arkansas should strive for: hand-marked paper ballots protected by proper chain of custody, counted once by machine for efficiency, and then verified by human beings to ensure the machine was accurate.
That approach is not extreme. It is prudent.
It is similar to the way a bank operates. A machine may count the money, but a teller verifies the count before completing the transaction. The machine offers speed, but the human verification is what provides assurance. Elections deserve no less.
These hand-count audits have shown that when ballots are properly secured, when chain of custody is documented, and when human beings verify the machine totals, voters have greater confidence that the final count reflects the will of the people and that the ballots being counted are, in fact, the ballots that were cast.
That is the kind of confidence the public deserves.
This filing was made because the law should mean something. It was made because procedures should matter. It was made because voters should not be asked to accept uncertainty when the state has promised security, transparency, and accountability.
Long before I ever ran for office, I was fighting for the rights of Arkansans and for a government that follows the law and respects the people it serves. That commitment does not begin or end with one campaign or one election. It is a matter of principle, and it will continue.
I remain committed to pursuing this matter in a respectful and lawful manner. My goal is not to create division, but to insist on a system that is worthy of the trust of the people of Arkansas.
The voters of this state deserve elections that are not merely declared secure, but proven secure. They deserve elections that are not merely certified, but worthy of certification. And they deserve an election system that gives them confidence that the ballots counted truly reflect the will of the voters.
That is the standard I have fought for throughout this campaign, and that is the standard I will continue to defend.
