We receive vague tips for stories.
Sometimes we have to decipher them. Sometimes we receive an email with documents. Other times, someone asks us to call them. We also find stories on our own.
Whatever the contact method, we try our best to figure out if something is a story or not. We investigate and report what we find. It's our stock in trade.
Such a thing happened in early November. We received a tip concerning the Pulaski County Election – not exactly a sexy topic but neither are school boards. Heaven knows, we've covered some of those relentlessly.
Richard was immediately intrigued by what we found had taken place during early voting. He's long been studying America's election process, the laws and how it actually works even before the Reckoning.
Several issues jumped out at Richard as he evaluated the information. Questions bubbled as Richard picked up on key issues – clues if you will.
After receiving documents from a Freedom of Information request to the Pulaski County Circuit and County Clerk's office, the documents included a letter about an employee making a change in the PowerProfile system: "This change to the street file affected 132 voter records", the letter stated.
Going further, the letter gave the appearance of an "error" occurring in early voting.
The letter stated: "Though the temporary change in street segment data potentially affected 132 voters, we confirmed that the impact was limited to four voters who did cast ballots prior to the error being discovered and corrected."
There was no mention of what the effect would be to the voters who had cast their ballots. In fact, it is still unclear if those voters' ballots were counted or spoiled as a result of the actions inside the clerk's office.
A closer examination of other related documents obtained from the FOI request showed a time stamp of when the employee made the reported "error" after the close of day one of early voting. That time stamp was 47 minutes after polls closed to be exact. Why it happened has not been disclosed.
Analysis of public records by the Reckoning is at the heart of this particular series of articles.
Richard faced resistance from personnel in Hollingsworth's office the minute he called on Nov. 14 to see if they had received his FOIA request.
That same day Richard finally got Hollingsworth on the phone. She gave him a terse quote. The first and only comment she has ever given the Reckoning.
We published that story on Nov. 14.
Richard immediately sent another FOIA request about the personnel file of the employee who changed the street file during early voting. We published that story on the afternoon of Nov. 19 just an hour or so before the Pulaski County Election Commission met to certify the 2024 election.
At that meeting, citizens brought copies of the Hollingsworth letter with our logo watermark – the lantern – on it. We watermarked the letter because we were the first outlet to obtain and report on it. We not only reported on the letter and other documents we provided our readers an analysis of what had actually occurred.
You may wonder how we know we had the information first? We know this because we've FOIA'd the media's FOIA request. Their emails, all interactions that occurred during the November election and the days after.
Our investigation had broken through to voters in Pulaski County.
Letters with the lantern watermark were attached by everyday citizens who filed complaints with the Pulaski County Election Commissioners on Nov. 19 about the election.
That night, one member of the Commission did not even certify the election because of questions raised by the Reckoning, and citizens at the meeting in person with their complaints.
Mind you, no other media outlet had acknowledged our story or reported on it at this point. Not one.
At that meeting, the Commissioners voted to send a complaint to the Arkansas State Board of Election Commissioners and others.
Citizens would not have known about this issue if not for Richard’s analysis and reporting. That is a fact.
Once the complaints were filed other media picked up that story but did not give the Reckoning credit.
One outlet gave us credit for only reporting the complaint but not for uncovering the early voting election issues the "ballot swap" or "manipulation" as we reported the issues or as the outlet that first reported the Hollingsworth letter.
On the Friday that news outlets reported it, Hollingsworth, who was elected to her position in 2018, sent out a news release later that night about this debacle. The Reckoning did not receive the release.
We could have stopped investigating but we did not. Curious about the news release, Richard traveled to Hollingsworth's office to pick up documents for himself about communications between Hollingsworth's office and the media.
Here's his article about what he faced when he went straight to the clerk's office seeking answers.
In January, Hollingsworth's office suffered what personnel called a cyber attack. Again, Richard dug deeper than simply relying on a press release the clerk's office sent. He traveled to Little Rock and faced resistance again by personnel in Hollingsworth's office. He, of course, wrote about it.
Throughout the last six months, Richard has stayed on top of this investigation, talking to national experts about voting machines, checking in continually with the Arkansas State Board of Election Commissioners and examining documents from the 2022 and 2020 elections in Pulaski County. Be sure to read his story about past ballot issues in the Pulaski County Clerk's office.
We have also followed the replacement of two Commissioners on the board.
In fact, one of the new commissioners, Michael White, told us today, "If it was not for the investigative reporting of the South Arkansas Reckoning, I fear this matter would have never been brought to the light. Both myself and the citizens of this county are grateful.”
Even in March, more curious access of street file data was discovered in the Pulaski County Clerk's Office.
There's a lot more intrigue surrounding this investigation and the hard work of the Reckoning worthy of a movie plot.
People are afraid to talk. Why? Others want to downplay our investigation. Why? We will one day tell our readers the entire truth when the time is appropriate. There is so much more information to report surrounding this investigation.
All in all, so far, the Reckoning has published a dozen stories on election integrity connected to Pulaski County, which is the state's largest county in population.
However, this investigation has taken an exhaustive toll on both Richard and myself.
Last Thursday, we finally received confirmation of what Richard had uncovered and articulated in his reporting from the start of the story – that election law was violated in the Clerk’s office. Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office confirmed to the Reckoning Thursday afternoon an investigation was opened in his office.
Richard traveled to Little Rock last Thursday afternoon for an in-person document request to Amanda Dickens, the Pulaski County Election Coordinator, for documents from the State Board of Election Commissioners.
We are now aware that Dickens failed to provide a copy of a letter to the Reckoning sent to her by Chris Madison, director of the State Board Of Election Commissioners. That letter contained a reprimand to Hollingsworth issued by the SBEC.
We learned about it Monday afternoon when a press release was sent out by the Pulaski County Election Commissioners.
The letter states: "This letter is to inform you that your complaint filed on November 20, 2024, has been resolved, pursuant to A.C.A 7-4-120, by issuing a letter of reprimand to the Pulaski County Clerk."
Remember, Richard didn't initially just report an "error" had occurred in the clerk's office based on a news release. There was no release sent to media about the street file change on electronic voting machines after hours during early voting. There was a letter and accompanying documents sent by Hollingsworth to the Pulaski County Election Commission that the public did not know about until the Reckoning reported it.
Without the Freedom of Information requests, interviews and on-the-ground investigating and articulation by Richard, this information likely would have never come to light.
Richard’s reporting articulated “election manipulation” and a “ballot swap” not simply “an error” as Hollingsworth wrote in her October letter.
Indeed, the Arkansas State Board of Election Commissioners now states:
“The SBEC find that the Pulaski County Clerk's Office violated election law, and that the SBEC offer to resolve this complaint with a Letter of Warning" as we reported last Thursday.
However, the findings have been turned over to the Attorney General's Election Integrity Unit, which Attorney General Tim Griffin created in March 2023 soon after he took office. That office could discover more information about voting irregularities on Pulaski County than what the Arkansas State Board of Election Commissioners found based off the complaint.
This has been Richard's investigation from the beginning. No other media covered it until citizens complaints were filed, no activists were posting about it on social media. The bringing to light of this illegal activity was Richard's and Richard's alone. Credit where credit is due.
He has spent countless hours on these stories for the Reckoning. That's why we started the Reckoning to investigate and uncover, to be a watchdog shining a light on corruption for our readers, to use methodology to deduct what is wrong from what is right.
Other media will likely pick up this story soon and likely not give the Reckoning credit. We will be watching them, too.
I will say this: Investigative journalism like Richard's is dying in our state.
We want to publish more investigative journalism about what is happening in Arkansas. There are so many stories we want to dig into. That said, there are stories people do not want us to investigate because they fear the aftermath of the truth. We get sent emails weekly from people asking us to help them find the truth because mainstream media turns them away.
Our truth is we cannot investigate everything because we lack resources. We cannot live on air. We do not have some magical trust fund. We do not have thousands of dollars rolling in and we don't get grants or state advertising dollars like other news outlets do in Arkansas. We don't even have an advertising revenue stream – yet – although with our new website we are willing to run advertising especially for locally-owned businesses.
There are only two of us. We don't need a lot of money but we need some money. If everyone who read our stories would become a yearly subscriber, we would be solid for awhile. But everyone is accustomed to free "journalism", especially in America where media is subsidized by corporations and federal and state money. We are not. We depend on you, the reader. We are grateful to those of you who have invested in our brand.
We work hard to bring you these stories. They are original and they are written in our own voices not cookie-cutter newspaper tone or by AI. We will never use AI to supplement our writing.
We aren't sure for how much longer we can continue the Reckoning. We take a lot of heat and stress.
But we want to grow our small news business and dream of bringing on a freelance investigators to help us go further. We can't, however, until we get more support from our readers.
Our monthly subscription is priced reasonably. If everyone who reads our stories simply signed up for a $4-a-month subscription or $30 annual special it would go a long way to making us more sustainable. Without more subscribers, we will go away. That's exactly what the powers that be and mainstream, legacy, corporate media want. Your support is essential if you want us to stay.
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