Body
Arkansas will hold primary runoff elections Tuesday that include the GOP contest for secretary of state, where Bryan Norris and Kim Hammer will face off after neither candidate secured the majority needed to avoid a runoff in the March 3 Republican primary. Under the state’s runoff rules, the secretary of state winner will advance to the general election against Democrat Kelly Grappe, who won her party’s nomination without opposition.
Norris and Hammer both presented platforms focused on implementing President Donald Trump’s election agenda, but they differ on how Arkansas should handle ballot counting. One central distinction highlighted in the run-up to the runoff is the candidates’ competing views on whether ballots should be hand-counted in elections that do not use automated tabulation equipment, and how those hand-counted ballots would interface with state tabulation systems.
Arkansas’ secretary of state role includes overseeing state business filings and maintaining the capitol building and grounds, but the office is also known for administering federal, state and district elections in the state. The AP’s decision notes on the runoff pointed to that election-administration responsibility as a key reason the secretary of state contest draws attention beyond partisan lines.
In the March 3 GOP primary, Norris and Hammer finished as the top two vote-getters but both fell short of the majority vote threshold, which triggers Tuesday’s runoff. The AP reported that Norris edged Hammer in a three-way race in which both candidates received about 34% of the vote, while Miller County Judge Cathy Hardin Harrison received about 32%. The notes also said just more than half of the primary vote was cast in counties Trump carried with 70% or more of the vote in 2024, with Norris performing slightly better than Harrison and Hammer in those counties, while Hammer slightly outperformed the others across the rest of the state.
The candidates also arrived at Tuesday with different networks of endorsements. Hammer received backing from much of the state’s Republican Party establishment, including U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Lt. Gov. Leslie Rutledge, Attorney General Tim Griffin and outgoing Secretary of State Cole Jester. Norris’ backers included former national security adviser Michael Flynn and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, both described in the AP notes as prominent 2020 election deniers and Trump allies.
The AP decision notes said Jester, in endorsing Hammer, called on Norris to drop out of the race over Norris’ past confrontational and expletive-laden social media posts. Norris, in an interview with KATV, acknowledged using “some salty language from time to time” but said, “you’re never going to hear me talk or speak that way again.”
Tuesday’s runoff is also set to include other state legislative primaries: AP said voters will select nominees in Republican runoffs for state House Districts 5, 6, 46 and 52, and Democratic runoffs for state Senate District 15 and state House District 35. Republicans hold majorities in both chambers, and the AP noted that it has been 20 years since Arkansas last elected a Democrat as secretary of state and that no Democrat has won statewide office since 2010.
For voters participating Tuesday, AP said they do not need to have voted in the March 3 primary to vote in the March 31 runoff. However, primary voters may only vote in the runoff for the same party they voted in during March 3, meaning Republican primary voters cannot vote in a Democratic runoff and vice versa; voters in the non-partisan primary, the AP notes said, may vote in either party’s runoff.
AP also laid out additional timing and vote-counting expectations. Polls close at 7:30 p.m. local time, 8:30 p.m. ET, and the AP said its decision team would provide vote results and declare winners in the Republican secretary of state runoff and the listed state House and Senate runoffs. The AP said early and absentee results typically appear in the first vote update of the night—before any in-person Election Day results are released—and cited past timing in a March 3 GOP U.S. Senate primary where the first results were reported at 8:32 p.m. ET, with the last update at 2:04 a.m. ET with more than 99% of total votes counted.
The AP also described what turnout and advance voting looked like in advance of Tuesday. The AP said there were about 1.8 million registered voters in Arkansas as of the March 3 primary and that more than 266,000 voters participated in the Republican primary for secretary of state. In addition, AP said nearly 28,000 statewide Republican runoff ballots had already been cast as of Monday. For the AP’s election-night operations, it said it does not make projections and declares a winner only when it determines there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap, and that it continues to cover vote developments while explaining if no winner has been called.