Arkansas judge finds four new voting laws unconstitutional

LITTLE ROCK — An Arkansas judge on Friday struck down four new voting restrictions passed by Republican lawmakers, finding the measures unconstitutional.

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen issued a permanent injunction against the new voting laws at the end of a fourday trial in a challenge brought by the League of Women Voters of Arkansas, Arkansas United and five voters over the restrictions.

The measures struck down include a change to the state’s voter ID law that removes the option for someone to sign an affidavit affirming their identity if they don’t present a photo identification at the polls.

The other measures would preventanyone other than voters from being within 100 feet of a polling place, require an absentee voter’s signature on a ballot to match the signature on their voter registration application, and move up the deadline for voters to return absentee ballots in person.

Supporters of the restrictions had said they were needed to bolster confidence in Arkansas’ voting system. But in his ruling, Griffen said the state’s concerns about election and integrity “are based entirely on conjecture and speculation.”

Griffen, who ruled from the bench, said he planned to issue a more detailed order later.

The lawsuit argued the restrictions would make it difficult – and in some cases impossible – for voters to exercise their right to vote.

The laws were among a historic number of voting restrictions that advanced in statehouses across the country last year, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud in 2020.

Republican Attorney General Leslie Rutledge’s office said she would review Griffen’s order and determine the next step.

“The Attorney General is committed to fighting for the integrity of elections in the state of Arkansas,” spokeswoman Stephanie Sharp said in a statement.

The measure moving up the deadline for absentee ballots became law without Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s signature – a move governors have taken to raise objections to a bill but not veto them.

Hutchinson said he expected Griffen’s ruling would go before the state Supreme Court.

“States should be left with the flexibility to protect the integrity of the ballot box and the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to review the constitutionality of these laws,” Hutchinson said in a statement.

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Professor receives $175,000 for electrical system research

JONESBORO — The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $175,000 federal grant from the NSF’s Division of Computer and Network Systems to Rasoul Narimani, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Arkansas State University, to conduct research that will contribute to the reliability of electrical power systems.

Narimani said that this was the first time writing a grant proposal for himself.

He said that a friend had told him of a grant program for junior faculty in which the research overlapped his own research.

Starting at the beginning of April, Narimani will serve as principal investigator for the two-year project, which is partially funded under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 as well.

“This project aims to strengthen dependability and robustness of the electric power grid by improving the capability to aggregate power system state estimation (PSSE) methods to monitor and assess the health of a power grid,” Narimani said, noting that the cyber-physical system has layers such as the power and communication systems and his method will help strengthen the safeguards so that if one layer is hit power can be transitioned to another.

“The electric power grid is a cyber-physical system, essential for modern daily life,” he said. “The grid is arguably the largest global engineered structure.”

“The goals of this project are to understand vulnerabilities intrinsic to traditional PSSE methods and improve the dependability and robustness of PSSE algorithms to potentially disruptive conditions,” Narimani said.

He said that his proposal includes three different steps: design a sophisticated attack, improve the safeguards and transition between operation points, which includes checking the feasibility of transfer between points.

The project extends recently developed power system optimization techniques to enable better situational awareness of the operations of the overall power system.

Narimani said, “This will be good for the College of Engineering and junior faculty as it will help to hire two more students for the department as well as allow them to visit K-12 classes and talk with students about engineering.”