Runoff voters pick Robertson as Sheriff; Hammer as Republican nominee for Secretary of State

See election results below the article. Share this page: https://www.mysaline.com/2026-elections-primary-runoff-results.

UPDATE #7 – 10:50pm –

The Sheriff’s race is decided in Robertson’s favor (more below).

The Secretary of State race shows 80,922 votes counted. Sen. Hammer wins the Republican nomination 50.57%, or 40,920 votes, according to the current Secretary of State’s office report.

Bryan Norris shows 49.43%, or40,002 votes. That amounts to a difference of 918 votes in this tight race.

Chief Deputy Dustin Robertson wins the Saline County Sheriff’s runoff race with 68.80% of the vote, while Richard Friend received 31.20%. The election report also shows that out of 82,154 registered voters in Saline County, 6,970 actually voted in this election – that’s 8.48%.

England Arkansas Chief of Police Richard Friend published a concession statement on social media around 8:00 p.m. right after the Saline County Clerk’s second voting results update.

UPDATE TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 2026 – 645PM

It’s election day, March 31st, and Saline County Arkansas will decide who their Sheriff will be. Voters will also participate in a statewide election that decides who will compete for the Secretary of State office in the November race.

Race #1 – Statewide – Senator Kim Hammer and Bryan Norris both hope to win the nomination as the Republican candidate for Arkansas Secretary of State.

Race #2 – Saline County – Dustin Robertson or Richard Friend will win this runoff race to become Sheriff, since there are no candidates of any other party.

There were quite a few people in line to vote at 5:30 p.m. March 31st.

See below for the numbers from Early Voting, and sometime after 7:30 p.m., we’ll report on the totals votes for each candidate. There may be several updates, so keep this page open, and the link is https://www.mysaline.com/2026-elections-primary-runoff-results.

Coming soon, we’ll report how many votes were cast for each candidate. But for now, here are the number of people who voted early in this runoff election: