Officials: Porter County results may not be known until Nov. 16
Chicago Tribune
November 06, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-vote-woes-st-1107-story.html
A day that started with late-opening polling places continued to roil in apparent chaos Tuesday night in Porter County, when absentee ballots and those from early voting were not delivered to precincts to be counted. Results in some races might not be known until Nov. 16, officials said.
“It is a mess. It’s just as big of a mess as the polls not opening,” said Jeffrey Chidester, chair of the county’s Democratic Party.
Chidister got an injunction from Senior Porter Superior Court Judge Julia Jent mandating those ballots be counted Tuesday night. Some poll workers where voting had concluded remained waiting for the ballots to be delivered, he said, while others closed, forcing their delivery to the county administration building.
More than 15,000 early ballots were cast this election. There was no immediate tally Tuesday night on how many of those ballots might have been counted.
“Absentee ballots are supposed to be delivered to the precincts in a timely fashion and be counted in the precinct by 6 p.m.,” he said. “That did not happen for many people. I don’t want them counted as provisional or tossed.”
Officials said the final tallies for Porter County’s midterm elections might not come until the election board wades through an untold number of provisional ballots, many cast after 12 precincts remained open after 6 p.m. because of late starts on Election Day morning, and certifies the election on Nov. 16.
Chidister got an injunction from Senior Porter Superior Court Judge Julia Jent mandating those ballots be counted Tuesday night. Some poll workers where voting had concluded remained waiting for the ballots to be delivered, he said, while others closed, forcing their delivery to the county administration building.
More than 15,000 early ballots were cast this election. There was no immediate tally Tuesday night on how many of those ballots might have been counted.
“Absentee ballots are supposed to be delivered to the precincts in a timely fashion and be counted in the precinct by 6 p.m.,” he said. “That did not happen for many people. I don’t want them counted as provisional or tossed.”
Officials said the final tallies for Porter County’s midterm elections might not come until the election board wades through an untold number of provisional ballots, many cast after 12 precincts remained open after 6 p.m. because of late starts on Election Day morning, and certifies the election on Nov. 16.
“Maybe the positive that comes out of this would be the impetus for change,” said Republican David Bengs, president of the election board, adding that change will be decided later and will likely be a ballot measure of sorts in its own right. “This is a referendum of how the process worked, and it did not work properly.”
The election board will be tasked with going through what is essentially three separate stacks of provisional ballots, Bengs said. One will be for voters who cast ballots the morning of Oct. 27 in Portage but whose ballots were not properly initialed by poll workers and could not come back in to vote anew; a second will be for any ballots set aside during normal polling place hours on Election Day; and the third will consist of ballots cast at those 12 precincts after regular voting hours ended at 6 p.m.
Seven of those precincts were in Portage Township; three were in Westchester; and Porter and Westchester had one each. Two precincts that vote at South Haven Public Library in Portage Township took voters until 8:30 p.m.; others closed at 7 p.m. or later.
The election board will have to go through each provisional ballot separately and determine whether it can be challenged, Bengs said, adding ballots can be set aside as provisional under normal circumstances for anything from not being filled out completely to being mangled so the voting machine couldn’t read them.
“It really comes down to, was the intent of the voter communicated properly on the ballot, and is the ballot proper?” he said.
Porter Superior Court Judge Roger Bradford issued an order early Tuesday afternoon to keep the polls open longer after an emergency election board meeting was held to address problems at the polls.
During a brief late afternoon court hearing, Bradford put a stop to a last-minute bid to stop the extended voting hours, filed by Portage attorneys Patrick McEuen and Christopher Buckley appearing for the Indiana Republican State Committee.
Buckley argued that the courts don’t have the jurisdiction to alter polling place times, and that setting such a precedent will have an impact on subsequent elections.
Voters had the chance to cast ballots at early voting locations throughout the county, by mail and on Election Day, he said.
“These voters have had plenty opportunity to vote,” Buckley said, adding it was a disenfranchisement of voters who had already cast ballots.
But Chesterton attorney Monica Conrad, appearing on behalf of the county’s Democratic Party, argued that polling hours could be extended “under unusual circumstances such as occurred (Tuesday).”
She argued it was unfair to voters to change course, as did Ethan Lowe, attorney for the election board.
“To reverse that at this point is going to cause a further threat to the validity of this election,” he said.
Closing those polls that opened late at 6 p.m. would disenfranchise the voters, Bradford said, though he denied a request to add a 13th precinct, at a Portage church, open until 7:20 p.m. because of the late notice.
Polls opened late for an assortment of reasons, said Clerk Karen Martin.
“Some of the inspectors didn’t pick up their suitcases and we had to have the sheriff’s department pick them up and deliver them. We had people quit at the last minute, and we had a location where we couldn’t get into it right away,” she said.
The election board held an emergency meeting to address the matter, Martin said, adding she and Bengs, the two Republican members of the board, were present, but J.J. Stankiewicz, the board’s lone Democrat, couldn’t be there.
Chidester said he knew there was the possibility polling places would not open.
The number of impacted voters, he said, “had to be hundreds, and I’m probably being conservative.”
In early March, the election board voted 2-1 along party lines to give election duties to the clerk’s office after Kathy Kozuszek, the Democratic director in the county’s voter registration office, sent a letter to some election board and party officials stating she would no longer handle elections because doing so ran afoul of state statute.
State officials said at the time Porter County was the only county in Indiana where elections were handled by the voter registration office, and in the most of the state, those duties are undertaken by the clerk’s office.
While there have been problems during previous elections, Martin said, it hasn’t been anything of this magnitude.
“But rarely do people expect the midterms to be this,” she said, referring to an unprecedented high voter turnout. Regardless of voter turnout, she added, “you still have the same amount of workers, whether it’s heavy or slow. It’s still 615.”
The Porter County Board of Commissioners issued a statement shortly after 8:30 a.m. Tuesday in response to problems at the polling places, asking the election board to take legal action to keep the polls open beyond their regular schedules.
“The ability to vote is the keystone of our democracy. The Porter County Board of Commissioners’ office understands this,” the statement said, noting problems with polling locations opening late. “We understand the frustration of voters in these locations. We are ready to help in any capacity within our means.”
Councilman Dan Whitten, D-At large, said members of the council “share the disgust” with commissioners over the handling of the election and would provide whatever resources were required.
The council has repeatedly offered additional resources to the clerk’s office to handle the election, he said.
“Like we’ve been saying since the beginning of this show, ‘What do you need?,’” he said, adding Martin said during recent budget hearings that her office was prepared for the election.
During the municipal general elections three years ago, problems with electronic poll books and a lack of key to get into a library being used as a polling place in Portage forced polls there to remain open an extra hour.
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