MARC CHASE: Vitriol, dysfunction set table for Porter County election fiasco
NWI Times
November 11, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/opinion/columnists/marc-chase/marc-chase-vitriol-dysfunction-set-table-for-porter-county-election/article_499a9d20-2c24-58fc-8abd-e8f384405644.html
Dysfunction breeds chaos in human relationships.
Vitriol, anger and shouting are the precursor to collapse.
So it should surprise no one that the Porter County 2018 general election fell like a house of cards doused in gasoline and set ablaze just before being shoved into ruin.
Ask just about any Porter County official, and they'll describe the dysfunction that has been brewing for some time among the Porter County clerk, the elections board and the "leaders" of the voter registration office.
If you won't take their word for it, view the video of the Oct. 31 election board meeting. The angry, childish and misinformed antics on display in that meeting seem to foretell the impending doom that came to pass for the most sacred of democratic processes on Election Day.
VIDEO--Porter County Election Board meeting
Between the vitriol that built toward the election, and the climax of an Election Day collapse, Porter County voters should be clamoring for their leaders to rebuild the process.
By now, consumers of Region news are quite familiar with the fiasco of the Nov. 6 Election Day in Porter County.
A dozen polling locations opened hours late, prompting a judge to order the locations to stay open hours beyond the normal closing time.
A number of voters were disenfranchised in the process, but the disaster was only just getting started.
Scores of absentee ballots cast early by voters weren't processed on election night at the precinct locations, ultimately delaying any reported election results until an embarrassing three days after the polls closed.
It turns out a big reason for that delay was the state of chaos in which the early ballots were kept leading up to the election.
As top county officials begin to unravel the messy mechanics that led to the election collapse, they're noting early ballots weren't sorted properly as voters cast them in the weeks leading up to actual Election Day.
Rather than immediately being sorted by precinct, the ballots became a jumbled mess that no one began to rectify until it was too late.
The chaos of polling places that didn't open on time, lacked the requisite volunteers for operation or early ballots left in disorganized shambles should surprise no one.
It has become clear from speaking with numerous county officials and watching video of a recent election board meeting that chaos and division define the relationships between the people who are supposed to be running the show.
On Halloween, a mere six days before the Election Day debacle, the Porter County Election Board meeting, which was supposed to be sorting out a snafu that threatened to negate some 118 to 122 early ballots cast in Portage, turned into a complete meltdown of unintelligible shouting among voter registration and other officials in the visitors gallery.
The 118 to 122 voters all were being asked to return to a polling location to recast their votes because those ballots lacked the bipartisan initials from the Democratic and Republican supervisors at the early voting location in Portage. Under state law, ballots lacking the bipartisan initials don't count, election board attorney Ethan Lowe explained at the meeting.
That legal advice didn't stop Democratic election board member J.J. Stankiewicz from making a motion to try to count the ballots, state law be damned.
A nonsensical argument over the matter occupied most of the Oct. 31 board meeting, with Stankiewicz's motion failing to be seconded by another board member, and therefore rightly failing.
The dysfunctional grand finale of the meeting actually came after it had officially adjourned.
Kathy Kozuszek, Democratic director of the Porter County voter registration office, engaged in an unseemly shouting match with Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, who sits on the election board.
Several others in attendance joined in in a noisy bout of vitriol.
Remarkably enough, the venomous exchanges all seemed to center on whether enough volunteers had been identified to properly open and run polling locations at the Nov. 6 election.
As it would turn out, the answer to that question was no. But the childish shouting match seemed to stand in the way of any solution to the problem.
In the wake of the ensuing election debacle, many taxpayers and Porter County officials alike have been quick to blame Clerk Martin. She deserves a lion's share of the blame.
Martin, who incidentally lost her bid to become county auditor in the election, was the chief official in charge of Tuesday's election.
The election was a failure on so many obvious levels.
Rather than becoming a pair of willing hands trying to fix the problem, Martin was largely missing in action in the days following the election fiasco.
Porter County commissioners and others have called on Martin to step down in the wake of the disaster, and she should even though she has only a couple of months left in her term.
But this disaster in Porter County's electoral process goes beyond Martin.
Unprofessional vitriol from Kozuszek, an inept motion by Stankiewicz that appeared to fly in the face of state election law and a pattern of dysfunctional infighting among election and voter registration officials shows a system seriously broken.
Porter County Commissioners Laura Blaney, Jeff Good and Jim Biggs appear ready to identify and weed out all of the causes of the Porter County election collapse. Good and Blaney told me last week they're prepared to dissolve the voter registration office and start over if that is what it will take.
The commissioners also showed leadership in crisis by calling in the FBI and possibly state election officials to independently vet the election's integrity.
That's incredibly important.
The fiasco has left many in the public reeling, disenfranchised and in a state of distrust over the core American institution of democratic elections.
"Blow it up and start over," said one county official, telling me what needed to occur in the wake of the disaster.
The blowup already occurred.
It will take bipartisan leadership, free of lowly vitriol, to rebuild something in which voters can be confident.
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