Major issues complicate Bloomington election, results trail far behind other Ind. cities

The new vote-counting process for the Bloomington municipal elections caused significant delays in results Tuesday evening compared to other elections across
the state.

The slow start in reporting the results was caused by a system that caught precinct officials off guard, Chief Deputy Clerk Mike Szakaly said.
 
The machine-free process required hand counting, extensive paperwork and self-entry into a spreadsheet, and the precinct workers were notified Monday of their expectations, he said.

“In 2010, Monroe County decided to become a paper-ballot county,” Monroe County Clerk Linda Robbins said.

The county signed a contract with the company ESNS for digital scanners to count paper ballots.

In February of this year, the Indiana Secretary of State notified the county that the machines were to be decertified by the state and couldn’t be used for elections. When the company didn’t resolve the issue, the county entered a new contract and is currently waiting on a decision regarding voting centers, Robbins said.

“Once we decide on vote centers, then we should be able to determine what kind of equipment we’ll need for the next election and we won’t have to do this again,” she said, adding that a decision should be made by Dec. 1.

Two precincts refused to count votes at the polling station because of the time-consuming process.

Bloomington precincts 6 and 16 packed their ballots and brought them back to the election’s central headquarters, Szakaly said.

He also said the state statute expects the precinct officials to count their votes, but not necessarily at their polling center. This was new to election officials as of the night prior to the election, and Robbins attempted to notify all precinct officials, Szakaly said.

A counter from precinct 6 said his staff was never told it was expected to count votes.

“Our verbal instructions at the meeting and written instructions we had, both of those said, ‘Count the number of ballots, not the number of votes,’” Bill Baus said. “The instructions were specific.”

Officials arrived with forms to begin the counting process Tuesday evening, but Baus said he and his staff also weren’t notified ahead of time that they had to count votes.
Baus said if he had known this earlier, he believes the precinct would have lost volunteers for Election Day.

After calling in to the counting headquarters, it was decided that the ballots were to be brought in and counted by others on location, Baus said.

Szakaly said they refused to count on location due to what volunteers felt was a lack of expertise.

Precinct 16 officials counted the votes at the central location while precinct 6 turned the tallying over to the election board, who appoints precinct officials, Election Supervisor Ruth Hickman said.

“We can’t force people to do the work even though they were supposed to,” said Jan Ellis, Democratic appointee and chair of the election board.

All of this confusion significantly slowed the voting process, delaying the election results.

When asked whether releasing results usually takes as long as in this election, Szakaly said, “There is nothing usual about this (election).”