INDIANAPOLIS — Gov. Eric Holcomb and state election officials are allowing in-person voting for the June 2 presidential primary despite concerns over the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic.
State officials opted to not restrict voting to mail-in ballots after talks with county clerks, election staff, state Republican and Democratic parties and other stakeholders, said Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson during a press conference on Thursday.
Early in-person voting for the primary will run from May 26 to June 1 and in-person voting will be allowed on election day, Lawson said.
“The fact of the matter is that there are some people who feel very, very strongly about voting in person,” she said. “So we have decided that we will cut down the number of days of early voting. We didn’t want to have in-person voting only on election day because we felt like that would be too many people congregating at the same time.”
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Additionally, Indiana will apply for $7.9 million in federal election COVID-19 funds to purchase masks, gloves, hand sanitizer and cleaning and disinfecting supplies for vote centers across the state, Lawson said.
Locally, the Bartholomew County Election Board will meet Thursday morning to discuss next steps, including making an inventory of past poll workers who feel comfortable volunteering for this year’s primary. Election board members will also discuss how many of the current 16 vote centers in the county will be used for early voting and on election day, said Bartholomew County Clerk Jay Phelps.
Phelps has repeated urged voters to cast their ballots for the primary by mail to help prevent spreading COVID-19 in the community. The Bartholomew County Clerk’s Office has ordered an extra 6,000 mail-in ballots.
So far, 1,607 voters in Bartholomew County had requested a mail-in absentee ballot – roughly the total of all mail-in ballots requested during the previous three presidential primaries combined, according to local records.
So far, the Bartholomew County Clerk’s Office has received 654 completed ballots and have locked them up so they can be counted on election night, Phelps said. That figure is already higher than all mail-in ballots received for the 2016 primary and the fifth-highest since at least 1984.
More than 70,400 Indiana voters have requested a mail-in absentee ballot this year, according to state figures.
“It will probably look different on election day this year just with poll workers wearing masks and gloves and wiping down voting machines,” Phelps said. “We are going to have to heavily rely on the (Indiana) Secretary of State’s office supply those because a lot of that stuff is back ordered.”
Phelps reiterated that early voting by mail has been done in Indiana for decades and election fraud in the United States is very rare.
“We check the signatures on the application with the ballot and make sure they look somewhat the same. There are some fail safes in place. When a voter submits their application, that gets marked in our system to that voter record and when we receive the ballot back we mark that as well. Then those (ballots) get locked away until election day to be counted. All the ballots have to be initialed by our bipartisan absentee board.”
“As far as voting by mail and fraud, I’ve worked in the (clerk’s) office for nearly a decade now, and we’ve never had to turn anything like that over to a prosecutor,” he said.
May 21 is the deadline to request an absentee ballot, and May 4 is the deadline to register to vote in the primary, Lawson said. Absentee ballots must be received by the county clerk’s office by noon on election day.
On March 25, state election officials pushed back Indiana’s primary election date until June 2 and lifted constraints on voters requesting a mail-in absentee ballot. The primary was originally scheduled for May 5.
“We have never experienced anything like this before,” Lawson said. “…We’re going to keep marching forward and we are going to make sure that Hoosier voices are heard on June 2.”
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In response to recommendations from Gov. Eric Holcomb, Secretary of State Connie Lawson, and the leadership of Indiana’s major political parties, the Indiana Election Commission has issued an order implementing policy changes for the June 2 primary. This follows a previous order issued March 25, 2020.
The complete order detailing each change is available at in.gov/sos/elections/2404.htm.
The Commission’s order included the following changes, which will apply to the June 2 primary only.
- Limited early in-person voting will be available for one week, from May 26th to June 1st.
- Poll workers are currently required to live in the county they work for. This requirement is waived so long as the voter is registered to vote in Indiana.
- The Secretary of State and the Indiana Election Division will provide counties with training and guidelines on mail handling procedures and personal protective equipment.
- The Commission advises that all public buildings, such as fire stations and school buildings, be available for use for the June 2 primary.
- All absentee ballot applications submitted after Dec. 2 will be accepted regardless of excuse given, as long as they are otherwise compliant with Indiana law.
- County election boards may adopt more than one central count location.
- Counties may move a polling location after giving best possible notice to the public.
Eligible Hoosiers can register to vote online, check their registration status, and request an absentee ballot by visiting IndianaVoters.com.
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To vote absentee in Bartholomew County, visit https://www.bartholomew.in.gov/clerk.html#vote-by-mail.
There you can download an application. Complete and return application so it is received by county election board at least 12 days before election day. For the June 2 primary, deadline for county to receive the completed form is 11:59 p.m. May 21.
Forms or more information may also be requested by calling the clerk’s voter registration office at 812-379-1604.
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