GOP appointee to Monroe County election board to step down, could hinder adoption of vote centers

Judith Benckart, the Republican Party’s appointee to the Monroe County election board, has announced her resignation from the three-member group, effective Dec. 31, 2024.

Benckart read aloud her letter of resignation at the regular meeting of the board on Thursday afternoon.

As the reason for her resignation, Benckart cited other activities that are competing for her time. Her letter put it like this: “I have chosen to get involved in other volunteer activities that help the community and need to withdraw from this Board to give me sufficient time to dedicate myself to these activities.”

Benckart’s resignation could dim the prospects that Monroe County will adopt vote centers as polling locations before the next election in 2026. There are no scheduled elections in 2025.

Vote centers are polling locations where a ballot for any precinct in the county can be cast. Such centers are different from traditional precinct-based polling locations, where only voters who are registered in specific precincts can vote. For the Nov. 5 election, Monroe County used 29 precinct-based polling locations.

Under Indiana state election law, vote centers can be adopted only by a unanimous vote of the county election board.

Benckart is generally in support of some kind of vote center proposals, but her successor on the board might not be.

Benckart’s resignation letter raises the possibility that the vote center study committee could wrap up its work before the end of the year, instead of in early 2025 as planned. That could give the election board a proposal to vote on in the next three weeks. From Benckart’s letter:

I had hoped that the vote center issue would have been resolved before I took my leave. However, it does not appear that that will be the case. If by chance the committee puts together a draft plan that meets the statutory requirements before the end of the year, I would be available to attend a special meeting of the Board to assess the plan.

It was in 2023, when the county’s vote center study committee was established by the election board. The 11-member group has been working for about a year to come up with a proposal.

At Thursday’s board meeting, Benckart responded to a report from Ami Gandhi, who is a vote center study committee member. Gandhi asked the three board members to indicate how they felt about different alternatives considered by the study committee: establish 22 vote centers across the county; maintain the same number of polling locations (29), but make them all vote centers; or keep precinct-based polling locations.

Monroe County’s clerk, Democrat Nicole Browne sits on the election board by virtue of her elected office. Browne said she would support taking a vote center approach for all of the county’s current voting locations. But Browne said she wanted to use 2026 as a “data gathering election,” to measure where people actually voted, and to remove or add locations based on those patterns.

Board chair John Fernandez, who is the Democratic Party’s appointee to the board, sounded like he was in agreement with Browne, and indicated support for all current voting locations as vote centers—but as a “phase one” when data could be collected on voting patterns.

Benckart told Gandhi that she is inclined to support the 22-location approach.

Even if that means Benckart is not perfectly aligned with the other two members of the election board, she is still in favor of adopting vote centers of some kind. If the board were to decide the question before Benckart steps down at the end of the year, that would likely mean the required unanimous support would be achieved.

But John Arnold, who is Monroe County Republican Party chair William Ellis’s choice to replace Benckart, might not support vote centers. Arnold has professional accounting background, and has been active in the county’s Republican Party leadership as a precinct committee chair, and as treasurer of the party’s central committee.

Arnold attended Thursday’s meeting of the election board. After the meeting, when asked by The B Square for his thoughts on vote centers, Arnold responded with a cheerful, “No comment!”

Party chair Ellis serves on the vote center study committee, and during the committee’s work has been vocal in his skepticism about the merits of a vote center model. Reached by telephone after Thursday’s election board meeting, Ellis told The B Square he thinks that vote centers are a “solution looking for a problem.”

Ellis questions whether there is good evidence that vote centers lead to cost savings or to an increase in voter participation.

Ellis pointed out that Monroe County’s voting patterns are pretty reliable—Bloomington leans heavily Democrat, while outside of Bloomington the county leans Republican. That means the choice of location for vote centers could influence the outcome of elections in Monroe County, Ellis said.

Ellis said that the kind of assurances that he would like could probably only be provided through requirements enacted in state law, that would put some guardrails on where vote centers could be placed in a county.

Asked by the B Square if he’d subjected Arnold to a vote center “litmus test” before deciding to appoint him, Ellis said it was not a “litmus test,” but vote centers had factored into it. The appointee to the election board is supposed to reflect the “will of the political party,” Ellis said.

Monroe County is currently one of the 27 counties in the state of Indiana, that still use precinct-based polling locations. The other 65 counties have adopted vote centers.

Monroe County Democratic Party chair David Henry, who is also a county councilor-elect, is squarely in favor of vote centers.

Reached by The B Square after Thursday’s meeting, Henry gave his full-throated support to vote centers and the work of the committee: “I am encouraged by the fruits of the labor of the vote center study committee. We mapped out a truly bipartisan approach to relaunching this committee during my time on the Board.”

Henry’s choice of the word “relaunching” was not an accident. In 2011, the creation of vote centers in Monroe County foundered on the requirement of a unanimous vote, when the Republican Party appointee voted against vote centers.

In his written statement, Henry continued, “The committee has made the case for the convenience and potential cost savings that vote centers can give to our county. They have left no stone unturned, and no question unanswered.”

Henry, who served alongside her for a time on the election board, praised Benckart’s service as a board member: “I enjoyed serving with her and appreciated having a pragmatic partner who helped guide a model bi-partisan approach to problem solving in our community,” Henry wrote.

Henry alluded to Benckart’s previous service as a Monroe County circuit court judge, when he added, “I will miss having the Judge’s steady hand alongside John Fernandez and Clerk Browne on the board.”

If the vote center study committee intends to try to finish up a proposal before the end of the year, so that the election board could call a special meeting to vote on it, that would likely become apparent at the committee’s meeting next week.

The next vote center study committee meeting is set for 5 p.m. on Dec. 11.