Ballot preview done, machines yet to be tested in runup to May 7 primary in Monroe County
Ready for inspection, printed on yellow paper, and laid out on tables at Monroe County’s Election Central on Friday morning were preview versions of 168 ballots.
The count came from Kylie Moreland, the county’s election supervisor.
The ballots were on display for candidates in the May 7 primary elections, and anyone else who wanted to check through them.
Why so many ballots?
Each yellow sheet was a preview of the ballot that will be used in one of Monroe County’s 83 precincts. Multiply that by 2, one for the Democratic Party primary and one for the Republican Party Primary, to get 166 ballots. To account for ballots showing just federal offices, which are used by overseas voters, add one for each party. That makes a total of 168 ballots.
It’s the official listing in the SVRS (statewide voter registration system) that determines the spelling and spacing of a candidate’s name, Moreland told The B Square. The prescribed capitalization is all-caps.
That’s why District 3 county commissioner candidate Joe Van Deventer’s name appears as “JOE VAN DEVENTER” on the ballot and not as “Joe VanDeventer” with no space—which is the way that it appears in the city of Bloomington’s employee directory. Both Van Deventer and Paul White, Sr. are running for the Republican Party’s nomination for the county commissioner seat in which Democrat Penny Githens currently serves.
Githens is in a three-way race with Jody Madeira and Steve Volan for the Democratic Party’s nomination for District 3 county commissioner.
Even though the general rule is to render a candidate’s name in all-caps, names with patronymic prefixes, like “McCormick,” get a lower case ‘c’. So the one gubernatorial candidate for the Democrats shows up on the ballot as “JENNIFER McCORMICK.”
The ballot viewing was held from 10 a.m. to noon. By the B Square’s count of sign-in signatures, 20 people—candidates, surrogates, or other interested members of the public—dropped by during that 2-hour window to inspect the ballots.
Not yet scheduled is the logic and accuracy test (LAT) of the Hart InterCivic voting machines that are used to scan the paper ballots. But the three machines that were randomly selected by Hart for the test were set up at Election Central on Friday, ready for the LAT.
According to Moreland, the LAT will be scheduled, once Election Central has received from Hart the memory drives for the machines, with the proofed ballot information. The LAT has to take place at a meeting of the three-member county election board, which means at least 48-hours notice will have to be given for the test.
The white board at Election Central includes a countdown to the May 7 election, and to early in-person voting. On Friday, the white board showed that early voting for the elections starts in 25 days, on April 9. The day before that, April 8, is the last day to register to vote in the May 7 primary.
In-person early voting takes place for all registered voters in Monroe County at the election operations building (the former NAPA Auto Parts store) at 3rd and Walnut streets.
