Hours first, money later? Standoff between Monroe County council, election board delays decision on early voting schedule

Monroe County’s three-member election board will hold a special meeting next week to decide the hourly schedule for early voting in the 2026 primary—amid a funding and staffing dispute that county clerk Nicole Browne says could limit early voting hours to the statutory minimum.

The 2026 election calendar calls for in-person voting for the May 5 primary to start on April 7.

At the close of Thursday’s regular monthly board meeting, Danny Shields announced he will call an extra meeting next Thursday (Feb. 12) at 1:30 p.m. Shields can’t make that time but has arranged for a proxy to stand in for him. The special meeting is expected to focus on issues that the board did not settle this week—early voting hours, staffing needs, and polling locations.

Before deciding the hourly schedule, Browne wants the funding for all the required staffing to be in place. She says the budget adopted by the county council last year won’t stretch to cover the kind of 10-hour daily regimen that voters in Monroe County are accustomed to. The schedule would likely be reduced to just eight hours per day.

A request for an additional appropriation of $242,781 to pay for poll workers and early voting staffing was put off by the county council at its most recent meeting, until the board sets the actual hours.

Also a point of contention for Browne was the elimination of overtime hours from the 2026 budget.

By not deciding the early voting daily schedule for this year’s primaries this week, the election board not following the suggestion of Monroe County council president Jennifer Crossley in an email message she sent to the board, to be read aloud at Thursday’s meeting by county attorney Molly Turner-King.

Crossley’s email included a reminder “to the clerk and the election board” that during the council’s 2026 budget discussions last year, the council had said that if the clerk needs additional funding to run the primary and general elections that the county council would welcome her to consider the appropriation. But Crossley’s email added, “... I want to mention that I’ve been a bit dismayed to hear in our recent council meetings that the personnel numbers that were presented to us were not being presented to the election board for a vote.”

Crossley’s email message stressed the point of setting hours ahead of making the funding request: “I want to repeat again, once the board has approved the voting hours for the primary, I welcome the clerk and the election board to come back to the council for additional appropriations.”

But based on the timeline that is now unfolding, the county council will hold its meeting next Tuesday (Feb. 10) without a daily schedule of early voting hours that has been settled by the election board. But the requested extra appropriation will likely still appear on its agenda, having been postponed from its most recent meeting.

Thursday’s election board meeting was focused as much on philosophical framing of the issue as it was the nuts and bolts of funding the election funding. Browne said, “Here’s the bottom line: Do you consider elections to be as critical to Monroe County’s infrastructure as you do your highway, your police, your fire?”

County election supervisor Kylie Farris said earlier expectations that staffing could be scaled back from 2024 levels, in order to have enough funding, are no longer realistic. That’s because of the workload for the upcoming election that she can already anticipate, based on candidate filings. “As of the end of day yesterday, we were up to 199 candidate filings,” she said, noting that there are so far 16 contested races.

That figure includes races for precinct committee chair and state delegates. But even discounting those internal party offices, there are so far eight other contested races: Clear Creek Township board; Richland Township board; Perry Township board; Perry Township trustee; Clear Creek Township trustee; Monroe County clerk; Monroe County commissioner District 1; and Monroe County assessor.

About the earlier reduced staffing model she had tried for early voting, Farris told the board there was no way she could make it work. “It’s just not going to happen,” she said. Farris said past election records and conversations with colleagues in other counties point to the likelihood that turnout in 2026 could resemble a presidential year, even though it is a midterm. “Other counties are telling each other that we need to prepare for a presidential election turnout this year,” she said. “We can’t look at a midterm election the way that we used to. We just can’t.”

Farris also pointed out that Monroe County will be operating in a new election location, which adds uncertainty about how voter flow will work. The new location is in the North Showers building on Morton Street, and is currently under construction to remodel it for the early voting operation. In the past few years, early voting was run out of the former NAPA Auto Parts store at 3rd and Walnut streets, which was demolished to make way for the new convention center expansion.

Farris said, “We’re learning through these curves of being in a new location, figuring out how things are going to work and how the flow is going to work.” The remodeling work has reached the point of hanging drywall, but there is still floor leveling work to do.

Browne’s basic message on Thursday was blunt: “You want the infrastructure of a full-out Monroe County election? … If you do, you’re going to have to pay for it.”

The issue will likely get some air time when the Monroe County council next meets, on Tuesday (Feb. 10) at 5 p.m.