Monroe County clerk plans to sign accord for election results display, even if commissioners say no again
Tensions have mounted around the way that Monroe County will report local Nov. 5 election results to the public on election night.
But the numbers that actually matter will be reported to Indiana’s official election system the same way as before—by hand-typing numbers into a form that is hosted on a state-run server.
That was the key takeaway from a B Square interview with Monroe County election supervisor Kylie Farris, before Thursday’s Monroe County election board board meeting.
Arising as a topic at the board’s meeting—even if it was not an agenda item—was the source of the controversy about the way election night results will be announced to the public this year.
Monroe County elected clerk Nicole Browne has told The B Square she’ll be signing a contract with An Island, LLC for election night results reporting to the public for the Nov. 5 election.
That’s even if the county board of commissioners rejects the contract a second time next Wednesday (Oct. 9).
Last week, commissioners rejected the contract for the first time.
Browne says she’ll be using the provisions of a new law [HEA 1158] that was passed this spring by Indiana’s state legislature, which gives elected officials two different procedures for getting contracts executed.
One of those procedures requires only review, but not approval from the board of county commissioners.
Improvements to election night results reports
In Monroe County, the current method of reporting election results to the public is for the elected county clerk, Nicole Browne, to send a message to a list of email addresses, with an attached .pdf report of results. The .pdf report is generated by the county’s Hart InterCivic voting equipment.
This year, Browne wants results to be displayed on a third-party website, under the terms of a contract with An Island, LLC. The $41,000 total contract with the Tell City company would run three years, starting this year.
But on a unanimous vote at its meeting last week, the three county commissioners rejected Browne’s proposed contract.
Browne is one of the three members of the county election board.
So, at the election board’s Thursday meeting, county commissioner Penny Githens took the public mic, to air concerns about the clerk’s proposed contract. Chief among those concerns is the idea that the county’s own GIS team, working out of the elected surveyor’s office, could easily do the same work, at no cost.
Another criticism of the contract has been that it requires payment for 2025, a year when no elections are scheduled.
Improvements to election night results reports
Why was Githens raising the topic with the election board, even though the commissioners rejected the contract last week?
It’s because Browne intends to put the contract back on next Wednesday’s (Oct. 9) county commissioners meeting agenda.
If the commissioners again say no, Browne plans to go ahead and sign the contract, citing the provisions of a new law [HEA 1158]
The new law says that if a county officer, like the elected county clerk, has a proposed contract that the officer believes is necessary to carry out a constitutional or statutory duty, then the county officer must have the county commissioners execute the contract or submit the contract for review under the procedure laid out under the law.
That review process does not require an affirmative vote by the county commissioners.
Githens, aware of the clerk’s intent, noted from the public mic at Thursday’s board meeting that the alternate procedure has 20-day review process, adding that Browne would have to show that the contract with An Island, LLC is necessary to carry out a constitutional or statutory duty.
Under Indiana election law, it’s the election board that has the statutory duty to “conduct all elections and administer the election laws within the county.” But within state election law, the county clerk is assigned several statutory duties, including membership on the election board as its assigned secretary. So the practical tasks that are connected to the board’s duties like certifying election results would fall to the clerk.
It will be the clerk’s contention that displaying election results on election night for the public’s benefit is necessary to carry out part of her statutory duties as clerk.
Role of structured data files in reporting results
Currently, there is no role for structured data files in the reporting of election results from Monroe County to the state of Indiana on election night.
On election night, the numbers are hand-typed into a form that is hosted on a state-run server. On Thursday, Monroe County election supervisor Kylie Farris told The B Square that it’s a bi-partisan process like all procedures involving election materials are—a representative of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party work in tandem.
Using a printout of a .pdf file generated by a Hart Intercivic machine, Farries said she types in the numbers as someone else calls them out, and someone looks over her shoulder as she types to catch any mistakes. At the end everything is rechecked before it is submitted.
Not involved in the official reporting of results to the state are any structured data files. One such format is a .csv file (comma separated value) file, where each piece of data on a row is separated by a comma.
It’s that kind of file that Farris talked about at last week’s meeting of the county commissioners, when the An Island, LLC contract was voted down. Farris made statements to the effect that county election staff were not able on own their own to generate .csv files using Hart Intercivic’s voting machine, and had to rely on Hart for that.
That prompted Hart Intercivic to weigh in, refuting that claim as inaccurate—because generating a .csv file is part of the basic functionality of the machine, which Monroe County election staff can use to generate themselves.
Farris told The B Square on Thursday that she now understands that Hart cannot generate .csv files on behalf of Monroe County, but that Monroe County election staff can do it themselves, by using the functionality of Hart’s voting machines.
A .csv file is crucial to the way An Island, LLC will be displaying results for Monroe County, assuming the contract is eventually executed.
Responding to an emailed question from The B Square, An Island’s Anjan Kashyab wrote that on election night, Monroe County staff will upload a .csv file to An Island’s proprietary cloud software, called US Elections Live.
The display for Monroe County’s data will be pre-programmed, Kashyab wrote, so that once the numbers are uploaded from the .csv file, election results will be automatically displayed and mapped.
Data security
Responding to a B Square question about the data that An Island will receive from Monroe County, Kashyab wrote: “An Island will not be receiving any data that isn’t already public through the Monroe County clerk’s office. An Island does not and will not share any confidential or private information of clients and their data.”
Security concerns have been cited by Browne, as one reason not to use Monroe County government staff and computing resources for the same kind of data display that it looks like An Island, LLC will be paid to do. Browne bases her concern on the early-July cyberattack that shut down Monroe County government for a solid week.
The long-awaited after-action report on the incident has still not been produced. Responding to an emailed B Square question on Thursday, Monroe County chief technology officer Greg Crohn wrote: “I was in touch with our insurance carrier earlier today, over one final item that is still outstanding that may take a week or more to complete.”
Crohn’s message continued, “I don’t want to give you another timeline, as the previous timeline has come and gone. I can only say that I don’t believe it will be much longer.”
Monroe County election supervisor Kylie Farris told The B Square that the delay in the after-action report contributed to her skepticism that the county government’s computing system is secure. Monroe County clerk Nicole Browne indicated that it was not just the delay in the after-action report, but rather the way she had not been looped into the situation during the incident.
For Browne, it does not matter which servers the county’s GIS team might use to do the same work that An Island, LLC would be paid to do.
The county’s GIS team recently unveiled a new food service inspection map tool, which displays the results of inspections by the county health department. The food service inspection map is hosted on the Esri cloud, independent of any county government servers.
That means there’s no trace of Monroe County government in the URL for the map: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/cfec8ef461304070b0cd46d854716df4/?org=MoCo-GIS
If the county’s GIS team took the same approach to election results data on election night, that would mean posting the numbers to the Esri cloud, not to Monroe County government servers. Asked if that would address her concerns about security of the data, Browne answered: “It would not.”
Monroe County GIS staff works out of the elected surveyor Trohn Enright-Randolph’s office. Enright-Randolph has been consistent in his remarks at public meetings, including at Thursday’s election board meeting, about the idea that elected officials can set the direction for their own offices.
He has not tried to advocate for the use of the county’s GIS resources instead of An Island, LLC for election results display. He has said he’s available to answer questions. Enright-Randolph has also said that the GIS team has already been mobilized to post election data.
The Oct. 9 meeting of the Monroe County commissioners is set for the regular time of 10 a.m. in the Nat U. Hill Room of the Monroe County courthouse.
