Monroe County commissioners again say no to clerk for election results display contract, tussle transferred to election board’s Thursday meeting
On Thursday, the question of how Monroe County’s Nov. 5 election night results will be announced to the public could finally be put to rest.
But the numbers that matter—those that determine the winners and losers in elections—will get reported to the state government the same way as before. They’ll get hand-keyed from a report generated by the voting machines into a form hosted on an Indiana Secretary of State’s office server.
The county election board has a special meeting set for noon on Thursday (Oct. 10), and the agenda includes item that could lead to the signing of a contract with An Island, LLC, for displaying election results on its US Elections Live website.
The proposed $30,000 contract, which has been reduced from $41,000, is proposed by Monroe County’s elected clerk Nicole Browne
But twice now, the contract has been rejected by the county commissioners on unanimous 0–3 votes at two separate meetings. The most recent rejection came on Wednesday morning (Oct. 9).
[Updated Oct. 10, 2024. The outcome of Thursday’s election board meeting was a 2–1 vote against approval of the contract with An Island. The board did not vote on the question of delegating the election board’s duties to the clerk. The board has another meeting set for Oct. 15 when the question of delegation could be addressed, which appears to provide a technical chance for the clerk to sign a contract herself, even if that chance looks slim.]
On Thursday, what the election board could, but seems unlikely to do, is delegate one of the board’s statutory duties—for the reconciling of ballots and reporting of unofficial results (canvassing)—to the county clerk. The delegation of an election board duty is possible under state election law.
Based on discussion at Wednesday’s meeting between commissioners, county attorney Molly Turner-King, and chief deputy clerk Laura Wert, there could be some disagreement about whether the election board in the past has delegated the canvassing duty to the clerk.
In any event, a delegation of the board’s canvassing duty to the clerk could set the stage for the clerk herself to proceed to sign a contract with An Island. She would be using a new state law [HEA 1158] that allows elected officials to sign agreements themselves, if it’s necessary for them to perform a constitutional or statutory duty.
Browne herself serves on the three-member county election board, so she would have her own support for the delegation of the canvassing duty. But the other two election board members, John Fernandez (Democratic Party appointee) and Judith Benckart (Republican Party appointee) are reportedly unlikely to support the contract.
At Wednesday’s meeting, commissioner Penny Githens said that based on her conversations with Fernandez and Benckart, they both “oppose the contract,” which means they would not support the delegation to the clerk of the board’s canvassing duty.
Reached by The B Square, Fernandez said, “I’ll reserve my final judgment until I hear the case that the clerk might make during the meeting.” He added, “As of now, I’m skeptical as to whether this solution [the contract with An Island] is the right solution for Monroe County.”
At this Wednesday’s meeting, county commissioners cited the same concerns they did when they rejected the contract two weeks ago, by the same 0–3 tally.
The main difference between the contract presented this time around was the price. An Island was offering to reduce the cost of the three-year accord from $41,000 to $30,000.
But the reduced cost did not sway commissioners, who point to the fact that Monroe County’s own GIS division, working out of elected surveyor Trohn Enright-Randolph’s office, could provide the same functionality.
Enright-Randolph has said that he supports the clerk’s ability as an elected official to chart the course of her own office. But he has also said that the GIS team has already been mobilized to post election data.
Vice president of An Island, Anjan Kashyab told commissioners: “The main thing to focus on here is that we’re not creating new data that is different.” He added that An Island would be taking whatever numbers Monroe County provides and displaying it in a nice way.
In Monroe County, the current method of reporting election results to the public is for the 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.
Browne does not trust the county government’s computer network, after an early-July cybersecurity breach shut down county government for a week. But commissioners point to the fact the GIS division would be hosting the data separate from the county’s network, on the Esri cloud.
The clerk’s lack of confidence in the security of the county’s computer next work was conveyed to commissioners on Wednesday by chief deputy clerk Laura Wert, who read aloud a statement. Browne did not attend the meeting.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Monroe County’s chief technology officer, Greg Crohn, was on hand to address the clerk’s concerns.
Crohn said that during the July cybersecurity breach, the county followed protocols set up by his department and also the county’s cyber insurance company. He said following protocols meant that until the full scope of the breach was recognized, he and the county’s third-party cybersecurity consultant didn’t report to any county offices other than the commissioner’s office.
About the handling of the cybersecurity breach, Crohn said, “I understand the clerk is upset that she wasn’t notified in what she found to be a prompt fashion.” He continued, “But since her data was not affected on our local networks, she was treated no different than any other department head whose data was not affected.”
Crohn also said the county government could have been brought back online sooner than a week, but he and the investigators took the necessary time: “We were making sure that the data was secure, that our backups that we pulled from were secure, and we did that from multiple angles.”
Commissioner Julie Thomas said that for the clerk to raise the cybersecurity issue “didn’t help the cause.” Thomas said, “I don’t appreciate the deflection.”
Commissioners are also concerned about $25,000 that is going towards Monroe County’s contract, which is already in the hands of An Island, through a HAVA (Help America Vote Act) grant. The grant was awarded to Harrison County, which was going to use An Island’s service, but opted against it. The commissioners are supposed to approve the acceptance of such HAVA grants, commissioner Penny Githens said at Wednesday’s meeting, which the commissioners have not done.
About the election board’s Thursday (Oct. 9) meeting, Thomas said: “ I’m very curious to see what the election board chooses to do tomorrow.”
