Monroe County election board member Judith Benckart.
Monroe County clerk Nicole Browne and election supervisor Ryan Herndon.
The 15 provisional ballots reviewed by Monroe County’s election board on Friday at Election Central were not enough to affect the outcome of any of the races, not even the MCCSC referendum, which passed on a narrow 108-vote margin.
But the work of the board on Friday still affected the final tallies. Five out of the 15 provisional ballots were accepted as valid by the board. The remaining ten were rejected.
Monroe County election board members David Henry (Democratic Party appointee) and Nicole Browne (Monroe County clerk) review provisional ballots. Seated at right is the new county election supervisor, Jessica Brown. (May 12, 2023)
The tallies for the May 2 primary elections are now final, after Monroe County’s election board voted on Friday to accept the votes from three additional, provisional ballots.
No outcomes were even close to being changed from the initial results—because there were a total of just 13 provisional ballots.
Provisional ballots are set aside, for various reasons—like a failure to show adequate ID, lack of voter registration, or trying to vote in the wrong polling location. Setting ballots aside means they’re not a part of the initial election vote totals, but could be added after their eventual adjudication by the election board.
Provisional ballots are adjudicated 10 days after the election. On Friday, 10 provisional ballots were rejected by the Monroe County election board.
The Monroe County Democratic Party will petition the Indiana state election division for a recount of votes in the state house representative District 62 race, which was won by Republican Dave Hall over Democrat Penny Githens.
Left: Penny Githens (D). Right: Dave Hall (R). In these photos, they were giving stump speeches at a candidate event hosted by the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce held on Oct. 3, 2022.
The news release cites the 40-vote margin as the reason for the recount request.
MCDP chair David Henry is quoted in the release saying, “In such extremely close races, a recount is simply about exercising our candidate’s rights under the law, and crossing every t, and dotting every i.”
Under state law, the deadline for a county party to petition for a recount is 17 days after the election, which translates this year to Monday (Nov. 28), due to the Thanksgiving holiday.
On Friday, at one minute after 12 p.m., at the Election Central building at Madison and 7th streets, Monroe County’s three-member election board will convene a meeting to review the provisional ballots cast in the Nov. 8 general election.
Posted notice of Monroe County election board meeting at Election Central at 7th and Madison streets starting at 12:01 p.m. on Friday, 16, 2022.
Election officials have told The B Square that for this year’s general election there are well over 100 provisional ballots. Those are ballots that were set aside on Election Day, if there was some question about a voter’s qualification to vote.
The key question to be considered for each ballot is whether it should be counted in the final, official results of the election.
It’s a routine and regular process, but generally does not attract much interest, let alone press coverage.
The unofficial vote totals, not including provisional ballots, give Hall a 37-vote margin: 12,975 to 12,938.
District 62 includes areas of Brown and Jackson counties, in addition to a swath of Monroe County that excludes most of the city of Bloomington.
In Monroe County, Githens got the majority of votes: 10,608 to 7,893.
After Friday’s provisional ballot review, Hall’s 37-vote margin across District 62 could be a little bigger, or a little smaller, or exactly the same.
According to Monroe County election officials, after Friday’s meeting, any provisional ballots that are accepted will be run through an optical scanner, which will write the results to a removable storage drive, which will then be hooked up to the computer that stores the election results and uploaded.
Seals from provisional ballot bags after they were broken at Friday’s election board meeting.
From left: Hal Turner and Shruti Rana, members of Monroe County’s election board.
At its Friday meeting, the three-member Monroe County election board voted to accept as valid 19 out of the 32 provisional ballots from the Tuesday, May 3 primary elections.
Provisional ballots are those that are cast by a voter, but set aside due to some question about whether they are valid. Provisional ballots allow a voter to make their choices for candidates, without requiring Election Day poll workers, in circumstances that might be hectic, to make a final decision on validity
This was three-member county election board on Friday, Nov. 13, 2020, resolving provisional ballots cast on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020. From left: Carolyn VandeWiele (Democrat), Hal Turner (Republican) and Monroe County’s clerk, Nicole Browne. (Screenshot from Zoom conference call.)
Those initial results will now get altered, possibly by as much as 15 votes either way, which won’t be enough to change the outcome of any races.
The tweak to the results comes from the provisional ballots that got resolved on Friday by the county’s three-member bipartisan election aboard.
If there’s any kind of dispute or conflict at the polls, the law gives a voter the chance to cast a provisional ballot, which then gets reviewed by the three-member bi-partisan election board.
As Monroe County election board chair Hal Turner put it, everything the board did on Friday was based on Indiana’s election code. (Screen grab from video of meeting to which the image links.)
In a Friday afternoon meeting that lasted just a bit over a half hour, Monroe County’s election board reviewed 23 provisional ballots cast at the June 2 primary elections.
That’s about a minute and 20 seconds per ballot.
The board accepted three provisional ballots and rejected the other 20. Provisional ballot review was the only item of business for the three member board, which consists of the county clerk, Nicole Browne, and two members appointed by the county chairs of the two major political parties. Continue reading “Election board OKs 3 of 23 provisional ballots from June 2 primaries”→
