Welcome to politically speaking.

I'm Elizabeth Bennion, chancellor's professor of political science and director of Community Engagement and the American Democracy Project at Indiana University, South Bend.

Early voting in Indiana began Tuesday, October 8th, with the election less than one month away.

We are focused on what you need to know about how to cast your ballot.

We'll talk about early voting, voting options, election security and more.

As county clerks across the state oversee the election process.

Joining us today are St Joseph County Clerk Amy Rofles and Elkhart County Clerk Christopher Anderson.

Thank you both for being here.

Early voting is underway.

Christopher, what is turnout looking like in Elkhart County?

Very heavy.

We had lines at both locations in Goshen and Elkhart, pretty much all day Tuesday, very steady yesterday throughout the day.

We've done about 16, 1700 voters already in just two days.

It has been a very, very steady, heavy turnout at our early voting locations.

Amy, do we see a similar turnout pattern in Saint Joseph County?

Absolutely.

Actually, on the first day of early voting, Tuesday, October eight, we set a record in Saint Joseph County for turnout.

We had, I believe, the numbers 891 at the county city building and over 600 at Mishawaka County Services Building.

So we were very happy with that.

The voters were excited.

Our election workers were excited as well.

So I think some of the people mentioned that they would just like to get voting over with.

And one man said, Does this now mean that I'll see no more political ads on my TV?

So that was the feeling in Saint Joseph County for sure.

And then now I think I just checked on our numbers there, close to 3000 right now.

So we're very happy with the turnout.

Well, campaigns certainly do engage in narrow casting and targeting specific voters, but I don't think they're quite to the stage of turning up and changing your television ads for early voters.

If people do want to vote early, Christopher, what do they need to know?

Who is eligible to vote in person or by mail?

And what do they need to know?

What do they need to do to make that happen?

Well, the easiest answer to that question is going to be the in-person voting.

Any voter's eligible and what they need to do, they just need to bring their vote, a state issued, federally issued photo ID with them.

We will check them in with electronic pull book issued on the ballot.

They can then mark their ballot and out the door they go.

You mentioned the ballots by mail, voting by mail.

There are, I think, 14 reasons that a voter can request and receive a ballot by mail.

Most common is going to be a voter who's over the age of 65 or they have a reasonable belief that they're going to be out of town on Election Day.

Those are the most common reasons.

You're confined to your home.

You're caring for somebody that's confined.

All those like I said, there are 14, and I think it covers a lot of people and allows them to cast their ballot in the privacy of their own home.

If they can't get to a polling location, but they do need to check off one of those excuses and they're certifying that that does in fact, apply to them.

Would that be true also of poll workers who are working the entire day on Election Day?

Poll workers in a vote center county can vote at their voter vote center location.

In the past, we have said that you'll be able to cast your ballot on Election Day this year.

I do not think so.

I think it's going to be heavy, very heavy on Election Day.

And I am encouraging my poll workers that I am training.

I just started that yesterday that they need to cast an absentee ballot before Election Day because it would be very disconcerting to have them try to vote on Election Day and not be able to get it done because they're too busy.

Absolutely.

Amy, are you giving the same message to your poll workers?

Then go and vote in person early or absentee?

Right.

Yes, that's what we're doing.

We're asking them to come in early, in-person, absentee.

We're a vote center.

County is Elkhart as well.

Yes.

okay.

All right.

Great.

Yes.

So we we have about out roughly 600 election workers for this general election.

And I agree 100% with Kris.

We anticipate just a very busy day on Election Day and the lines will be long.

And so that's what we're encouraging as well, that they we are encouraging them to early in-person vote.

Now, in terms of those Election Day workers, they will have a long day because the polls open for voters at 6 a.m., close at 6 p.m. local prevailing time.

What do people need to know if they're voting on Election Day?

What do they need to bring with them then?

Well, on Election Day, of course, you have to be a registered voter and voter registration is now closed.

But you have to be a registered voter.

You have to live in Saint Joseph County and you do have to bring photo I.D.

That's just an Indiana code, election code.

You must have photo ID.

We are asking our voters who will be coming to the to the vote centers to hold their ID in their hand while they're waiting in line, because we've had lots of slowdowns when they get up to our poll pads and ready to check in and they have trouble getting the ID out of the wallet, if you find that as well.

Yes.

So our sheriffs are now saying everybody hold or will be saying, make sure your ID is in your hand, just like when you go to the airport, put your ID in your hand.

And we are hoping that that will speed up the line a little bit.

But that's all they need to bring.

They do not need to bring a voter registration card or anything like that, just their photo ID and they'll be they'll be good to go to vote in one of their a first time voter who registered by mail.

Is that an exception?

Will they need to bring additional proof of residency or does that just depend if their license actually has the current address on it?

I suppose it depends on if the license has the current address on it.

But you you do.

That's an additional documentation that's required and it would be your license or it would be a bill from a utility company.

It could be a bank statement, it could be a government check, something like that, because we do want to confirm that that person is who they say they are.

And what I like about photo ID is that our poll clerks actually look at the photo.

They're holding it up and going, so I think that's the first line of defense.

But again, if it's a first time voter who registered by mail, they do have to have one additional piece of documentation.

Now, those first time voters may wonder what you mean when you say sheriff.

So we're not talking about the county sheriff here, right?

No, we are not talking about the county sheriff.

However, it is sort of a fun role for an election worker to play.

And often times anyone who is their role is a sheriff.

They will come with a little toy sheriff badge.

The sheriff is the one who greets the voters.

Welcome them into the vote center, asks them to have their photo ID in their hand, and then if there's any case of a voter who has perhaps a candidate's T-shirt on with the candidate's name or a hat with the candidate or something that we call electioneering, it is the sheriff's response ability to gently go up and mention that we are about the process here of voting.

We are not at all about the politics, so they are not allowed to wear anything with the political candidate's name on it.

So that's a job that the sheriff does.

It's a very it's a very fun position to have.

You are on your feet all day.

But but greeting and welcoming the voters and asking them to have their photo ID in their hand.

That's what the sheriff does.

Now, Christopher, for photo ID, most people probably use a driver's license or a driver's permit.

BMV issued state I.D.

They could also use a passport for students at public or state universities.

They can also use their state ID and their student I.D.

It can be as long as that student ID meets the four criteria.

One, it has to have the student's photo on it.

That's why we call it a photo ID.

Two, It has to have the student's name on it.

Chris Christopher It doesn't necessarily have to match.

And that.

The third one is it has to have an expiration date.

And that applies to all the photo IDs with the exception of a VA or a military I.D.

that expiration date.

It can be expired as long as it expired after November 8th, 2022, which was the last federal general election.

The fourth requirement of that photo ID is it has to be issued by the state of Indiana or by the federal government.

So the three obvious ones that meet that requirement right off the bat, state driver's license, Indiana city driver's license, a state I.D.

and a passport, the.

We have been trying to work at the clerk's association, have been trying to work with the state post-secondary institutions IU, Purdue, Ball State and the rest of them.

Do you have a expiration date on your student IDs?

My student ID from Ball State when I was there was I had my photo, had my name.

Expiration date was a sticker that went on it and I got a new one every single semester that said I was a student.

We would like to see something like that.

And we have been working and we have gotten a lot of input from the universities in terms of how we can do that.

Those are the public institutions organized IU Purdue and Ball State.

People ask, Well, what about Notre Dame?

It's a big university.

Notre Dame is not a state post-secondary institution.

It is a private institution.

Okay.

We've got Goshen College in Elkhart County.

That is not a state public institution either.

Okay.

Right.

So not private university IDs or college IDs.

And I know IU did add that expiration date in part to make those IDs compliant with state voter ID laws a few years ago.

So you talking about voter I.D., That's part of what happens with security.

You've also been working in other security issues.

Let's talk a little bit about that.

You each received some grant money actually to work on election security.

And Christopher, what did you use that money for?

How will it make elections more secure or at least give you confidence that they'll stay secure?

Well, we are as you know, we had an experience this spring with a recount in Elkhart County and House District 49.

During that recount time, all of our equipment was impounded.

We could not do anything with it.

And we got about ten weeks behind in terms of preparing for the November election.

We applied for and received from the secretary of state's office through the have a program, $33,500, and we are going to utilize that to purchase a backup to the computers and equipment that we use to design, build, prepare for our election.

And that will also allow us.

God forbid anything should happen.

We could have run an election from that backup equipment.

We could tabulate the election and certify that election with the backup equipment.

My chief deputy and I, we participated in a CSA election security cybersecurity tabletop event.

We went down to Muncie and did that.

And one of the questions that they asked while we were describing our experience was, Don't you have a backup?

And I said, No, we don't.

And I'm already eight weeks behind.

I need to really get access so I can build the ballot.

It takes a while to do that.

And so we made that application and it was approved.

And Elkhart County did receive $33,500 that we are going to use to create an offsite backup system for preparing, running and certifying the elections in Elkhart County and under what conditions would a backup system like that be required?

If your main location, God forbid, there was a fire or sprinkler system went off because something called a glitch and all of a sudden you've got waterlogged computers, I'm I would think at that point we would need a backup system.

And that's what we're thinking, that we could have that offsite so that if we needed it, we could have our the media that we need and just have that backup install it begin.

Okay.

It may take us 45 minutes, an hour, hour and a half to get that set up and get it up and running.

But we can do it.

And at that point, that's peace of mind for me.

And I hope it's peace of mind for the voters of Elkhart County and other counties that do have a backup in the state of Indiana.

I think that should be peace of mind for those voters.

Also for the best, that plan for the worst, it sounds like.

What about Saint Joseph County Fire flood.

God forbid, violence in a polling place.

What is the plan in place or can you talk a little bit about at least how you are creating plans so that voters know there is one?

Even now?

We know sometimes all of the details aren't good to release, right?

Yes.

So we took the month of August to really look into a backup plan, worked with the Emergency Management Association of Saint John or Agency of Saint Joe County.

You know, we contacted law enforcement.

We have our emergency contact list of if disaster strikes.

We also participated in that tabletop exercise for which was wonderful.

They brought together the Clerks Emergency Management.

We had our I.T.

department there, and it was a roundtable discussion of what if disaster strikes.

And it was so fruitful, I think, for every clerk that was there, because you got to sit right across the table from the I.T.

guy and say, okay, what if there's a what do you call it, a DDOS or something, a denial of service to the network.

We got to talk exactly about that.

What does happen if a if the power goes out, which it did in a couple of counties during the primary because of weather.

So having those face to face conversations with the people that really matter in creating an emergency plan was wonderful.

So we get updates all the time from CISA about the threats that are out for election administrators and the of the technology that runs elections.

But Saint Joseph County received money from the Harvard grant as well, that the secretary of state's office to put in equipment in our storage facility that is surveillance equipment, keycard access, motion detectors, things like that, because Saint Joseph County has over a thousand pieces of election equipment and we were just enhancing the system.

So now there's outdoor lighting, there's outdoor motion detectors.

So the when the vote machines are being stored, all election equipment is being stored and moved out and moving day.

When it goes to the vote centers, everything is under a camera and keycard access.

So I think that's a great step for Saint Joseph County so that people can have confidence that, one, the machines weren't tampered with in a way that will make them inoperable, and two, in a way that maybe would affect the results right?

Yes.

Yes.

We don't want any of that.

Is there you mentioned power going out.

Are there paper ballot backup options?

What does happen if something like that happens just due to weather as happened in the primary?

Right.

I will say I will talk for Saint Joseph County, of course, because we are a vote center county and anyone can go to one of 41 vote centers.

We would just do a media blitz that this voting location is not operational right now and the voter has 40 other choices to do.

So that's that would be our plan.

We do have backup generators at the schools and things like that.

A lot of our vote centers are located at schools and so they have their own emergency plans and backup generators and things like that.

And our lead vote machine technician Chris Lisle meets regularly with the school administrators for sure, just to keep them up to date because we are taking over the school on Election Day and they've been very, very helpful and it's been great communication about what we need to run a safe and secure election in your school.

And it's been it's been a great experience.

I think when some voters hear that you have a vote center and you can vote anywhere, they think that's nice, that's convenient, and the sounds great in the case of a power outage.

But does that mean all these voting machines are up online and will people be hacking in?

So what do you say about those security concerns that St Joseph County elections are super safe and super secure?

There is one piece of equipment that is is connected to the Internet and that is when you check in on the poll pad, which is basically an iPad that is required to be connected to the Internet so that the voter registration information will capture that this person has has checked in to vote.

And that is updated to all of the other 4140 vote centers so that no voter can check in a second time to vote.

That is the reason for that.

But then moving on to our freedom vote machine, which is the tablet where you make your selections, that is not connected to the Internet, Neither is our open vote optical machine, which is the tabulator.

You feed your ballot into the overflow and those votes are recorded on a separate thumb drive, which is encrypted.

So, no, the Freedom Vote machine does not record and save anything.

And the Open vote Optical only records on the encrypted thumb drive, which is brought by a bipartisan team at the end of the night down to the county city building and we tabulate the votes down there.

And then you would also have those hard copy receipts of the actual votes.

Should there be a reason to need those?

Yes.

Yes.

Now, Christopher, some people, I think when they are concerned about technology, that they're less concerned about it not working in general than the fact that they might not be able to work it once they get in there, what assistance is available to voters once they arrive at the polls, if they're voting for the first time or haven't done it in a while, or maybe it's some new technology to them, the assistance that we have, you mentioned your sheriffs in your vote center locations.

The term we use for our workers is a facilitator.

They're there to facilitate the flow of the voters through the vote center.

Hey, what do I do now?

Where do I go?

And okay, there's an open machine there for a touchscreen machine ballot marking device that you can use to mark your ballot.

Where does my ballot go now that it's marked, Where it goes in the arc hours is ad2 hundred C optical scan machine and it goes in there and that's what tabulates it.

Excuse me, but one of the things that happens with these is we have very similar we use different names for each of our pieces of equipment, but nothing with the exception of the electronic pole book is connected to the Internet, has never been connected to the Internet.

And I think that's one thing that can reassure our voters that everything is safe, secure the vote centers can accept anybody.

Elkhart County registered voter saying Joe County registered voter in Saint Joe County.

I think that is one of the key issues that votes centers provide for both of us.

Well, speaking about accepting any body, what about people who may have disability or vision impairment, for example?

I understand there may be some audio ballot options available.

Could you perhaps talk about that?

I'm sure in Saint Joseph County we have Ada.

Ada accessible voting units and it's this it's the same kind of voting machine, but it is on a table that is wheelchair accessible.

It has a headset.

You can vote with extra audio.

The screen is larger for anyone.

That's vision impaired, and if someone comes in to assist the voter, they a lot of times a family member will bring somebody and there is a form that they need to fill out.

It's a voter assist form so we can make sure that that the voter knows that that person has assisted them.

And we know that that's why they're standing together at the vote machine, because other voters need to know, wait, why is that?

But, you know, voter privacy concerns about voter privacy.

So they have to fill out a form.

And I'm very happy in our county city building right now, we have two ADA accessible machines for the voter.

So.

And is that true in Elkhart County, too?

Any accessibility barriers for people or are there places they can go if they wish to vote in person?

Each one of our machines we have each one of our voting locations has at least one of our we call them express votes that is set up that the person can wheel right in, right flat up to it and begin casting their ballot.

If the voter has a vision impairment.

We also have the audio ballot and there's a set of headphones.

They can there is a pad up, down, left, right, select, move forward, move back and they can listen to the audio ballot.

It is it does take a while.

Ours is about 8 to 9 minutes.

Is that ours is about it.

Well, we have 20 screens and it's about for four or 5 minutes.

Yeah.

And so that that does allow the voter to do that.

We also with our the screens of the touch screens, you can increase the size of the font and that's nice.

I'm 57 years old in my eyes don't work as well as they used to.

None of us are over 40.

Okay, I am over the other thing that we've got and I like this and it actually has helped me when I've tried it and we've had voters that we can do this, we can inverse the screen rather than white rather than black printing on a white screen, we can reverse it.

So it's white printing on a black screen.

And that actually is has helped several of my voters just in the past couple of days are here.

We can do this for you.

Increase the font size.

that's good.

What if I do this and then I reverse it for them?

Is that on their regular machine?

Your regular.

so it's not the 80 8000.

The machines can do it all at the same time and all of our machines, all you have to do is plug in a set of headphones and the screen that you're currently looking at is where the audio ballot will start.

that's awesome.

We only have about 30 seconds left, so I guess in a sentence or two, what would you say to voters who want to be reassured that we are prepared in Indiana and in your counties to handle the volume of voters expected and that their process should go smoothly and their votes will be counted in Elkhart County.

And I can I'm speaking for Elkhart County, and I'd like to be able to speak for all the other counties in the state of Indiana.

We run all of this professionally.

That's why we're here.

That's why we do what we do.

We enjoy what we do.

People think we're crazy, but we can assure people that the votes in Elkhart County, we have a paper ballot for every single one that we can count.

They are they are counted.

They will be counted no matter what.

We will have those for them.

Amy Ralph's right.

What I like to say is our our elections and voter registration is transparent, bipartisan and professional.

And we this work for this election has taken the whole year.

I want voters to know this is what we have been doing since the beginning of the year, is organizing and getting ready.

And we are ready.

And and I'm and I encourage everyone to get out and vote.

Absolutely.

Well, that's all the time we have for this week's politically Speaking.

I want to thank our guests, Saint Joseph County Clerk Amy Rolfes and Elkhart County clerk Christopher Anderson.

I'm Elizabeth Bennion and I'm echoing that point.

Get out and vote because it takes all of us to make democracy work.

This WNIT Local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.