Board of Elections & Registration - Regular Meeting

Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Roll call. here. Here

all right, welcome Mr. Coulter. Thank you. I don't know if I need to bring this to your attention. There's no you in my name. Oh, yes. We'll fix that. I will fix that. All right. The process of reorganization Uh we begin with uh the position of president. Do we have any motions? Like to make a motion that Paul Rous remains present. We have a motion and a second. All in favor?

I oppose. Carried. All right. Next would be the position of vice president. I'd like to make a motion that Daniel Tim serve as vice president. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor?

I oppose. Congratulations, Mr. Tim. All right. Okay. That concludes the reorganization selection of election board attorney. Floor is open for nomination. I would like to nominate Monica Conrad. Second. We have a motion and a second to retain Monica Conrad as board attorney. All in favor? I oppose. Thank you. I appreciate that. What should we wait for?

Going to be a busy year or is it exactly right? Clerk's report, please.

Um, filing began this month. We have approximately 45 candidates that have filed for office already left party offices. Um, we had a training on a vote earlier this week or I think it was this week maybe it might have been nine weeks. um which is where we do our online pullworker uh how we keep track of all of them and it's also where we go for um campaign finance and do that all online. Just a refresher for us and also for the new um people in the office. And then um just as a point of concern um the legislative conference is next week and so I'll be there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And for the elections conference, I do have calendars for you guys. That's the only thing they bring. They need to print manuals, but you guys do get a calendar.

All right. Thank you. If you want one, Monica, I have another one in my office. Okay. Anything else? Um, that's all I have for this section section. Everything else I have can go into the different headings. Okay. director's report.

Pretty much covered everything. Filing's going on. It's still going. Um, we're getting them in. Okay. Deadline 7th at noon. 6 6 at noon. Yeah.

All right. You should have received the electronically a copy of December's meeting minutes. If there are no amended amendments to the meetings minutes or comments, I'll entertain a motion to accept as written. So move. Second. Second. All in favor? I oppose. Thank you. resolutions for 2026 elections.

Um these are the same resolutions that we do each year um during an election year. So the first one is to authorize the use of 15 to 17 year old pole workers and just get them done at the beginning of the year just from having to do them closer to the election when things are a little bit easier. Okay. Do you need a motion on that? Um we'll just need to approve them and then also um sign them all and then we can file them.

Okay. The first one here is a a resolution authorizing the use of 16 and 17year-old pole workers. Motion to approve. We have a motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second.

All in favor? I opposed. The second one is um a resolution to use the electronic pole book for travel board. This is a resolution to use the electronic poll vote for traveling boards pursuant to IC3-11-12-25. Do I have a motion? So second. All in favor?

I oppose. Now the last one is something you might want to hold off on. Um the premise of it will remain the same. Um typically we would make a resolution for the delivery of the election equipment to be for the county highway department that is no longer an option to us. So it's uh resolutions to allow a moving company to move our elections commission still pursuant to IC code 3-11-3-10. So it's still pursuant to following the same rules and regulations that forced by the state. But if we waited we could name the moving company. Right now it's just vague. So to allow a moving company, we have to find a moving company, which was a struggle last year and something that we've already started looking for this year and um are still struggling. So, is is there like a time frame that we have to

No, we just typically take care of it take care of all of our resolutions in the first um meeting just so that they're done and over with and it's one less thing we have to do in the hecticness of the election. But we could hold off on this so that we can name the moving company once we have a moving company that will use it for us. Right now, we have not yet found that company. So, no harm. No harm in holding. No, there's no harm in waiting to add. Just it's the pleasure of the board. If we want to do it right now with an unnamed company,

just saying yes, we're going to use a moving company, we can do that or we can wait and I can put the name of the company into the resolution. Any comments? Any thoughts? Hey, I don't know about the rest of the board members, but I'd like to have a name to, you know, name with a face. You know what I mean? And I just think this makes more sense. I mean, if it's reputable, I mean, maybe you've heard something about them one way or the other and stuff like this, you know. So, so yeah. So, I'd like to make a motion that we put we table this one until we get a a name to put into the resolution. Yep. Second.

So, we have a motion and a second to table until we can identify a moving company for the transport of our equipment. All in favor? I oppose. Yeah. The stat the statute is is that we just we just have to have it adopted before the election. Right. So in terms of a deadline April your April meeting or you'd have to call special meeting if you didn't do it by then. So we have to target April. It sounds like this this might be a harder project than you think. You know what I mean? We found last year it was a very hard project. Yeah. not telling you there are a lot of

equipment is not something that most moving company want to take the responsibility of touching. So it's um it's very difficult. Other kinds are having the same problem.

Do you think it's like a bonding issue? They're concerned with damage and liability. I think they're concerned to touch the Yeah. security. I think everything around it with all of the um glitz and glamour around elections. Yeah. And if one of the machines get damaged, it's not just like you broke a headboard, right?

Or something. It's it's a piece of election equipment and there's a lot of drama around elections and the equipment and keeping them sealed and keeping everything, you know, just right. People are a great candidate. Yeah. They got to be a big enough company to to tackle what 40 sites. We already down to 40. That is another problem. you know, cuz we do have 40 sites that they have to travel to and we're asking them to go there one day and then go back and pick them up and then bring all the equipment back. So, we're asking a lot out of the company,

but you do it pretty much in the same time, right? Yes. And then there's times I mean, you can't just do it whenever school you have to go there during certain hours. Yeah. Can I ask is it has there been any thought about what a backup plan is? If we can't secure a private firm to move the equipment, we literally just never come up with the name of the moving company. How are we going to get the equipment to them? That's where we were last year. We did not have a name of a moving company. We did not have anything and luckily facilities were a was able to bail us out last year. They did step in. Yes. Unfortunately,

it was a smaller election. Yes, it was a smaller election. I have already talked to them. They due to the timing and the issues they cannot and when the number of machines that we will have out for the election this year, they they are not our backup plan this year. Your CEOs Yes. Yeah. I I mean, literally, if we can't find a moving company to do this, we can't, you know, postpone an election. We've got a We need a another plan. Well, hopefully the commissioners would allow the highway department to step up again. Yeah. I mean, that would be our only option. Maybe that's a conversation to be held now.

Yeah, we need some kind of backup plan here and insurance. I would set an internal clock with you guys and stuff like this like maybe by the end of February or something like this or or the end of March or something. So you're not up against like a a real hard deadline, you know, over that April time frame and stuff. And then tell them, listen, we have searched high and low and everything like this, man. We're coming to you hand in hand. Can you help us out here? I mean, cuz we're not having any success. So, so if you don't have something, then you know that by sometime in, you know, March or whatever, you got to go to the commissioners and talk to them about, you know, if they're willing to step up.

I'm willing to have another conversation with them. It was a hard no last year. Yeah, I get it. But but it we have no other choice. Hopefully the conversation would go in different direction. You got you got a a budget hard but hard line on a budget. Yes, we do. We have a budget. It has been budgeted for We have a line item for moving the the election by private concern. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Have Have we pulled other counties to find out what their answer is? Yeah. This problem is internal. So, they're all going internal.

They either use internal or they use um some of them use highway department, some of them use sheriff's departments, some of them use um local small moving companies. I mean, by that I mean small counties. Could Could we touch base with Jim Bon and let him know that this is a problem that we might ask him? He's aware. Okay. cuz he may require some form of special equipment to move that stuff that he doesn't have. Yeah. Um I've talked to Sheriff Allen about it. Okay. I think part of that is the it's 40 40 locations

cuz we have what eight trucks? Yeah. So we would need no less than eight drivers who have the ability to drive that type of a vehicle. Could you break this into pieces like with the school districts? I mean schools. That's why we have eight of them. Yeah. I mean this this bid I mean for this project could you omit it smaller? Yeah. Bid eight parcels each school district or whatever you got to do or whatever how many school districts we got in the county and let them take the uh not only cuz most of those are schools but yet the there's some the other places are close by schools and stuff or within reasonable distance and stuff to that school district. Break it up by truck you mean? Like

Yeah. Yeah. or or by bid or whatever, however you want to do it. Getting one truck for this Dueland election. The Dueland election was one truck. Yeah, it was four stock. You couldn't get anyone to bid out for four stops. Yeah, I was going to say coming back and saying, "No, we don't want it." They didn't even put a bid in. Yeah, I get it. No, I get it. And two of them contacted me personally and just said, "We're not doing this."

It is beyond the scope of what we do. This is this is new to us at least as long as I've been in service of the board. It was always done internally. So due to the way budgets were constructed, changes were made and this issue surfaced for this board and the office just in our last election. So, we're trying to navigate what the future looks like in in having our elections go off soon, right? So, it's kind of a new deal for us here. Okay. I just wanted to make sure you understood kind of the history.

How did we do this 20 years ago? Probably internally, right? it it would have been county employees using county trucks to do that. Up until just the last iteration, that's how it was being done. Yeah. But that changed. We would rent like U-Hauls or Enterprise trucks or things like that. And then the county employees would drive them and help load them and help deliver. And up until last year,

you could literally have anybody drive the truck and unload the freight, but you need a county employee to be with them to watch it. No, we are having a problem finding someone to drive the truck. And if they're a county employee, we don't have to go through their voter history and make sure it's one D and one R. Oh, okay. If it's an outside company, we have to adhere to other gotcha requirements. Well, years ago there was a guy Bob McCaslin a Sunday. I know. I mean, and he he he kind of did it as a favor, you know? I mean, well, I mean, we're not going to have trouble getting the trucks. Yeah. Like the trucks are fine.

Yeah. It's not the trucks. It's finding people to move it. That's what you're talking finding people to move it. It's not like we can just throw a random driver and, you know, hire out eight drivers and the county insurance will cover them. You know what I mean? We do just just send two of our girls with each truck to check the equipment, make sure stuff's going to the right place and all of that. Um, but finding eight drivers that will load the equipment, unload the equipment, and are covered by insurance enough to cover the amount of our insurance. and whether the county would cover them for that or is the hard part, you know, and these companies like Jess said, they're they know how expensive collection equipment is. So

they and how with security and like she said, it's the gliss and glamour. That's my favorite way of ever heard that phrase um of it all is, you know, they don't want to touch it. And that's the problem she ran into. Well, it's an important discussion and something we absolutely need to stay on top of.

I mean, we reach we've reached out to Lake County. We got their VIP specs. We've gotten their um people that they use. We've had conversations with them because they're the most local company that uses an external provider and they have the same exact problem that we did. There's just too much around surrounding elections and election security and too much responsibility on the provider's plate.

Would would you need to have the president of this board reach out to the president of the commissioners to be put on the agenda regard to this issue?

I mean, we can try that. to try a conversation again. I mean, I can I'll I've got the bids ready to go out again, so I can send those out next week. If we don't get any feedback from them, then we can try a conversation and if that doesn't work, then we can try being put on the agenda. Okay. And I would I'm more than willing to represent us if everybody's all right with that in just a non-public meeting to explain our situation, whatever whatever they might choose to understand before they we would ask for action on it. Whatever makes sense. So if you're asking that the the if you're asking with public with the um open door law if this if you guys were going it would be on their agenda you were decision making would be on their agenda.

Yeah I was I was more referring so that they understood what we were going to approach them and why. But either way either way we do it either way that that can happen within communication. Yes. Okay. So, yeah, you just need to let us know how those bids go. Yeah. Okay. Do we have more resolutions, Jessica? No. All right. Thank you for that. Election 2026 updates.

Um, we will have a room change at Veil Sunday. I was able to talk to um communicate with them and we're able to keep it at Veil School. we will just have a room change. They have something going on um that day in the Jama in the gym. Um and Sunday is still communication with Samanovich. There's some construction that's going to be happening in that school. And so we're trying to figure out if the location is completely off the table or if we're going to be able to go around the construction somewhere or not. There's a new superintendent that we were unaware of. that we're trying. But just a heads up that there may be a location change there and then we still are um holding our breath about Chesterton Town Hall, but it sounds like it's ready to go um with the public viewing on Monday.

Yeah, I have an update. I'm sure I she did get back to me. the new superintendent got back to me right before this meeting and said that she will look into see what they can do either changing it to e-learning or finding a new location for us and she would get back to me on Monday. Oh, perfect. So, that's great.

Yeah. The 26th of January at 5:00, uh, the town of Chesterton is holding an open house there, the new facility, the new town hall. So, it might be our first opportunity to see that building and then we could probably arrange from there a followup for the election office personnel to make sure that it'll function the way we need it to because I think it's a new space that they would be offering us now. So, Jessica has that date. My intention is to attend as a citizen on the 26th and then we can go from there.

Okay. Anything else, Jessica, on election updates? That's all I have. IEC-22 approval.

Uh that is our inventory. It's the same thing we have to sign every year. is just a list of all of our um serial numbers and we give it to the state. The staff will use this list to pull what our um public test machines will be. Um with that um we just have to upload it to the resolution to section office and stop and we do it by the 31st of January. All right. This is our uh electronic full book inventory that will be sent down state. Do I do I make a motion to accept this document as a full and wholesome representation of our inventory? So motion second.

All in favor? I I

oppose. Okay. I thought you were going to make me sign all those pages. Well, I'm just initial. I was going to say I'm getting a stand. All right, our favorite time of the meeting, campaigns announce. They um the annual reports were new yesterday by noon. We had 13 reports. It looks like um according to our some of them have been remedied, but we will have some here for next month.

All right. So, you said there's 13. Is it Sunday? Is that the document we all received electronically from you? Yeah. So the next step would be to ask council to contact each of these. Yep. Can I follow up?

Do we need a motion to that effect or that's just the process we follow? It's just generally been the process to review those and pretty much authorize to go ahead and send out a notice and have them come in in February to review the delinquent reporting. We'll probably in February then have a list of the defective ones. Correct. So, we're not even quite to that process yet. be delinquent effective, but this is just going to be the delinquent

delinquent. Okay. Here we go again. We had a year had a year retrieve. I think we've had years where 13 where we were much higher than 13. So maybe hopefully the work continues, but I think we're everyone's getting better at this. A lot of these are the July 1st. Yeah. Candidates, too. So, Mhm. Oh, there's the brand new ones. Yeah. So, the ones that weren't expecting to file an annual because they weren't expecting to have to open their campaign in

July. Right. Right. So, they're the ones that usually close out their campaign. Um, but the office did send an email out reminding everyone about it. There was a social media post that went out about it. So, we did do our due diligence and try to remind people that we Okay. So, until next month. Upcoming meetings.

Um, filing ends on February 6th at noon. The office will be closed on February 16th for President's Day and then our next election board meeting is February 26th at 3 p.m. Okay, we have other business before this board.

Um the quotes are starting to come in for what we will be going to council for for um the new equipment. Interns will cover a portion of the new equipment, but we are going to ask council for a complete new setup. Um, I've already started having some conversations with some of the council members, but I wanted you all to be aware if we're looking, they're not making the express vote twos anymore, which is what we have. And so when inter places our express vote twos, which um, let me back up a little bit. Um, member Holder, you know that we had a plug Say what?

We had a flood last year. Are you aware that we had a flood? I think I heard something about it.

We had a flood and twothird of our express boats, which are the the ballot marking device where you make your selection on the screen. 2/3 of those machines were damaged. So 2/3 of those machines will be the newest version. They're called the Express Vote 3 because they no longer make the Express Vote twos. With that being done, we're asking for council to replace our current 100 with the express 3s so that we do not have two different styles of machines. We'll be able to trade in our express 2s. The express 3s will have the latest software on them and the latest in security enhancements. So there's no sense of twothirds of our machines being upto-date security and firmware and software and a 100 of our machines not. especially when a lifetime of our machines were set to reach between 10 and 15 years and we're on year eight of our machines.

Okay,

so that's the background behind that. Um, so what we're the going back and forth with, they haven't given us accurate trade in. So not the numbers that we're trading in, they have our numbers skewed a little bit. So Sunday and I can sit down and go through exactly what is needed and what we have that we can trade in so that everything is accurate and then we'll bring the final quote to you guys with those um convers or I'll probably end up emailing it ahead of time ahead of the February meeting because these conversations are going to have to be hard and fast because um if we want to have all the new machines in for the primary. But basically, we're going to be asking council for roughly $1.6 million estimated. But that's an entirely brand new fleet of equipment when it's not having our equipment on two separate versions. Because if you have two different machines sitting next to each other, our voters are not going to understand why they're voting on different machines.

It just doesn't make sense. It only makes sense to have everything uniform. Yes, it should look uniform. Yeah. And our how-to videos should be uniform instead of having two different videos on how to use the machine. Um security should be the same across the board. How many of the old machines do we have in that is usable? We have 100. 100. 100 out of 30. I was hoping it was only three or four. So, yeah. No, 200 of our machines of those machines were damaged. Gotcha.

So, they have to be replaced. So, 200 of them would be the notice version that insurance is picking up. So when when are you going to pursue that ask? As soon as you firm up these numbers from Yes, we have final quotes which I'm hoping will be um next week and the conversations have already started. Have any of the council members been made aware of this? Yes. Okay, good.

I talked to them. I began having the conversation at budget time last year and then I've spoken to a few of them individually as the courts began coming in. Excellent. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. That's another big deal thing that you guys got to stay on top of for sure. All right. Public comment. I just have one. I'm sorry. Well, take your time. No, that's state your name, please. And then

Okay. Barbara, Grace, Indiana. Um, you said the cost was $1.6 million. Is that net of the insurance recovery or what is the insurance recovery amount for the 200 damage? It'll the insurance is estimated around 800,000. So then in addition in addition to so the the total cost of machines will be are really valued at 2.4 but it'll cost 1.2 million. Okay that's all. Thank you. Thank you. Any other? Seeing none, I thought the insurance had paid more.

We're in talking with them about that, too. Yeah. Seems like they're getting up. Are they depreciating the life cycle of the equipment as part of of what

So, when it comes through, they do have depre depreciable recoverable value. Um, but that has to be done after it is purchased. then they we can apply to have them pay for a little bit more. And Jess and I were talking to is um so they have some Express code stock but not a lot. So um a lot I've been talking to the insurance company as far as like if something is not made anymore and we have to buy a newer better version, they're covering that whole cost. So is this something that we could do with that since they're no longer going to be making our kiosk, they're no longer going to be making the express boat too. So, we may not have access to even buy that amount. So, this should be an amount that they should cover hopefully, but I it's the insurance company and we can't make them. So, we're still talking about it and I'm still trying um to get them to cover more because it's not one our fault that BSN is not making those machines anymore. Um and two, it's not our fault either. Right.

So, if you get the express rope three in there, so how long is that cycle good for? saying about 10 to 15 years. About 10 to 15 years. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like if we didn't have a flood, we wouldn't have to replace these. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, right. I mean, we couldn't upgrade the software in espresso shoes. Like that would have gotten us somewhere, but we needed our system to be uniform. And if 200 of them are one style and 100 of them are another style,

I get it. I get it. Well, that's that's got to be your selling point. You know, this is a onetime deal, you know, for x amount of years and stuff like this. How long do we what do we get out of the express boat too? How many years and stuff like this? Well, there's I mean the hundreds that we have are still going. Yeah. Been ongoing without the flood. So, if it wasn't for the flood, we'd still be And that's the other thing is we're able to train them in while they still have lifespans, right? And I'm sure that'll be the same situation where they express vote three at some point in time where they upgrade those like this.

And um the election assistance commission just put out new safety standards and the express three matches and meets and exceeds all of those safety standards. The express two do not. So we would have the highest and standard. So trees are all certified with the state and everything else like this. That happens late in the last quarter. Yeah, I get it. Okay. Anything further? I'll entertain a motion. Second. All in favor? I oppose.