Some absentee voters in Kosciusko County received a misprinted candidate list that may have affected how they filled out their ballot in four electoral races.
Those voters will receive a letter from the county clerk’s office notifying them of the issue and how they can fill out a form to recast their ballot if they feel they had a defective ballot.
The races likely affected are the Indiana attorney general, U.S. Congressional Districts 2 and 3 and possibly District 9 state senate. The county has 65 distinct ballots for this upcoming election, with the known defective absentee ballots being in Tippecanoe, Turkey Creek and Wayne precincts.
The Kosciusko County Election Board had an emergency meeting Tuesday morning to gather information on the issue and make a decision.
County Clerk Ann Torpy said as of the meeting, they knew of three voters who received the misprinted ballot. “We’re not sure of the scope and how grand it was,” she said.
Attorney Austin Rovenstine, the Republican representative on the Election Board, said they were having an emergency meeting because of the time sensitivity involved.
“We don’t want to sensationalize this though. This is just a normal meeting allowed by the law, but we felt fit to have it quick because we’re very close to an election and because we spotted an issue that might be a disruption to that election,” he explained, adding that there are some laws that the state legislature have laid out that will help the Election Board in making their decision.
In describing what the issue is, Rovenstine said, “It appears that in the first batch of absentee ballots that were sent out, there was a candidate list that went to some voters that was defective and it was defective in a couple of ways. One, there were a lot of candidates whose names were sort of pushed together with no spaces between the first and last name. So that’s not an insurmountable difficulty, but that’s something that would make the ballot difficult to read.”

    Shown is a projection of a defective candidate list that some absentee voters in Kosciusko County received. In this defective list, Marlin Stutzman, who is the Republican running for U.S. Congressional District 3, appears right under the Indiana attorney general candidates. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union
  

The second, and most important issue, he said, was that under the attorney general section of the candidate list, a voter would see Republican Todd Rokita, Democrat Destiny Wells and then a second Republican candidate - either Rudy Yakym or Marlin Stutzman, depending on which Congressional district the voter lived in - listed under those two names.
In the next column, under the section headlined for either the Second or Third Congressional District, the voter would only see the names of the Libertarian and Democrat candidates listed.
Rovenstine said the first issue for the Election Board to decide was, “Whether that is an issue that would result in confusion or mistake by the voters.” In his opinion, he said that was pretty obvious. Torpy and Bill Morton, the Democrat representative on the Election Board, agreed that it could result in voter confusion.
Rovenstine read Indiana Code, which states, “If an election board determines that a ballot printed under the authority of the election board does not comply with the requirement imposed by this title, or contains any other error or omission that might result in confusion or mistake by the voters, the board shall - and then it gives us two options.”
The first option is to reprint or correct the ballot. The second option is to conduct a public hearing concerning the defective ballots, which would be a hearing separate from Tuesday’s meeting. During the public hearing, the board would have to solicit voter input to determine whether the voters think they’re confused by the ballot.
Torpy was in favor of option 1. “Allow the voter to reprint the ballots, which we have, and give the voter the option to get a corrected ballot using the state form ABS-5.”
Morton suggested they should proactively notify all voters who may have received a defective ballot. “I think it’s important to state that we believe that this problem has been corrected subsequent to the initial mailing. The procedure has changed now so that there’s not a chance that this same problem will go out to the voters who receive their mail-in ballots,” he said.
Torpy said their deadline to mail out the first group of absentee ballots was Sept. 21. The first voter contacted the clerk’s office about the ballots Sept. 23 or 24. It was hoped it was just an isolated incident, but last week they received two more calls with the same or similar issues. That is when the process began to hold Tuesday’s meeting.
Describing the procedures that changed, she said, “We print our ballots on demand, so our Republican absentee board member will take the ballots off the printer, flip through them and make sure they’re correct before the candidate list is placed into the mailing envelope to the voter. The Democrat member of the absentee board will flip through and make sure that the document appears to be correct.”
In the first batch, Torpy said there were 675 absentee ballots. She said there is no evidence that all of them were defective. All three phone calls the clerk’s office received about the ballots were in that first batch of 675. There is evidence that some of the ballots in the first batch were not defective.
Rovenstine and Torpy agreed that in terms of how many of the 675 ballots were defective, they don’t know.
Asked by Rovenstine what caused the issue in the first place, Torpy replied, “It is our belief, and we are making an assumption, that it was a communication error between Adobe pdf files to a printer. Our IT staff has had other issues with the newest version of Adobe and they converted us back to the prior version of Adobe, hoping that it will prevent this issue.”
Morton wanted all 675 voters notified of the potential issue with a letter explaining everything and a candidate list. Torpy’s issue with that is that a voter has to complete an ABS-5 in order to request a new ballot. She said it would be best if they sent out a letter explaining what had happened, and if the voter feels they received a defective ballot, then they need to complete the form and the clerk’s office will send out to them a corrected ballot as soon as possible.
Torpy said on Election Day, when they are opening the absentee ballots, “We should handle that differently. We have a way to bundle them together as a group, knowing which ballots were sent out as far as the names of the voters. We have a way to keep them together and maybe handle them differently on Election Day.”
Morton said the card filled out by the voters isn’t what was defective. The list of candidates names was what was defective.
“If you look up at the ballot on the screen, it does look confusing that there’s three candidates for attorney general and two candidates for the congressional race. If the voter selected Marlin Stutzman but coloring in 62, that would still give Marlin Stutzman a vote for Congressional District 3, but would they think they’re voting for Marlin for attorney general and not Todd Rokita or Destiny Wells? So I think that’s the issue Todd Rokita’s staff has with this when I spoke with them on Sunday,” Torpy said.
Rovenstine said on Election Day, when it comes to absentee votes, it’s usually the Republican and Democrat members of the election board, along with the county clerk, who oversee the counting of absentee votes. If there’s any kind of ambiguity, they make a determination as to whether they can discern the intent of the voter.
Morton said they usually don’t look at the votes and the voter doesn’t normally return their candidate list. Torpy said she explained that to Rokita’s staff. Rovenstine said there was no way for the election board to determine if the voter misunderstood their ballot if they also didn’t return their candidate list.
“So I think our best remedy is to send out that letter as soon as possible, letting them know that they can recast their ballot,” Rovenstine said, adding that the letter should very clearly describe what the issue was.
Jason Torchinsky, co-counsel for Yakym, suggested the Election Board either seek some guidance from the Indiana Election Division or the attorney general’s office about sending out a corrected candidate list without sending out an additional Scantron, as Morton suggested.
Dustin Renner, with the Indiana Secretary of State Election Division, was at the meeting, but had no input on the matter at this time.
Morton asked what percentage of the ballots have already been returned. Torpy said of the 675 sent out in the first batch, they are waiting on 203 to be returned, as of Monday.
“A lot of voters were going to Florida so they wanted to make sure they returned it before they left,” she stated, noting that they are at over 50% of absentee ballots returned at this time.
Torchinsky said he’s supportive of a letter going out to the 203 people whose ballots haven’t been returned yet, but something also needs to go out to the other 400-plus voters to let them know that if the ballot caused them any confusion, they can ask for a replacement ballot.
The board decided that the 675 absentee ballots, when they all come in, should be set aside from the other ballots in case any future questions or challenges arise.
Sean Surrisi, co-counsel for Yakym, asked Torpy to confirm that there wasn’t any issues with the early voting by machine with the ballot layout, and she did.
Torchinsky said their biggest concern with the return ballots was if people overvoted in the congressional races.
Rovenstine made a motion to give the county clerk’s office the discretion as to the contents of the letters to be sent out to the absentee voters, in consultation with the Indiana Election Division, and the motion was approved.
If a voter feels they received one of the defective absentee ballots, they can contact the county election board.
Kosciusko County Republican Party Committee Chair Mike Ragan said, “I just want to make it very clear that voting in Kosciusko County is safe and secure, and if you vote in person before now or on Election Day, everything is fine. There’s no problems with that. They can be assured that everything is the way it’s supposed to be, and there is just a small printing error that has created a problem with what seems like less than five people from what we know so far.”
Rovenstine said the fact that they are all together discussing it and making decisions shows that they are taking very seriously even the smallest of errors.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Election Board was still waiting to hear back from the Indiana Election Division.