LOCAL

St. Joseph County Election Board to work on limiting access to ballot storage room

Greg Swiercz
South Bend Tribune
This is the set of two locks on the door to the ballot room in the St. Joseph County clerk's departmnent. St. Joseph County Election Board and party members toured the ballot room Friday where absentee ballots are stored. The issue of who has access was discussed by the election board.

SOUTH BEND — The St. Joseph County Election Board discovered there are more keys than both political parties are comfortable with to the room used by the county clerks in the basement of the County-City Building. The board on Friday vowed to see whether the room for the ballot storage can be changed to one that can be secured according to strict state guidelines.

According to the statute, a room with two locks — one controlled by the Democratic Party and one controlled by the Republican Party — is supposed to be used for early voting and mail-in ballots for primary and general elections.

The point is that both parties know when the room is open and being accessed.

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Several incidents took place the day before and the day of this month's primary election that brought into question exactly how many people had access to the room.

Ben Horvath, county election board member and the holder of the Republican key to the ballot room, questioned County Clerk Rita Glenn how many keys there are to the room.

Glenn said she was given two keys for the Republican lock in March, and the room already had a lock that was used for the Democratic key access.

But on May 2, the morning before primary election day, Glenn contended Horvath was not responding to her calls for access to the ballot room. She said on Friday that after not getting any response from the GOP, she enlisted a Republican staff member and used the spare Republican key to get into the room so the election clerks could continue their codifying and processing of absentee ballots, a practice they do as early voting takes place.

The Republican lock to the room was not secured and was found to be unlocked on election day when clerks went to the room to work on processing ballots.

But under questioning by Horvath, it was determined Brian Davidson, building engineer, has keys to the room that, in addition to the absentee ballots, also has an air-conditioning unit and servers in it. He is responsible for the mechanicals in the room, he told the board.

Zach Potts, chair of the St. Joseph County Republican party, said he felt no member of the opposing party should have key access to the ballot room. "I do not feel comfortable with the three Republican commissioners having the Democratic keys, not that I feel they would do anything, but if I were a Democrat, I would not want the opposing party to have access to that key, and I wish that other people would feel the same about us."

Glenn pointed out the election clerks are required to process the absentee and early voting ballots so they can be tabulated on Election Day. To have a room where they need access during the period when they are being sent to voters is critical for their election duties.

That fact is also more critical for presidential elections, especially for the 2020 election in which St. Joseph County processed more than 30,000 absentee ballots prior to the general election day.

The board is expected to meet with party chairs and address the ballot room issue to see if there's another room that could be used and still serve the clerks' needs.