Technical issue at Hamilton County polls leads to Democratic Party complaint

The Hamilton County Democratic Party filed a complaint with their county election board Tuesday stating several polling sites failed to open on time. Indiana state law requires all voting locations to open at 6 a.m.

The complaint, addressed to the Hamilton County Election Board, states six polling places opened late on Election Day due to a technical issue with the electronic poll books.

The six locations are College Park, Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Carmel Water Distribution, Billericay Park Building, Northview Church in Fishers, and The Meeting House at West Clay.

Jocelyn Vare, the Hamilton County Democratic Party chair said peoplehad to wait as long as 30 minutes after the scheduled poll opening to cast their ballots.

Vare said she hopes the complaint will spur an investigation into the cause of the technical issue.

“I want to be sure that we're doing everything we can to identify what the problem was and correct it in the future,” Vare said.

Beth Sheller, the Hamilton County election administrator, said there was no technical malfunction with the voting machines and that polls were up and running, just delayed a few minutes because of a coding issue.

“The poll pad was not malfunctioned,” she said. “It was not malfunctioning at all. In the first 5 minutes, they still managed to check in 500 people and thousands in the first 10 minutes.”

According to the complaint residents were “initially deprived of voting time,” but Vare said she does not feel any voters were disenfranchised.

“I have no evidence that any voter was disenfranchised,” she said.

Vare went on to praise the elections office and poll workers for navigating the problem and aiding voters efficiently.

She pointed to one location where Vare said poll workers gave out tickets to voters who had to step out of the line because of time constraints. Then they came back to vote later in the day and were able skip the line to cast their ballot.

“I thought that was a lovely solution to an unfortunate problem,” Vare said.

The Hamilton County Election Board does everything they can to ensure the security of residents ballots, Sheller emphasized.

“I would hope people would realize that our elections office and our election board in our county works hard to make sure all voters get to vote on Election Day or beforehand,” Sheller said.

The complaint requests the Hamilton County Election Board examine the problem to prevent complications in future elections.

Contact WFYI Morning Edition newscaster and reporter Abriana Herron at aherron@wfyi.org.