A new committee has been formed to review Brown County election worker training in hopes of avoiding problems that occurred during the primary and general elections of 2020.

During the March, April and May meetings, multiple election workers’ experiences were shared about how the 2020 elections went.

By many accounts, they didn’t go well.

There were multiple challenges to start with, such as the pandemic, polling place changes and new election equipment.

Republican Party Chairman Mark Bowman compiled comments from nine election workers — mostly Republicans, but also one Democrat — which mentioned other challenges that could have been mitigated.

The common thread tying them together was training, said election board President Mark Williams, the Republican representative on the board.

Brown County Clerk Kathy Smith was responsible for training workers for the 2020 election.

“It is clear that we have training gaps, communication gaps,” Williams said at the May meeting, after Smith verbally responded to the written complaints.

“Is any of that anyone’s fault? I’m not judging that by this,” he said, with “this” being the resolution he was introducing.

The resolution sets up a committee to advise the election board on various aspects of poll worker training, from the number and structure of training sessions to how to determine if poll workers understand what they’ve been taught, before the next election in 2022.

“This is the second time we’ve been to the polls and heard the same sorts of complaints. So it’s now time to address all that and to create protocols and expectations in a bipartisan way, focusing on the primary and general election and focusing on absentee voting and on election day voting. And to be done in a systematic way that can be reviewed, tested, challenged, and then with enough time to actually implement,” Williams said. “There may be budget considerations to this, but the point is that we need to get started now.”

Paula Staley, the Democrat on the board, seconded Williams’ motion. Smith chose not to vote on it, but it still passed with two votes.

The committee, chaired by Staley, will include Diana Biddle and Sharlene Jones representing Republicans; Cathy Kazimier and Evelyn Kent representing Democrats; Shari Frank and Lauretta Teal representing the League of Women Voters; and Deb Noe and Julie Cauble, the Republican and Democrat who coordinated early voting for 2020.

The committee is to report its findings to the election board by Sept. 7.

The poll workers whose comments Bowman read at the March meeting mentioned concerns at seven different polls on election day and during early voting, as well as during training. They included:

• Duplicate absentee ballot applications being received from the county clerk’s office at the absentee voting office. This resulted in duplicate ballots being sent to at least two voters. (Those duplicate ballots were not counted as valid votes.) Smith said that this happened because the absentee voting workers were not scanning in applications. Cauble said they were doing this and there were still problems. Instead of relying on the State Voter Registration System, which they were having trouble logging into and staying in, Cauble suggested a spreadsheet system to keep track of dates and actions for every step of every ballot application, as well as phone numbers for voters seeking those ballots in case there are questions about their applications.
• Problems with getting ballots sent to voters overseas and out of state. A backlog of ballot requests built up. Smith had decided to handle military and overseas ballots on her own, without help. Bowman said he had 11 voters call him personally who were unable to get Smith to call or email them back about the status of their ballots. Noe said that when voters would call the absentee office looking for those answers, they didn’t know what to tell them, and when they’d call the clerk’s office, the majority of the clerk’s staff didn’t know much of anything about the election.
• Not having a big enough site for the absentee voting office and absentee voting location. Picking voting locations is the responsibility of the county commissioners. Absentee voting probably won’t happen at the same place as it did for the 2020 general election — the lower level of Veterans Hall — because that room is now part of the parks and recreation office.
• Not having enough voting machines and poll books for poll workers to learn on during training. Veteran poll workers said that there used to be several, but this time there was only one of each. Smith said that anyone could have tried out those machines after training but nobody stuck around to do so.
• Election day supplies not being ready for pickup on time. Smith said this was because her copier caught on fire.
• Voting machines and other supplies, such as personal protective equipment, not being dropped off in a timely manner the night before voting so that poll workers could set up their rooms. Smith said this was the fault of the election technicians the election board hired, who didn’t follow the instructions she gave them. Smith and her husband delivered some of the poll books instead.
• Signs not being placed at certain polling locations, including at least one that moved from its normal spot and some that were the same as always but hard for voters to find.
• Disabled voters having to come to the polls in person because the absentee ballot they had requested in the mail did not arrive.
• Election day handbooks having outdated information in them or seeming less organized and user-friendly than usual.
• Election day equipment and supplies not getting picked up from a poll until a week after the election.

“There is bipartisan criticism of the way that the training sessions went and there is a consensus, a bipartisan consensus, that the delivery and distribution processes for the equipment must be improved,” Williams said.

“Now, that’s not casting blame, not casting fault but it’s a fact. And so, the way to deal with this is since there is bipartisan concern, we’re going to develop the solutions in a bipartisan way and will be important for you, Kathy, and for (Deputy Clerk) Laura (Wert) also frankly to be involved in this and to help craft what is reasonable and what’s not reasonable, especially working with the inspectors and the absentee election board.”

After the meeting adjourned, Smith approached Williams to ask why he was intent on cutting her office out of the process. Williams told her that her office wasn’t being cut out; like he said earlier, they would need her to be involved.