Indiana’s Secretary of State Holli Sullivan stands in front of the Brown County Public Library. Sullivan visited Brown County on her tour of the state to talk about the upcoming primary election earlier this month.
Indiana Secretary of State Holli Sullivan paid a visit to Brown County earlier this month as part of a listening tour ahead of this spring’s primary election.
Sullivan met with Clerk Kathy Smith at the Brown County Courthouse on Feb. 9 to discuss the 2020 election and any potential challenges, the voting equipment used here and how the clerk’s office is preparing for the second major election to take place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sullivan is visiting all 92 counties in the state to talk with county clerks ahead of the election.
“(We discussed) getting ready for 2022 and how that looks a little bit different post pandemic,” Sullivan said of her visit with Smith.
She continued that her office plans to work collaboratively with county clerks this election season.
Having these discussions locally with all of the county clerks will hopefully fortify the confidence of Hoosier voters, Sullivan said.
One of the topics Sullivan and Smith talked about included the county’s voting equipment.
Brown Countians were able to use new voting machines for the first time in May of 2020, which combined electronic and paper voting.
The electronic poll books are from VR Systems and are used to check in voters when they present their IDs. After checking in, voters can choose to mark a paper ballot with a pen, or use a touch-screen Unisyn voting machine which prints out a receipt-like piece of paper showing their choices.
Then, voters feed their paper ballot or their receipt into a machine which reads and records the votes for each candidate. The memory cards from those machines can be plugged into a computer to print out vote totals.
They also spoke about redistricting and the new precincts recently approved in the county.
Brown County Commissioners decided at the beginning of October 2021 to look at precincts that make up the county council districts after approving changes to the Washington Township precincts and Census data showed a population deviation gap between the districts with the highest and lowest populations.
Commissioners accepted proposed maps with changes until Nov. 3 last year, but ultimately voted to not make any changes to the district maps ahead of the 2022 election.
Precinct changes that were approved earlier in 2021 for Washington Township caused changes to the district map for county council District 1, 2, 3 and 4 seats.
Under the new precinct map, District 4 is now made up of Jackson 4, Washington 3 and Van Buren precincts. District 3 will include only Washington 1 and 2. District 2 is made up of Hamblen 2, Jackson 1 and Jackson 3. District 1 now consists of Hamblen 1, Hamblen 3 and Jackson 2.
Sullivan said that right now — before the primary election and before some of the election deadlines — is the “perfect time” to make sure individuals are registered to vote or know where to cast their vote by visiting indianavoters.com.
“Indiana has a national reputation for a strong elections process,” she said. “I’m thankful that the legislature is continuing to partner with my office and local county clerks to ensure that we can continue to increase safeguards in a good process and build a confidence together to increase voter turnout.”
The commissioners are working to finalize polling locations for this year’s elections.
She added that a lot of news has come in from other states about voter security. She said that Indiana is a “pioneering state” for voter identification laws, having them on the books for more than 15 years.
“Here in Indiana we have had a steady hand at the wheel for many years, with strong election integrity in place where other states are currently calling me wanting to be like Indiana,” Sullivan said.
Certifying voting equipment, entering voter IDs and maintaining voter lists are some of the safeguards in place to protect votes.
“We want people to start engaging on the fact that Indiana’s process is safe and secure,” Sullivan said.
“There are ways we’re working with the legislature to ensure that we’re safeguarding the process but also listening to Hoosiers’ needs and desires to make sure voting is accessible.”
