CLARK COUNTY, Indiana — Southern Indiana election officials have repeated a well-publicized blunder from the 2022 general election.
Over 4,000 ballots from three precincts in Clark County were not included in the county's first batch of unofficial election results posted Wednesday morning.
Republican County Clerk Ryan Lynch said the issue was with "memory sticks" used to transfer election results from voting machines into their central computing system.
The clerk's office posted a second round of unofficial results Friday afternoon, and Lynch said no race results have changed.
"We physically put them into a computer. Myself, our election technician, and the rest of the election board were there. And he [the technician] did physically enter them into the computer, but for some reason, it did not register them into the results," he explained.
The affected memory sticks, which contained 4,086 ballots, were from the following polling locations:
- Renaissance Academy in Clarksville
- River Valley Middle School in Jeffersonville
- Clark County 4-H Fairgrounds
Amanda Cahill voted at Renaissance Academy on Tuesday and described her experience as "simple and quick."
"I think it's ironic that we contemplate a lot of times how valuable our votes can be or are," said Cahill. "It's something important to consider, and having taken time to go and vote, and then to find out that perhaps it didn't count at all, literally."
Voter Susan Crocker said she was "not surprised" when she heard the news, but she was "disappointed."
"I think that here's an opportunity to fix the process and I'd like to see that happen, especially in Clark County," Crocker said.
Some voters chalked it up to an imperfect system.
"We're going to do what we need to do, [and] are [hoping] that other people who are in the positions to do what they need to do would do the right thing to fix things," said Cahill.
While other voters want the county government to make improvements before the next election.
"Clearly the process is flawed and there's a training opportunity for all involved," said Crocker.
The new results can be viewed here. They are still considered unofficial election results until the county does it full re-canvass of the votes and confirms the counts. The total amount of ballots cast went from 55,010 to 59,078.
Wendy Dant Chesser's lead in the House District 71 race slightly dipped from 884 votes to 787.
"We assure the public that while this affected the total number of votes reported, none of the outcomes of any races were changed," Lynch said. "We understand the importance of transparency and accuracy in elections, and we are committed to maintaining public trust in the electoral process."
History of election issues
Clark County had this exact same issue in 2022, when 1,700 votes on memory sticks were not tabulated until a few days after the election. This flipped the House District 71 race from Republican Scott Hawkins to Democrat Rita Fleming.
Lynch confirmed they are using the same software that they used in 2022, when Susan Popp was clerk. Their voting machines, memory sticks and central tabulating computer are all from "ES&S".
He said the former clerk didn't personally recommend changing the software after issues in 2022.
"We definitely talked about the issues that they've had before. Unfortunately, even if we talked to the vendor, we're kind of at the whim of the technology that we use. We hope that it works right. We expect it to work right," Lynch said.
Lynch said if they were to switch to new software, it would require approval from the Clark County Board of Elections, as well as possibly funding from the County Council.
"I support anything that makes the election as fair as possible, and as efficient as possible. And the other thing, people working at the polls need to make more money," Tom Galligan said, chair of the Clark County Democrats.
Galligan said his appointee to the board of elections was notified about the new issue on Thursday, but he himself was not. He thinks he should have been notified sooner.
"I don't think Ryan's a bad guy, I just think maybe the management of that thing is more than he can handle. And I think they need to be paying people more money that work there so that they can get more help and keep it. The last thing I want is for someone to challenge the election as not being correct," Galligan said.
This issue with the memory sticks is the second issue to hit the clerk's office this week.
On Tuesday, the office noticed that many of the 22,500 early and absentee ballots were not grouped with their appropriate precincts. This led to a 12-hour delay for the county's full election day totals to be report.
"Leading up to election day during the end of day audit process some [early and absentee] ballots were grouped with precincts that they are not from," Lynch told WHAS11 earlier this week. "This can create a headache on election day because of the steps we use to insure our election integrity can prolong the process."
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