Vote Green Michiana!

November 20, 2007

Greens cite de facto “poll tax”
Full, accurate count of all the votes will cost thousands of dollars

Green candidates for municipal offices in last week’s election today said their offer of volunteer help in securing a full, accurate count of all write-in votes was rejected by St. Joseph County Election Board chairperson James Korpal. The Greens reported that Korpal informed them that there is no legal procedure available for allowing volunteers to take part in a counting of votes.

Korpal also said there are no plans to count the more than 300 write-in votes that were cast in races that included registered write-in candidates but have yet to be attributed to a specific candidate. According to Korpal a formal recount would be necessary to address the issue of these 300 votes, likely resulting in costs of several thousand dollars that would be incurred by the Green candidates.

“The idea that we have to should have to pay thousands of dollars to get a full count amounts to a de facto poll tax on write-in voters and candidates, “ said write-in South Bend Mayoral candidate Tom Brown. “St. Joseph County didn’t have the equipment necessary to follow Indiana election law and the consequence is that write-in candidates are likely being denied more than 60% of our votes.”

Indiana election law requires that all votes be counted and attributed to all registered candidates. The St. Joseph County Election Board devised a plan requiring voters casting write-in votes to place their ballots in a separate auxiliary bin in order to allow for a hand count. Ballots that are scanned directly into the voting machines register the existence of a write-in vote, but because these ballots are placed in the sealed ballot box after being read by the voting machine, there is no way to determine what has been written-in and, therefore, no way to legally attribute these write-in votes to a specific person.

Greens reported widespread breaches of voter privacy, confusing and conflicting directions for write-in voters, and the tallying of write-in votes in public view stemming from this year’s municipal elections.

Election Board officials have stated that specialized equipment called a “diverter” is necessary to allow all ballots to be placed into the voting machine with those containing write-in votes to be separated so that they can be hand counted. The cost of a diverter, according to Board officials, is $3,000 per machine and would be necessary for all voting machines in use across the county.

“This is an example where Indiana’s restrictive ballot access laws are forcing independent and third party candidates into write-in candidacies, “ said Karl Hardy, write-in candidate for at-large South Bend Common Council. “The reality is that Indiana is out of step with the national standards of ballot access and this is creating a mess in terms of counting write-in votes and adhering to the principle that all votes be counted with the same standard.”

Indiana’s threshold for signatures necessary for ballot access was quadrupled in the early 1980s from one half of one percent to 2 percent of the total votes cast in the most recent Indiana Secretary of State’s race. Furthermore, the deadline for turning in these signatures has been moved earlier and earlier from its original date of 20 days before then election to its current July 1st position.

“These problems with ballot access and write-in votes are not going away, “ said Hardy. “Next year is a presidential election year and we’re certain to go through this again.”

Similar problems occurred in the last general election held in November 2006 when approximately 500 votes cast for three registered write-in candidates were never attributed to them.