All right, we're gonna go ahead and call to order today's meeting of the election board. The beginning of this meeting, just for the record, is the second public hearing on the vote center plan. So in keeping with that, we want to begin with any additional public comment or presentations related to the plan. And then once we get through the public hearing phase, we can go to the board for further consideration on how we're gonna move forward. So with that, I don't know if there's a representative of the vote center committee that will want to make any opening comments. And we have a sign in sheet for anybody who wants to speak that we ask you to fill that out and then identify yourself at the podium for the record. Good evening. Thank you for the chance to be here. My name is Ami Gandhi and I've served as a nonpartisan member on the vote center study committee. I also in my day job am a voting rights attorney with a nonpartisan organization called Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights just to set forth for everyone my colleagues and I did submit a written public comment in advance of this hearing explaining our perspective that adopting the proposed vote center plan would be a positive step forward for fairness and access to voters. As you asked at the outset of this hearing about any remarks from the committee, let me stick to that perspective for the time being and happy to take any questions. I know we're all eager to hear first and foremost from voters themselves about their perspective so I won't belabor anything, but I wanted to share a little bit of background which was also discussed at previous election board meetings and the previous vote center related hearing in our work as a vote center study committee that was bipartisan in nature. We heard from voters, we heard from community members, I'm a Monroe County voter myself, and we heard a lot of stories of confusion that voters had about determining where is my polling place, how can I exercise my right to vote, and that's particularly in some communities where if later in the day because of someone's constraints that are on them, long work hours or long class hours or a child care or health care situation, if there's very limited time to go out there and vote in person and then having location confusion on top of that, it can lead to and it has led to unfortunately in Monroe County voters being turned away. If it's late in the day by the time they realize they would have had to go to a different assigned polling place in order to be able to exercise their right to vote. And after hearing about these experiences of confusion and voters being turned away, that has really made an impact on the vote center study committee's work and analysis and that analysis is available in the proposed vote center plan. And if Monroe County moves to this plan and changes its model, there will be a lot of communication required with voters and frankly that's the case whether the election system stays the same or changes because there's a lot of confusion out there. When most of the counties in Indiana have already changed to a vote center model that lack of conformity can be quite confusing for voters including those who have moved from other parts of the state even from a neighboring county for example. And another thing last of all that I wanted to highlight about the proposed vote center plan is the safeguards that are envisioned in there. That's something that counties can do to make it tailored for its own community not having to follow an exact blueprint from other counties but being able to tailor to the needs and the constraints and the other factors for a particular community. So for example the proposed vote center plan includes safeguards so that at least one location would be on or near Indiana University campus and our committee even discussed other ideas for safeguards and tailoring. For example what about the idea of requiring one vote center location per township especially for people who may live in some outlying parts of the county who definitely are in need of access to. Are there any questions at this time? I know we're all eager to hear additional community perspectives. Again if you want to speak just come to the podium complete the sign in and state your name for the record. Hello my name is Laramie Wilson I'm a Monroe County resident in Van Buren township. I support vote centers. I know everybody in this room would like to see elections be accessible fair transparent and accurate and of course vote centers do that while also bringing Monroe County out of the bottom third of the state that doesn't have the accessibility of vote centers. As a poll worker for more than three decades over multiple precincts in Bloomington Perry Van Buren and maybe a couple other townships I only once had an election day that did not include a lost voter who could not get to their correct poll site. They were too late or no transportation or just gave up at that point. So in my roles as absentee voter lead and as a voter registration deputy clerk I served 16 elections answering the phones at election central on election day. And I will say to you that this issue of people not being able to get to their poll site affects every single precinct in the county possibly not some of the very rural ones that don't change very often but it does affect them all. And we will always have situations such as we did with Southside Christian Church last year where for whatever reason we have to change a poll site and that was just a mess. People were rerouted to go to Souls Harbor Church or Emmanuel Baptist Church, didn't get the message, didn't know and wound up clear as far as Harrisburg. And I also would like the board and the public to know that more than the number of people that show up on provisionals were at the wrong poll site. Lots of people come and they don't want to vote a provisional ballot. So with that I also will say Monroe County enjoys the support of its commissioners and its fiscal body, the council, but we are in a state budgetary constraint now. I want to make sure that, and we all do, that the rollout is smooth for vote centers if they are adopted. I support and understand the option to have 29 vote center locations. And I'm not going to really weigh in on the other options, that's a board decision, but I do have four financial concerns. One of them is are we adequately staffing these poll centers? Looking at some of our poll sites that we use, like St. John's in Richland Township voted more than 4,200 people. Down at Napa in Bloomington Parish Township more than 2,000. Just half of Van Buren, one, two, and three voted at Grandview, 29,000 some. That are much bigger turnouts than we ever see at early voting. This year's biggest day was 2,200 and the biggest ever was in 2016, 2,500. So do we have enough poll workers? And bear in mind that the judge's poll workers have other duties to perform, including they serve with the precinct inspector as the precinct election board and should be part of overseeing everything that's going on at that precinct. They cannot do that while they're stuck behind a ballot printer. Skipping number two and number three, I won't go into details, but with that need for staffing, there's also increased need for training. And number three, there's increased need for the technical services to be at all the poll sites. And I just want to make sure you're covering all those to adequately staff them. And then all this last one, number four, unless there has been a legislative change in Ms. Turner-King convey on this that happened in prior sessions, not this one, with that option about are we going to open up also satellite voting for early voting. Here is what the statutes now say, all counties, whether you're precinct voting or vote center county must open up one location in the clerk's office or a designated place designated by the clerk for early voting 28 days before the election. This is what we do now in Monroe County. In addition, the vote center law, I'm reading directly from the election minister's manual, the vote center law not only requires that one location of the county clerk's office be open for the voting times and dates above, but also requires at least one vote center used on election day in addition to the clerk's office to be open the two Saturdays before election day. So I want to make sure those at least those two Saturdays are included in the costing of this election. And I appreciate the vote center committee to extend that even further into that last week because as I said, Friday is the biggest day Friday before the election. Anyway, my comments, the reasons are for I want to see the rollout go smoothly. No long lines, adequate staffing, no equipment down that takes hours to get fixed up, and no financial surprises that the county might not be prepared to be able to handle. Thank you. I thank the the board, the clerk, the staff, the vote center committee, and our previous 2011 vote center committee and staff who laid the groundwork for vote centers. I hope Monroe County can catch up with the rest of the state. Thank you. Hello, I am Julie Thomas, Monroe County Commissioner. I want to thank the election board and the vote center committee and everyone who's worked really hard on this. Democracy demands convenient and accessible voting. That's the bottom line. But I am here to remind the election board that in 2023, the Monroe County Board of Commissioners approved resolution 2023-19 approving the designation of Monroe County as a vote center county and the final therefore now be it resolved is that Monroe County is approved to operate as a vote center county upon the required approval and filing of the county vote center plan by the Monroe County Election Board. So two years later, we are eager, we're happy to do whatever we can to help. And we appreciate that you've had this public comment period. Thank you so much. We have I think we have someone online who wants to make a comment. We'll go online and then we'll come back to the podium. I think it's a Penny Githins, can we unmute her? Hi. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, good evening. As Mr. Fernandez said, I'm Penny Githins. I'm a Monroe County resident and I'm one of the commissioners that in 2023 voted to support vote centers. I'm here to offer my support for implementing the vote centers here and increasing the number of early satellite voting locations. Like Ms. Wilson, I want to thank the Vote Center Study Committee for its work in providing a thoughtful and well-researched and concise report. It's significant to me that the committee voted seven to zero to approve this plan. Now, as the report states, over two-thirds of the Indiana counties use vote centers. That means 65 of Indiana's 92 counties. Republicans and Democrats have worked together to implement this option, including the following surrounding counties, Morgan in 2018, Jackson in 2021, Lawrence in 2018, and Owen in 2016. And it seems to me here in Monroe County that we're a little behind the times. I think it's time to catch up. And as Ms. Wilson also stated, Monroe County is facing financial challenges due to the recent legislation at the state level. One of the arguments for vote centers is that they have the potential to save money by reducing the number of voting locations, which reduces the cost associated with staffing. And as the election board chair, Mr. Fernandez, recently pointed out at a meeting, there is also the potential for saving on the expense of paper used for ballots. So while it's true there is some upfront cost for additional equipment, Sirk Brown obtained a state grant last year to purchase several printers, and I understand she's submitted an additional grant application this year. So this would help to offset at least some of the upfront costs to Monroe County. The study committee laid out different options for vote centers, with option two being to select 22 locations. And this would include hopefully one in every one of the townships, reducing the number of election day voting locations by seven. I support this option due to its cost savings and due to how close some of the most recent polling locations are. For example, it's only one-tenth of a mile between Benford Elementary School and Christ Community Church, and only four-tenths of a mile between Fairview Elementary School and the new location for election operations on North Morton Street. The committee, of course, has made several other suggestions for reduction. I also support the addition of satellite voting locations during early voting. I agree with the study committee that it would be ideal to add satellite locations in Ellitsville and near the IU campus, which IU had a satellite voting center many, many years ago. However, instead of a third satellite location at the southwest branch of the Monroe County Public Library, I personally would like to see one on the east side, say, at College Mall or a similar site. This would fit with the recommendations of the 2010 Ball State Report, which is available at the state website, which recommends putting satellite voting sites at "high traffic areas such as grocery stores and shopping malls." And in fact, in Vigo County, we heard that they do satellite voting at grocery stores. So anyway, in summary, I hope the Monroe County Election Board will unanimously vote to adopt both centers and to add satellite early voting locations. Thank you. Thank you for your time and your consideration. All right. Thank you. Just a reminder, we're trying to keep comments to three minutes. Thank you so much. My name is Peter Iverson. I am a Monroe County resident, Chair Fernandez, Clerk Brown, and Mr. Shields. Thank you for your time, your dedication to Monroe County, Chair Stonebreaker, Ms. Gandhi, Mr. Boland. Thank you for your work on this committee and for all their committee members. I come before you today to request your support for vote centers in Monroe County based on fiscal issues. As president of the Monroe County Personnel Administration Committee, I request unanimous support because I have diligently examined the operational implications of this transition. I am pleased to report that my questions regarding staffing and personnel were thoroughly and satisfactorily addressed, specifically I referred to figure five on page eight of the recommendations on vote centers for Monroe County, where concerns about potential increases in personnel costs were directly addressed during a recent presentation to the Monroe County Council. As president pro tem for that Monroe County Council, I remain steadfastly committed to strong fiscal stewardship of taxpayer resources. In this duty, I have examined the long-term operational costs for vote centers. Again, the committee answered my questions thoroughly and satisfactorily, and the recommendations detailed not only a fiscal impact that appears on pages 13 through 15 of the report, but in particular, I found the four cycle chart, which is figure nine, very helpful in the recommendations. These resources make my request for unanimous adoption possible. Now, rest assured, the county council will remain vigilant in its oversight, carefully monitoring overtime hours, compensatory time, requests for new positions, and additional appropriations. This scrutiny ensures transparency and accountability as we move forward with vote centers. Ongoing scrutiny like this is important and timely because we cannot ignore the reality that the severe impacts of Senate Bill 1 are just now being felt on property tax and income tax. As we approach the budget season, our county council must balance two critical priorities. Number one, we need to be ensuring the constitutional right of all voters while at the same time balancing our books. While fiscal caution guides our decisions, I am genuinely excited about the future of vote centers in Monroe County. The comprehensive draft plan and the process tonight represent a modernization of our electoral infrastructure that I feel will increase accessibility, that will improve operations, and will ingrain long-term efficiencies. Monroe County has often been at the forefront of innovation in local government in Monroe County and this decision will keep us there. Thank you for your support of vote centers in Monroe County. This is Christopher MG from the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, but also Monroe County resident and voter. The chamber definitely supports the vote study committee's recommendation to adopting these vote centers. I don't want to reiterate too many of the points that have already been brought up, but our voter turnout is really low and I would say almost pathetic. I think we need a change of that. We've been into the polling places where you've been in the wrong precinct. We all know a friend that has been like that. If we look at the other 65 counties, I haven't heard anybody at least from arguments against going, "Those counties want to go back." We didn't like it. It just didn't work for us. We heard from council member Iverson about the efficiency as far as cost. I think sometimes you have to invest in order to save money. It just makes a certain amount of sense in this that we can streamline election management and do something that seems very 21st century. I think the precinct model had its day, and I don't think it is today on that. I'm going to recommend you move forward with that and also some satellite voting. I think we can have the recommendations on what that looks like. I don't know the specifics, but changing the model, I think, is the route to go at this time and appreciate it. Thanks. Good evening, I'm Karen Greenstone. I live in just north of Bloomington in Monroe County, and I'm here to speak from my own experience on Election Day. You may have heard it a hundred times, I don't know, but I was at the downtown what had been the vote center on Election Day, and it became almost a game to see if the people were at the right precinct. And I would say, without exaggerating, somewhere between 25 and a third of the people who came were not at the right precinct, and when they came later in the day, they may not have had time or transportation to get to the place where they needed to vote. So I'm in favor of vote centers for my own personal experience. Thank you. My name is Steve Volin. I am a member of the vote center study committee. Members of the board, I urge you to vote to adopt our report for four reasons. Firstly, vote centers will save money. We did the research. It's in the report. We won't see it in the first year because there will be an initial cost to get set up. We'll see the savings across the midterm city and presidential elections. That is over a quadrennial cycle. A lot of the savings come from not having to preprint ballots, but some savings will also come, as you've heard from personnel. Sites have generally not been at capacity on election day. The sites that remain will be more fully utilized. If cost is your biggest concern, amend the report from 29 not to 22, but to 20 vote centers. Just know that with 20, the overall cost of elections over this quadrennium will be equal or less than the cost of the previous quadrennium. It will be the county council's job to go beyond an annual view of the clerk's election budget when it comes to that sort of thing, but they can do it, I'm sure. Secondly, vote centers are not partisan. Only four counties in Indiana voted blue in 2024, yet more than two-thirds of counties in Indiana already have vote centers. Most of them, of course, therefore, are red counties. We studied a few of them. That's in the report. It turns out that Republicans who tend to prefer to vote on election day love vote centers just as much as Democrats do. Thirdly, the Secretary of State prefers vote centers. As early as next year, Monroe County may be forced to go to vote centers by the state. Better for us to have local control now over how it's done than to have the state impose vote centers on us if we don't act now on this plan. Lastly, it's not going to unlock the so-called student vote. How can I say this? Because I am living proof. I won five straight elections for the city council seat that had the most IU students in it. No one has been a bigger advocate for students for more than 20 years. I'm sure it's why I was appointed to this committee. But when I ran in the city at large in 2023 and for a county commissioner seat in 2024, I did poorly. Where were all these students? If it were true that students vote, I would have done better in those elections. But student precincts are always extremely low turnout. Vote centers will help them only as much as they will help every other demographic. Meanwhile, the state just this year made it harder for students to vote by not accepting student IDs, which are ironically issued by the state. Now, no matter what happens, students at IU should not be forced to vote at, say, Bloomington North, which is a full three miles from campus, like they had to in the most recent elections. But this process change will not make it any easier for students to vote than anyone else. Even if you believe that students should not be voting, you should adopt this change. Because no one should have to go out of their way to vote, no one. Because this makes it easier for everyone to vote. Amend the plan to fund only 20 centers, if you must, but please adopt this plan. Thank you. [PAUSE] Good afternoon, members of the election board. My name is David Henry. I'm a resident of Van Buren Township. I'm also a county counselor at large in this county. I am here today to speak in favor of the adoption of the vote center plan as presented. All three options are something I can support, not only as a community member, as also a former member of this election board and as a current member of the county council. In July of 2023, while president of this council and with Clerk Brown, we revisited the idea of trying to move us to a vote center county. The reasons were obvious. There were 60-something other counties in the state of Indiana that have already experimented, already ran the traps, already have gone through trials on how to use these centers in our counties to encourage voter turnout. So we're not the first county, the second county, the 10th or 20th or 50th county to pursue the adoption of this cost-saving solution to encouraging the voter turnout. We have a wealth of information to lean on, so much so that the vote center study committee, which has been at work diligently over the past year and a half putting together what has to be the most robust report on vote centers ever in the state of Indiana, with all that data, can show us that we've turned over every stone and really looked at a solution that makes sense for the county. From the county council perspective, I would echo the sentiments of my colleague, Councilmember Iverson, that of the solutions that were presented to us, we're looking at everything from a possibility of a no cost to our current model solution to something of roughly 5% in capital investment to move us forward to a vote center adoption. As a corollary for folks to know, in 1989, the election board had decided in its last iteration, when it went to different voting machines, that the cost of the county in 1989 was $369,000 in 1989 dollars to update our equipment. So in some ways, the cost savings are even larger than what we've done historically as a county. Others may remember in 2011 that due to technology issues and decertification of technology that was purchased for voting in our county, that we had to purchase over 400 new voting machine equipment to come into compliance with HAVA. Again, we've been down this path before, elections do cost money because it is the most important thing in our community, to make sure that every citizen has a chance to be heard, regardless of party, to cause for a robust election cycle, to make sure those of us that are elected to office know that we're not representing a super minority of voters in the community that just happened to turn out that day, but the full-throated voice of Monroe County has been heard on election day. Lastly, in the 22 seconds I have, I'll offer this. Imagine if you were only able to shop at one grocery store in the county, the one nearest to your house in a geographic area, and only that one place. That would be kind of absurd, but with the way we treat our voting in Monroe County on election day, I look forward to voting in every possible location over the next 25 years from Bergoon to the one near my house in Highland Park. With that, thank you very much. I hope you'll adopt the plan. It is a cost-effective solution for our county. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Hello, I'm Carolyn Craig, resident of Monroe County. And very enthusiastic voter, every time there's an election, is one thing I always look forward to. But I can tell you, as someone who's run for a political office, I was on the school board. [BLANK_AUDIO] A long time, [BLANK_AUDIO] Enthusiastic voter, that one of the biggest causes of anxiety for anyone planning to vote is, where do I vote? And how do I find out where I vote? Anything that can reduce that anxiety is very welcome. And I hope to be able to, in my further efforts, registering voters to let them know that in Monroe County, we will have vote centers. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO] Good evening, my name is Jack Schmidt. I'm here to probably offer the maybe only opposing viewpoint to this evening's meeting. And I do it for a couple reasons. First of all, I'm a Bloomington Township resident. I've been voting in this county for probably 34 years. I will tell you that I have been so impressed, really in the past 12 years, with how easy it is to vote in this county. I think the county election board has done remarkable work on making it easy, making it secure, looking at all the checks and balances that are in place. I've been very impressed by all this stuff. So I have lots of confidence in what the county currently does in voting. So in that process, I worry less about accessibility because we make it very accessible. The other thing about it, too, is that I don't understand why we're trying to make it easy to vote. Voting is a duty, voting is a right. And we should be able to figure out where to vote on election day before election day. And yes, I have been serving in some of the precinct boards on election day, and there's always people getting lost. But there are always people getting lost all the time and everything. So it doesn't mean we make it very, very simple. We simply continue to offer the advice and counsel. We offer the website. We also, we can call the elections office or tell us where to be. And even if you go to the wrong precinct, which people had have done in the precinct I worked in, we told them where to be. Now if they got there at 10 minutes to six, they're going to miss. But that means they didn't really put a lot of effort in the process before him. I also like all the advances that have been made. So when you sound like Monroe County is weighing in the sticks and behind because you're not keeping up with everybody else, that reminds me of my grandmother saying, don't always try to be with everybody else, okay? Just do well what you do. So electronic poll books are wonderful. I think it's great. I enjoy that. Early voting is remarkable. So you've got time to get there. And if you can't make it on election day, then you've missed not only one day, but many days before. Finally, the other thing that I look at, especially in the community report, I read the report pretty intently. And one thing I noticed is that when they went to compare vote center sites, they didn't compare apple to apples. They compared Marion County, which is huge, and Brown County, which is very small. So when I just went online and found all the reports of election results in the past 12 years for 10 counties like Monroe County, looking at population, in looking at that, I compared results across a four year period, four major election cycles, not off year elections. And then I looked at the vote centers. Seven of those had vote centers, three of them did not, Monroe County being one. The results were mixed. We should have, if vote centers are put in place, a higher level of turnout. More people voting. But that's just not the case, which again begs the question for me for the study committee. If they did such a great job of studying this, tell me any regrets of all those other counties, 65 of them, who have had vote centers in place. And why have the numbers gone down in many of those places for participation? That's the fundamental question here. If you're going to spend more money, please spend more money to make sure we get more people voting, and if that's not occurring, don't jump on this bandwagon so we can feel like we're in the 21st century. Maybe the old model might even work better. That's possible. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. I am William Smith from Van Buren Township. I wanted to thank the previous gentleman for voicing his concerns and his observation about how good we do elections here already. As a testament to how seriously we take elections in this county. But I've also experienced, like others here, people who have been lost. And while it is a duty, we also have for people to prep nowhere to have a plan to vote. We also have a duty as a community to make voting as accessible as possible because we should only make those barriers present that are necessary to safeguard free and fair elections and no additional hardships on anyone. And it also made me think about how I think this vote center approach is an attempt to make something go from good to better. We already have something good, but if we can have better and in a more affordable way, why would we not want to do that? And it also made me think about how early voting is a pilot of vote centers. That's what it is, and I vote early every election. And I think that expanding the flexibility to make things for hardworking people, people who are struggling with elder care, with child care, as easy as possible while still making sure that they are eligible voters, we are doing right by our community. Thank you. My name is Sandy Slus, and out of the 92 counties, has there -- and then turn back to the pre-state. No, that's unusual. My question is, out of the 92 counties in Indiana, has there ever been a county who went to voter centers and then reverted back to pre-state? No. I worked elections since 2016, and in my experience, if people went to vote, they'll figure it out. Good evening. My name is Seth Mutchler. I'm a Monroe County resident of 16 years now. I'll keep it short and sweet. I think many of the folks who have spoken in support of vote centers have said it more eloquently than I could, so I will just add my voice to voice for support, and I hope that you all vote yes for the vote centers this evening. Thank you. We have one person online that would like to comment. Looks like Eric, if we want to unmute Eric, and then, Eric, please state your full name. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Eric Host, and I appreciate this opportunity to offer public comment regarding this important matter. I ask that you approve the creation of vote centers in Monroe County. You have heard a number of insightful and definitive supporting comments from a number of current and former elected representatives, election office staff, vote center commissioners, and voters. The super majority of comments this evening have confidently spoken in firm support of the adoption of vote centers. I will not repeat their convincing testimony, but I will add my voice to theirs and request that you approve the creation of vote centers in Monroe County. Thank you. Thanks, sir. Other comments? [Pause for responses] Hi, my name is Ashley Carberg, and I wanted to represent the rural. When we think about those who, when someone says, "Oh, well, you have 28 days that you could do it," those in the rural areas, they could be mowing lawns. They could be taking people's trees down. They could be doing construction. Think of a lot of the rural work, doing farming. They don't have the 28 days. But also when we think about what's happening at the state level, there was many bills that were actually trying to lessen the 28 days to seven and to even 14. So when we think about, "Well, you had 28 days," there's people who want it to be seven. So if we had more opportunities so that more voices could be heard, that's a good thing. It's not a red, it's not blue, it's everybody united trying to make our voices heard. So thinking about those rural areas who are doing the backbone work and taking care of the counties, taking care of the cities, thinking about them, I mean, it would be so nice for my husband who, as he's doing everybody's lawns across the county, if he were to go wherever he can and not go all the way back to Washington Township. My neighbor goes on to Bitten, we go to Washington, literally neighbors, but thinking about that right there, how he stays in the county or inside the town doing most of his work. Think about all those who are doing that type of work, all those construction, all those, and if it's already trying to go to 14 to seven days, if we can make our voices heard regardless of our stance, that would be amazing, thank you. Good evening, my name is Liz Vidal, I'm also county council at large, and I've heard a lot of good things about supporting it, heard one thing, not to support it, but I think I'd like to play a little bit of devil's advocate here, so weighing all of these things, I can't help but think that if it isn't supported, where will we refer those calls to when they call in and ask the clerk's office about boat centers, who is going to take those calls, and I don't mean the clerk's office, the whole clerk's office didn't vote for this, there's two other people up here besides the clerk's office, who are going to take those citizen calls, who we represent, who will take those calls, I care about representation, I come from the union industry where I represented folks for many many years, either in the union local itself or with United Way in a partnership with the unions, and I care about representation, I've also been the voter service chair for the League of Women Voters for a decade around here and I've always tried to improve voting situations and get people registered to vote and to support anything that would improve the situation, so I urge you to think about those calls from those voters who may not be able to get what they need out of this and who are we going to refer those calls to, that's the big thing for me. Any other comments? I know that we received quite a bit of digital comments, some filling out the surveys, some submitting supplemental letters. Unless anybody opposes it, I think we should incorporate all of those comments into the record for our public hearings. Okay, so I'm going to share my screen with you guys so that we can see a table of that, and we received 296 comments from that digital responses online. Of that, 77%, which was 224 responses were for yes, 5%, which was 48, sorry, 17 responses was yes with changes to the plan, and 48 people, 16%, voted no to changing to vote centers. There was comments that were sent to each of you guys, which you have been able to review over the weekend. These are just some of those comments that we did receive. Most of the ones that do want to see changes to the plan are seeing for less centers. We also do have the question of where would you consider to vote on election day? It was the highest number of closer to home was at 31%, but we do see that large turnout of early voting being 30%. And there was also comments that were sent to each of you that were just basic comments of what their concerns or thoughts were on vote centers. And then we had individuals who did opt to let you guys know and give them contact information so that you can reach out to them if there were any other questions. After reviewing all of the comments, we did notice that many of the votes that were for no, their comments did lead towards that they weren't really understanding what vote centers were and were asking more questions about can you explain what a vote center is. We did reach out to quite a few of those, and I know Clerk Brown actually called one specifically just to have a chat with them and make sure that they understood what vote centers were and my office did the same thing as well when going through these and having people requesting more information. How many cards were mailed out? There was one card per residential address in Monroe County so I believe it was 64,000, about 65,000 cards that were sent out. So our responses were 300 out of 64,000. Any other comments? If not, we're going to bring it up to the board for any reflections on the public comment as we'll wrap up the public hearing part of the proposal. All right, seeing none. Do either of my colleagues have any comments, suggestions? I am incredibly grateful for the people who have showed up and who have fiercely and passionately advocated their positions on vote centers. I'm not sure if you're looking for motions or if you're looking for just further discussions. What I'll say is that Monroe County is just the most incredible place to me in the Hoosier State and so much so that I made my home here. Part of what makes us attractive to the people who come here are the many amenities that we have and that we embrace everyone from all walks of life. As we consider this opportunity for vote centers, I would look to my clerk siblings who are already vote center counties and they feel that it is fantastic. They have no buyer's remorse. It cuts down on the number of provisional ballots. There's less frustration because they have more access to the ballot. With that, I will be supporting the universal plan for vote centers with the additional satellite locations during early voting. Thank you. >> I need to ask a couple of quick questions if I could. Is the document we're looking at the final document? Were there any other changes regarding footprints, layouts, any of that kind of stuff? >> The document that was presented to you is the final draft of that document and then any changes would be made by you and then sent back to the vote center committee is my understanding. >> Not so sure. >> I don't think any changes would be sent back to the vote center committee. This would be the board amending on potentially adopting a plan. >> I know that there are some specific findings that we have to make as part of this process regarding the security election connection requirements, but one of the concerns I have about the report and apologize to the vote center committee for bringing it up at this time, but the early vote centers, you know, we're making a very strong recommendation for additional vote centers with specific recommended locations. That gives me a lot of pause because I'm not sure, A, other than having a satellite center as required by the law when you adopt a vote center, we don't need this resolution to adopt satellite centers. I mean, that can happen outside of the formal process of becoming a designated county vote center. So, I mean, we're, that just seems like there's not nearly as much detail and kind of analysis as there is for the rest of the report. I'm just wondering if we should separate that issue. In reviewing the requirements for the vote center plan, it does require the designation of a satellite office. However, I believe if the election board wanted to in the future add additional satellite offices, the plan could be amended to do such and that would allow for the election board or it would be the election board to have the appropriate conversations with the locations that are potentially being proposed. I understand there hasn't been really any conversations with any of these sites. Are there now there have not. Yeah. So if if it's incorporated in the formal plan for vote center, if we make changes, does that require the election board to approve those changes unanimously? Once a vote center plan is if a vote center plan is approved and submitted to the state, that is the plan until either the election board rescinds that plan unanimously or amends that plan unanimously. So if the plan is submitted with just one vote center identified, that would be the number of vote centers until the election board said otherwise unanimously. I do think in the plan, it identifies election, it identifies the old Napa building. So there will definitely have to be an amendment to the plan because I don't know that Napa is not available. But to be clear, but for the one satellite center for early voting required as adoption of a vote center plan, the county, the election board can add satellite locations and that doesn't necessarily require it to be an amendment to the vote center plan if you're doing that outside of a vote center plan. Does that make sense? Yes, I would have to double check with the election division to see how the vote center statute with the designation of at least one interplays with the additional satellite office statute. No, correct me if I'm wrong then. We decide where the vote, where the precinct voting occurs. We could also decide to have multiple early voting centers totally aside from this plan if we chose to do that. The plan would identify the location of the vote centers in a precinct model, which is like our current model. The location of that is determined by the polls is determined by the commissioners, but in a vote center plan, you are determining the location of the vote centers. I want to make sure we're using the right language. I would have the vote center plan requires the designation of at least one satellite office, which would be early voting. We still have the opportunity that should we choose not to have vote centers in general, we could have additional satellite early voting areas if we chose to. I believe so. Yes. So if we stayed with our current model, it would be kind of like it's set up right now where the election board would designate an early voting site. And I do think there's a statutory option to add additional sites. Would we be required to have all that's assumed we would take four plus early vote the Napa building? Because the Napa building ought not to go away. The Napa building is going away. The convention center is going away. There will be a replacement for Napa. Fine, then let's just call it Napa. Let's call it Napa 2. Okay. Napa approved. So there will be Napa 2. So we could determine to have Napa 2 for the 28 days. Okay. And then if we wanted to, because of the cost, have the other four centers a shorter period of time should we choose to do that? Do you think the election board decides the hours and location of satellite off satellite voting center? So, yes, thank you. Would there be value given that there are some vote center committee members here? It sounded like you were talking about the specific locations chosen that maybe they share their insight as to why those locations were recommended. I think I think we know why they were recommended. I think the issue is whether or not they're accessible and even, you know, there's different, we don't control those buildings. So it's going to be up to the building owners and managers to determine whether or not you're going to have a vote center there. I mean, just with my knowledge of a building, I'm, you know, I'm not sure why the Center for Responsive Government was identified because it doesn't seem like a particularly accessible building to me in terms of location. May I? I'm Ami again and was a member of the vote center study committee and I ask Kylie and others to please weigh in as well because this has been a collaborative process to really just make the planning and recommendations as sound and well informed as possible. And relating to that last question that related to the willingness of the host actually more even than other considerations. It's not a perfect location. I have been in there. One has to be willing to host despite imperfections and there are great attributes of that location as well. So that's a little bit about what the committee's thinking was relating to that proposal. And again, it's a proposal for you all as the election board to act upon respectfully. I'm submitting that that we did our best to provide the ideas for you to improve upon and confirm and finalize. And so that's what I wanted to say about that location. And then for others, there was certainly analysis. I think it's a fair point about the greater analysis done relating to election day and relatively less so detailed analysis in the report about early voting. I think that also mirrors what our charge was as the committee, if I may posit that, because of what we were asked to do in the founding document for the committee. Were there any questions for the committee? If not, I don't need to take up further of your time, but wanted to jump up here in case there was any question for the committee. And just to be clear, the reason I raise it is that I strongly support the creation of the vote center model for Monroe County. I just want us to adopt a report that has specific additional recommendations regarding satellite voting that might muck up the plan if we have to come back and get more approvals to adopt, to deal with that. And we don't have any of the... The commissioners have weighed in pretty heavily. At least a couple of representatives, the county council have weighed in very favorably towards vote centers. People are going to talk about costs. I don't think that's really the issue, but I don't also want to create a situation where it makes it more difficult for the county council to adopt this if there's a bunch of unforeseen or unexpected additional costs to adopting this plan because we've added a recommendation for up to three satellite early vote centers. Because of all the multi-way collaboration required to pull off a polling place, regardless of what type of polling place is, if it's a super precinct or a vote center, if the election board has ideas to improve upon the proposals, I think that's really important. If some of the potential hosts who are named in the report or not even named yet are willing to be more engaged, we tried so many times to invite them for more engagement to our public meetings. And I think if there can be more engagement, for example, by the university about more favorable locations or by other stakeholders, I think that would be phenomenal. And so really the committee is intending to put this in the election board's hand for further improvement and as Molly and others set forth for the amendments that might be appropriate. Well, I would just make this comment to my colleagues on the board. I still think that, you know, if there's a desire to add more satellite centers, this can require all the kinds of collaboration and consultation that he's raised. But we're being asked to vote on a specific vote center plan that is saying that we will have three early voting centers in addition to the changes related to the vote center. And I would just personally, I mean, if the board wants to go a different direction, I'm open to that. But I feel a lot more comfortable voting on a clean vote center proposal that early vote like we have. And then if the county, if the election board and the community wants to go further with other early satellite voting systems, there's nothing that would preclude us from doing that. And we'd have the opportunity to do that in the same manner that we just raised in terms of all the collaboration. But if we adopt a plan with three, we're adopting a plan with three satellite centers. And per the vote center statute, you're identifying the total number and locations of those satellite offices. And I think the plan identifies IU Center on representative government, which I imagine will encompass a conversation with the board of trustees, the Monroe County Public Library, which will also have a conversation with their board, and then Ellitsville Town Hall, which I imagine I would feel more comfortable advising the board to go ahead and designate those as part of the plan and identified locations if we knew those were going to be the locations for sure. And those conversations occurred that. And as you guys know, the election board could amend that portion completely out of the plan if you choose to. But the student on the center on representative governments was chosen because we got to spend a full day there this last year just before the general election. And they voiced their gratitude of potentially being a vote center location in the future because they were able to associate parking for us that day. They also had stated that we can take a look around that entire building. And when we did, we did decide and I had brought our I.T. team out and they had also said that they thought it would be a great location for a vote center if we were to adopt it. I'd like to make an amendment then to the report. I'll close an amendment to the report. Then on page 12. Yes, so on page 12 of the report, section G, section G4, I would recommend that we delete the last two sentences of that paragraph. May I trouble you to read the last two sentences into the minutes? Yeah, the last two sentences, the committee recommends three vote centers be open at least 10 days prior to an election. Possible locations include Ellisville Town Hall, the IU Center of Representative Government in Monroe County Public Library Southwest Branch, see Figure 7. So it still states that the committee advises that we increase them, but it doesn't include those specific ones in the report. Then along with that, there would be an additional amendment to section H2, that is on page 18. And for that amendment, I would delete all the language after the parentheses where it has election operations in quotes. So as amended, it would say that committee recommends at least one vote center to be open. The state mandated 28 day early voting period before election day, the clerk's office should identify replacement for the current early voting site at 302 South Walnut Street, referred to as election operations. And then we would delete the recommendation for the additional votes, early vote centers and the specific recommended locations. That's my motion to amend the report. Make a second? - I'll second that, yeah. - Comments? - I am concerned. I don't want that to be a slow roll to a no in that now we're publicly talking about this. We have, you know, the ear of the Monroe County community, elections cost money. I don't want to break news to anybody here, but it is not cheap to oversee a quality election. And the rules change at the legislative level a lot. And so if we delete, if we make the changes as far as the amendment that you're recommending, then when it's time to talk about it, the first thing that's going to come up is money. And that's, I didn't think that that was the driving force from the vote center committee. I felt the driving force was we need to have satellite locations during that last 10 days. I mean, Nicole, the spirit behind my recommendation isn't to slow roll towards a no, it's to fast track towards a yes. Because that other component is the least developed part of our recommendation. And I don't want that to be an excuse for people to say no, especially when we get to the county council. So it's my intent is not to slow it down, it's to actually speed it up. We can get the vote center designation, assuming we can get three votes for that. And then as process unrolls, there's going to be opportunities to discuss additional early voting beyond the one that statue fire, which we currently have. And I don't see that as a mechanism to slow anything down or make this a debate about money. Because I think the county council is going to have that debate and where it should happen with those elected officials. I will say during the committee, there was definitely less conversation about early voting than there was about vote centers in general. So I don't think that the vote center committee ever intended that it would be like a huge yes, we absolutely believe that you guys need to have the extra early voting locations. I think it was an additional, hey, this is the input that we're receiving from community members that they believe that there should be more voting locations for early voting. And it on me, Steve, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the main reason they added in there was so that it opened up the conversation for more voting back. All of the input that we got from all of the different community engagement sessions and the other work of the committee, whether we asked about it or not, we got consistent, repeated input about the need for more early voting locations. So while agreeing with everything that Kylie said and that I mentioned before, it was brought up as a sentiment from voters again and again throughout the course of our work. And it seems like you may want to add something as well? Just briefly, yeah. The other issue is that part of the charges we understood it was that at a certain point we had to tie up the report and hand it to the election board, who we then would count on to decide what to do with it, including amend it, cut parts of it as Mr. Fernandez is proposing. So one of the things we're waiting for is whether or not we're going to be discharged. In other words, if you want to send the report back to us to think about early voting centers, you know. Well, I think our intention as a committee is to hand it to you all now. And there was a mention in the founding document for our committee, it's two words. It says early voting alongside a lot of other verbiage about what we should mainly be focused on. And so that context is important as far as it was our responsibility to include our analysis, however brief, and the input, repeated input that we got from voters about needing greater early voting access. So that's represented in what you see. Any other comments on the proposed amendment? I'll entertain a vote for that. So to be clear, two pieces of the report that the amendment applies to, section G4 and section H2. Before we proceed to a vote, I'm not sure that the motion received a second. Okay, sir. All right, then in regards on the motion to amend and delete the language as identified by Mr. Fernandez. Clerk Brown? Yes. Mr. Fernandez? Yes. Mr. Shields? No. Motion passes to zero. So now we're back to the amended report. Any additional comments from members of the board? Well, if no one else is, I will. I think this report should be adopted. I think the vote center plan really is about accessibility, but it's also about efficiencies. It's kind of an antiquated system that we have today. Does it work okay? Yeah, it works okay, but it could be better. And, you know, when you look at just the patterns of population distribution, I mean, the counties or the voting locations right now are really less equal, particularly when you get into some of the more rural parts of Monroe County. If you look at the number of votes per voting place and others, it's just, you know, it seems like we could do a lot better. The vote centers are just such an over... I mean, to me, it's like way overdue. And for many of us who do vote early, I mean, when you go in and vote early, you're just sitting there going, "Why is it like this everywhere where I can, you know, print a ballot and vote?" And so, I don't really, you know, I'm open to... I thought Mr. Schmidt's comments were well put. I mean, I, you know, I think those are legitimate cases to make. I just think that at this time, it's time for Monroe County to become a vote center county. It will increase the effectiveness of how we administer our elections. It will continue to be a very secure system, but it'll be one that I think makes it more equitable in terms of how we make it possible for people to get out and vote, particularly on election day when we have such a limited window of six to six. So, I'm going to vote in favor of the report and the recommendation to take it forward to the county council. I do know that we need to, as part of this process, make some formal findings as to some of the statutory requirements. That's correct. I did prepare a proposed resolution and I will share that in a minute, but real quick, I need to correct the roll call. I just said it was 2-0 and it passes 2-1. Oh, thank you. Yes, Danny's vote counts. It counts. I'm sorry, Mr. Shields. I didn't go to law school for math. I've been married way too long. All right. So, we do have a resolution. Where is it? Resolution of the board that does make some of the formal findings as required by the statute in regard to the secure electronic connections as well as the accessibility requirements. In our resolution, we are specifically establishing Monroe County as a vote center county with 29 number of vote centers aligned with the recommendation of the study committee and that the election board would order staff to submit the plan with all the required and supporting documents once it is approved by the Monroe County Council. That's the next gating issue here that we would submit this to the state. So, do we have a motion to adopt the resolution? I will make a motion to adopt the resolution. I will second. Comments? No, sir. This is a roll call on the resolution that is displayed on the screen that finds the statutory requirements and that designates Monroe County as a vote center county with 29 vote centers. Clerk Brown? Yes. Mr. Fernandez? Yes. Mr. Shields? I have a statement I'd like to make, please. Okay. While I'm a seasoned veteran of the elections in Monroe County, my first one was 1972. I am a new member of this board. I take this position very seriously. Here are a few things that stand out to me about the report and the plan. First, let's be clear. We don't live in a pure democracy. Democracies don't last long because as soon as two people realize they can legally take someone else's property, it often leads to conflict and violence. We live in a representative republic where representatives are elected by the people of their district, whatever that district may be. I'm strongly in favor of minimizing taxes. Taxation, for any reason, is taking money from someone else who worked for it and using it for purposes they may not support. Property taxes, for example, are immoral and should be abolished. Spending taxpayer dollars, for any reason, should be carefully scrutinized. I've read the report of the committee and I was there when the committee began. It is important to note that the committee was never entirely unbiased. They never considered whether vote centers are a good idea. They were always focused on getting them implemented. There are some good things in reports such as the fact that electronic polling books are good if the electricity works. One thing the committee never asks is whether increasing voter turnout is the main goal or responsibility of the election board. For the record, it is not. The goal of the election board is to run fair, cost-effective, bipartisan elections for the government. It is the job of the political parties, civic groups, educational organizations, among others, to drive voter turnout. If it were not, we would not have repetitive commercial season every year. The report never mentioned why vote centers were not adopted in 2011. It never touched on what the usages were then. It never touched on what needed to be done to change them. I've been doing my own research on election costs and it seems that Monroe County has regularly spent much more per vote than many other counties. Our cost per vote is considerably higher than that of many other counties, so now we are asked to add over $600,000 for equipment. Despite the findings of the committee, my research shows that vote center counties do not have noticeably higher vote turnout. Their own numbers back this up. The committee and one political party of Monroe County has been really focused on getting people to our meetings who want vote centers. They never entertained having people who were not interested in them. Why not? I did my own research with the people I represent. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. I visited an IU College Republican meeting and asked how many of them had an issue either here or at home of finding their polling place. The answer was none. So is it the taxpayer's responsibility to spend tax dollars for people who will not do their own research to find their designated polling place, a space with all the early voting time available? I reached out to others on social media platforms and the results were the same. Literally zero were in favor of vote centers. Their concerns were about why should it be easier for non-residents to vote. If people pay out of state tuition, they are not residents of Monroe County. I also visited a group of Republican party workers with the same result. In three separate meetings, there was zero support for centers. There's much to say about other issues of Monroe County, but we can talk about them at a different time. My goal is to have the best, most responsive government possible in Bloomington and Monroe County. I'm here as a representative of a large group of citizens who identify as Republicans and following their clearly spoken wishes, my vote on the issue of adding vote centers is no. So the resolution and adoption of the amended vote center plan fails two to one. Passes two to one, but it fails because the state law requires unanimous vote. Correct. Okay. Do we have any other business for the election board? Seeing none, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. All right, we are adjourned. (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music)