Okay let's go ahead and call to order the April 7th meeting of the Monroe County Election Board. For some of you standing in back there are some seats in front if you'd like them. There's a bench if you don't want to get too close or there are seats right in front but encourage you to grab a seat. Today is the first hearing of two hearings that we'll be having regarding the proposal for vote centers here in Monroe County. What we're going to do tonight is have the representatives of the vote center study committee do an opening presentation and then we may have some questions for them and then we're going to open it up to public comment and we're gonna ask speakers to limit their comments three minutes so we can make sure everybody is now joining and then that includes folks online. We'll ask that you come to the podium and sign in prior to giving your comments. You don't need to do it in advance just when you walk up and that way we'll be able to have a nice record of everybody participated in tonight's hearing and for the folks online we'll just ask that you raise your hand and we'll make a record of who's speaking after you announce your name. So with that there will be a second hearing as I said but let's just go ahead and get things going and we'll ask Alana to come up and do the presentation for the committee and thank you all for coming. Yeah thank you so much for coming. My name is Alana Stonebreaker. I'm chair of the Monroe County Vote Center Committee which is a committee of the election board. Can you guys hear me okay if I talk at this level? All right I have some slides. Oh can they get a little bit bigger? Oh yes, awesome. So I'm gonna go through some information on on my slide deck but just the the gist of it is the the report which is 56 pages is available on the Monroe County Vote Center site and and this will go through some of the main findings and what what kind of happens next. So I'm gonna kind of speak for about 15-20 minutes to give it to kind of situate our area. So what is a vote center? So I'm right now on election day Monroe County has what are called precincts or super precincts which means that we combine multiple precincts into one location and they all vote and you only have one location you can vote at. In a vote center county you can vote at any of the voting locations it's kind of like a vote anywhere area. About 65 of the 92 counties have already adopted this it's about 20 years old and it doesn't require a change to for example electronic voting or anything like that we can use our paper ballots continually as part of this. So if you have experienced early voting in Monroe County it's a very similar process to what you've experienced before. Can I go to the next slide? How does a vote center work? So the way that this works is is a voter goes to an election goes to a location and then when they get there right now on election day you may have experienced that people check you on and what's called an electronic poll book. An electronic poll book is a device that is not connected to the internet that tells us that a person has voted and informs the the the machines that that has happened and an additional step that it will now do is it will know which what precincts that person lives in and it will and we will print out the ballot. So right now we had a certain amount of ballots pre-printed but now they'll be printing on demand. So once again if you have experience voting early voting you remember that you one of the steps was as you go to the printers and you receive your ballot that will be kind of how this would look differently for election day. Next slide. So how do we steps to forming of so these are steps outlined by the state. So first you form a study committee which we did in the fall of 2023. The study committee drafts a vote center plan and then there's a public hearing to open the pub the the draft to public comment. That's what we're doing right now. Then there's there's are concurrently there is a resolution by the county commissioners and a resolution by the county council. So we already have that resolution from the county commissioners and we're waiting on that resolution from the county council and then concurrently also then there's an additional public hearing for us it will be on May 19th at 530 which is on your handout to consider written feedback and vote by the election board so they can approve approve with amendments or not approved the vote center plan and then we file the plan with the Indiana election division and then Kylie who I'm looking at right now our election supervisor will then work through all the processes of ordering the additional equipment that we need so we need more printers in this environment and then making sure that we update all of our documentation so that's the process so in 2023 the Monroe County Election Board created the vote center committee it was a committee with bipartisan so Democrat Republican but then additionally represented from the League of Women Voters independent voters from neither who identified as independent additionally we had a student also on the board as well and so it was originally 11 and then over time it kind of has become 7 so and we've been working meeting every other week for pretty much the whole duration trying to make sure that we were as thorough as possible and understanding this process next slide so our methodology was we conducted listening sessions in Ellisville Unionville the IU campus and also with the Monroe County NAACP to kind of ask the question as my colleague says what about it what do you think of vote centers just to get people's feedback as we were drafting our plan we also conducted listening sessions with IU students particularly invited them to our meeting we also Kylie our election supervisor visited a different county that uses the same equipment that we use we had lawyers present on it and we also tried out the election equipment and did a tour of the election equipment next slide so we we chose four different options one was convert all 29 polling locations that we used in this last election into vote centers option 2 is convert 22 of the 29 locations to become vote centers this number came from looking at other counties and how many vote centers they had after they switched so you don't you know you're a little bit more demand-based and since people can vote not only where they live but where they work you can kind of change the locations to better fit that and so 22 is one of the numbers that we thought about for that or we could select 11 locations to become vote centers that would be roughly one per township or not to adopt vote centers next slide we also and I can't even read my slides from over here so I'm gonna look at we also considered proximity of key of vote centers to things like population centers committees with communities with low vehicle ownership students University faculty historically undermined genized groups public transit locations as well as we had a presentation by the Chicago lawyers committee on civil rights about voter access consideration and racial equity implications next slide oh oh yeah that the sorry that's just the same one again keep going so the recommendations we had is that we found that vote centers have potential benefits for the Monroe County voters and should be adopted and by a 7-0 vote the committee recommends converting all 29 super precincts into 20 into vote centers moving forward so doing a full-scale switch in terms of infrastructure and training we've had a good experiences with hard inner civic and that the representatives instructed the committee on how to supplement current equipment to support on-demand printing one of the issues that is a continued issue is the computers are not connected to the internet but low Wi-Fi is an issue in some areas we already own a hundred and a hundred and thirty secure and reliable electronic poll backs and then we'll have to work on poll worker training to prepare and we'll use our existing early voting training next slide additionally it was it was within the scope of the committee to make recommendations about potential early voting locations and from our feedback that we received we suggested two additional early voting sites ten days before the election I'm sorry three additional early voting sites ten days before the election so these wouldn't run as long as the full early voting but we approached specifically Ellisville Town Hall the IU Center on representative government which is across from the IMU and the Monroe County Public Library Southwest branch as potential locations for additional early voting so once again this is not required by the plan but this is something that we also suggest next slide okay so the report is available on the Monroe County Election Board's website so if you go to the election boards website you can look at it there next slide and I hope that's the right cue anyway including the report is it's long because it has the required compliance checklist so showing that we understand all the ramifications of the choices we made and that we're knowledgeable about the topic as a county it also has the required vote center floor plans of all 29 locations we also are required to include the number of vote centers and the location of each of all the vote centers which are currently all the current locations in terms of it we also got additional feedback on vote centers as well as recommendations of the committee all right next slide just for context and I think that's important I asked Kylie to get us polling sites over time in Monroe County just to give you an idea of how much they vary so as we've gone into as little as nine in 2019 to as much as 35 in recent areas just to give people an idea that there are fluctuations in terms of is it a city election and not a county election is are there are there uncontested races in terms of it those sorts of things affect the financing of this as well is how many locations are needed in a particular year so once again this is the steps so today we're doing the public hearing to open the draft for public comment and then people have until Monday May 19th to when we to either express to the election board through written feedback I'm going to show you guys a link to a form where you can do that as well as you can write the election board etc next slide all right so everyone should have the QR code on their little pamphlet that they got but that has a link to a Google form which is how we're gathering a bit of the public comment so some of the questions it asks are simple questions such as do you support vote centers yes or no what changes do you have for the current plan and then also a question about if you had a chance to vote in any location would you vote closer to work closer to home closer etc so for example I myself work at IU and if given the chance I would probably usually in the areas between 8 and 6 p.m. I'm usually at work so not that whole time in terms of it but it would be easier for me to vote while at work then in my then in on the north side of Bloomington where I live normally so you can also write election central that's on your card as well so last slide okay so the election the second election hearing and election board vote is Monday May 19th 530 p.m. in the not to you Hill courtroom and before I give up the mic I just want to say what a delight it is to have this many people interested in voting in terms of it we have been working on this for a long time and it has and especially for the the committee it's been kind of a long slog and so it's really I think a delight have this many people interested in invested so thank you all for coming and and hearing about the proposed vote center plan okay thank you any questions before we go on we'll just go on and we're here to hear for the public so we're not going to pontificate and I'm sure we could fill up two hours worth of questions just from the board but we're not going to do that tonight so as we said if you want to provide public comment we ask that you if you're online raise your hand virtually or come to the podium sign in and you will have three minutes I also welcome any questions - okay we have someone online why don't we do that why we wait for a person to come up can we I think that might be the mayor Katie it is the mayor I'm here are you ready for me to begin yes please okay this is mayor Carrie Thompson and I want to first express my gratitude to the committee that put the study together one of our greatest challenges in today's world is getting participation especially from voices and people who frequently get left out of decision making and as I have gone door-to-door knocking to get input from people within the city about what we're doing in city government not to gain their vote just to get their input many many people are telling me they don't vote because they it's it's inconvenient and they think their voices aren't heard and the work of this committee moving towards vote centers really alleviates a lot of friction for voting people can go during the work day during the school day to the place that's most convenient for them and it eliminates a lot of the confusion as as has already been stated today so this is clearly not a party issue I think that getting a getting vote centers especially out in the county will get many of the rural voices to the table to to cast their ballots and so I really encourage the election board to consider this carefully and and vote in favor of these vote centers thanks so much for all your work okay thank you we have someone at the podium and I've been thinking about voting for a long long time I can we moved here from Michigan in 1964 and at that time Michigan like most of the states around us had longer voting hours we have one of the shortest voting hour days in the country and and that doesn't help so people have to have to be there by in the more early in the morning and can't can't be there later than six o'clock that makes a very short voting day in any distance that one has to travel during that day makes it longer time it makes it more difficult for many people so that doesn't make any sense to me the first people that I who were talking about this was the wife of the former governor governor Frank O'Bannon and Mrs. O'Bannon was a strong supporter of voting centers and it seems that that was a good idea 30 40 50 years ago it's a good idea now and right now I think we're living at a time when voting is extremely important every vote has to count because we have a difficult human experience that we're going through here so my my support for this is full full-throated and full-hearted and hope that we can get around to the point where we're reasonable about what we're doing and recognize the need for for making it easy for people to vote because voting is the thing that we're going to have to get through the next few years with and we're going to have to make choices for not only our lives but the lives of our children and our grandchildren that for me it's a matter of civil common sense there's so many things are and I urge you to support this thank you my name is Tracy Yovanovich and we moved here from Seattle about six years ago which I'll just say the mail-in votes were fantastic but that's another story I appreciate everything that you guys have done at the Center Voting Center I've voted there every time it's smooth it's easy it's fantastic but most importantly I have a father who's 85 and our youngest son who's 19 I can make sure both of them get to the voting center and I don't have to worry about the schedules because it's nightmare trying to match it at the polling center so I think it's very important that we have them and we make it available to as many people as possible thank you my name is Michelle Higgs thank you so much for the work that you're doing last year I ran for House district 60 and my district included Monroe Morgan and Johnson counties and both Morgan and Johnson have vote centers and the experience that I saw particularly in Morgan County was that when the lines got too heavy in one area they would actually call and find out oh there's room there's you know no lines over in this vote center and people within go and so it just it flowed really well as a matter of fact we started to kind of make jokes that there needs to be an app like the great clips where it's like only five minute waiting at this vote center but then the other thing is and I'm glad that it was mentioned about early voting because that is Monroe County's experience of a vote center and so in my family I picked up my parents my brother arrived my husband was with me and we all voted as a family and it actually became the celebration together of celebrating democracy and also again me voting as a candidate that was a unique thing but I just want to name that to me I don't see a problem with vote centers I personally live in Benton one which is just north of Unionville and so being in a rural area and finding myself downtown it would be wonderful to have those options so thank you hi I'm Isabelle Piedmont Smith I sit on the Bloomington City Council born and raised here in Bloomington and I have worked at the polls a few times and I've also heard from other acquaintances who have worked at the polls and there are always people who come to polling sites because it's close to where they work or especially IU students close to campus and then they're turned away because they're at the wrong polling site and it gets very frustrating for them they've waited in a long line only to find out that they are not in the right location and then sometimes they don't have time to go to the right location so especially for a college town I think it's very important to have voting centers to make it easier for students to vote but across the board I think it makes it easier for anybody to vote and therefore I urge you to support voting centers my name is Vaughn Welch thank you for a couple moments of your time I'm going to largely echo my friend Isabelle's comments I've had the honor of volunteering at the vote centers to be honest the largest problem was people forgetting their driver's license and a little scanner things and having getting back to them following that it was people showing up at the wrong center sometimes just confusing it with one across the street literally in our case and then giving them the best directions and hoping that they had the time and the schedule and the forthrightness to find the right place so they can vote so I want to thank the vote center committee for their work and urge us all to give this serious consideration thank you hi my name is Daniel Jenkins speaking today in support of vote centers I was a I was in charge of voter registration for an organization on campus for two years and I just want to say that the current system is really confusing for a lot of students especially want to point out that not every dorm on campus gets to vote at the IMU so students who don't have a car they don't ever leave campus on most days are not able to vote on campus and it really drives down turnout for students I also grew up in Tippecanoe County where we did have vote centers over the years I voted with my mom multiple times at multiple different locations and I just think it's a lot better and a lot simpler thank you my name is Matt Caldy like Michelle I had the unique experience of getting to vote for myself in the primary election this go-around I voted early so this didn't really affect me but as an anxious candidate on primary election day I kind of bounced around between polling places trying to engage with voters and I spent a lot of late afternoon until when polls closed at the Sherwood Oaks location and I'm pretty confident that more people went in and came out and said I'm in the wrong place then came out with a sticker I know one individual not from that location but who I learned the next day had went to a wrong location and just gave up and went home so that means we lost at least at least one voter who I know personally so I think that voting centers would be a great solution to that just make life a little bit easier on everyone who may not be prepared or might not have a plan or might not have voted early so I'm strongly in favor of vote centers thank you for your time hang on one second we have somebody online why don't we go to the next person that has her hand up online here and identify yourself once you become unmuted okay yes hello my name is Madeleine Meldrum I am a graduate student at IU I've lived here for about two years now and I also want to speak in favor of having voting centers similar to some of the other people who have spoken it would be much more convenient for me to be able to vote in a place near my near my work because that is where I spend most of the day and also I think it's important to keep in mind people who have limited mobility and who you know may have a hard time getting to their designated voting center or even figuring out where it is they may not have the resources to look that up and so I think that for the sake of being inclusive all members of our community as well as just making it more convenient for some of us I'm strongly in favor of voting centers hi my name is Tanner Branham I am currently chair of the young Democrats of Monroe County and I've been a volunteer here locally for local candidates for several years while volunteering I always volunteer at polling locations and without fail every time I volunteer to polling locations there are multiple people who are turned away because they've showed up at the wrong wrong location many of these people are very crunched for time you know they might be trying to vote after work or on a lunch break or and you know having those people being told that they're at the wrong location and they have to drive across the county to get to the correct polling location it yeah it can just hurt a lot of people's you know their voting rights so yeah I just strongly urge you to support those centers thank you very much I just like to thank everybody here thanks for the committee that did the research my name is Nancy Goswami and I have worked the early voting several cycles and I've also worked election day several cycles in various capacities and various responsibilities and it's very disheartening when we have someone coming 10 minutes before the polls close and then have to tell them that they're at the wrong polling sites and there have been times when I've had voters come in that have disability I mean ability challenges and have to tell them that they're at the wrong polling site also most important is if this is approved and we do go to voting centers I still think that it's imperative that we make sure that the voters know where the voting centers are send out cards you know maybe even send out emails phone calls because they still need to know where to go to vote and I've had you know make sure that they know where the vote about the centers are thank you good evening Eric spoon more greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce just wanted to come here tonight first thank each of you for your service to Monroe County I know it's a big sacrifice but also want to register the Chamber of Commerce is full throw to support for vote centers you know we've seen this as a proven model in other counties across the state of Indiana so we don't see this as a blue versus red issue but something that just works we know that we have challenges with voter turnout we would like to see that and I think the chamber has for a very long time advocated for stronger voter participation in primary elections as well as general elections and we see this as a way of making that happen too as a former County Council member I know very well the costs of elections and how expensive that can be for taxpayers and so you know I really do see this and I think on behalf of our 865 member organizations it's important that we look at ways to be efficient and save on you know certain cost of taxpayers for services so again very supportive of this we're a membership organization of over 865 members businesses in the community employers and would urge your support for it thank you my name is Ashley Kierberg and thank you for your guys's consideration in this one thing I wanted to speak on as I worked on a campaign and to see the vote centers flowing very nicely it was very nice to see that what I noticed where I live is there is a lot of people in the rural areas who do not get off work at 5 530 and when they are rushing to Unionville school they are getting there at 550 555 and by the time they get out of their car they're already having to be turned away you see them you see the rush it's 6 o'clock they got there too late and that rush that could have been avoided if they were to a whole you know near their workplace there's people who whether they work at MCC or they work for the IU many of them from the rural areas are working in town and so it would be amazing to see that flow nicely me and my neighbor actually don't vote in the same area so she votes one way I won't vote the other and I think that would be really nice to flow that way that I've seen work thanks thank you hello my name is Anishka Pandey I'm this year's IU Democrats president so I wanted to speak a little bit about the student perspective as has been mentioned so far first off I want to thank the vote center committee for all of their work I think this is a really important topic and I'm glad we have the chance to talk about it publicly so not sure how many people are aware of this but in November on Election Day we had a particular mess on IU's campus at the IMU it was mentioned earlier but not all of campus even those in student housing are voting at the IMU and that information is pretty hard to dispel universally with everything else that's going on in students lives and so it was misinformation that led to further or whether it volunteer or not it was misinformation that led to a lot of student vote students not being able to vote in between their busy schedules and during classes student voting as we all know is already spectacularly low we don't need to make it any more difficult and in fact we can make it a lot easier by implementing vote centers I've also done a lot of voter registration work and one of the things that you hear most often is that people don't know how they're gonna get to the polls and often write off voting because of that if we implement vote centers they can vote right on campus the IMU is something that is a place that's all obviously very busy and people are very familiar with it that makes it a lot easier from the student perspective we're eliminating a barrier and it can be done really easily as it's been done in 65 other counties so I'm in strong support of those centers thank you thank you we're gonna go to the person who has their hand up online we can unmute them and just state your name hello everyone my name is Jada um can you hear me okay yes thank you okay my name is Jada and I'm a senior at IU like witness after witnessing the frustration of students unable to vote in one of the most important presidential elections last year I understand firsthand the importance of securing vote centers as previously mentioned by other speakers not all students are allowed to vote at the more central location of the Indiana Memorial Union and often do not have cars or timely transportation to transport them to and from their voting location in order to make it back in time for class extracurriculars meetings etc I've been following the hard work and progress of the vote center committee over the past year and like a majority of the speakers tonight I'm in favor of implementing both centers thank you thank you good evening election board my name is Trent Deckard I am a member of the Monroe County Council and at-large member and I'm pleased to represent all parts of the county and all constituents I actually want to speak not as a county council member but I want to speak as a citizen who actually used to work at the state in election administration the clerk and I did some time together I spent some time as co-director of the state election division it's a bipartisan agency that models really how elections should work much like an election board does and our poll workers do I want to make just a couple quick comments based on some of my experience and I'm gonna watch my time because folks that follow council know I can be long-winded when I get fired up but anytime I hear that folks are turned away from the polls or they're struggling at the polls I get a lot of heartbreak in a country this good in a country with this many plaques on our lawn for folks that have gone and and served overseas against fascism and dictators and and many of them did not come home and we could list their names but we don't have time to honor them in that way anytime I hear that folks are turned away from the polls on something that we could reasonably fix I think we need to fix it and I followed a vote centers for a number of years when I was co-director it was new back then under Indiana law and one of the things that that law allows you to do is an election board is a lot you can really zero the polling sites down to almost nothing or you can maximize them to reach voters where they're at my urge to you as you think about this is to think where people currently vote and think about expanding the convenience of where they currently vote so that a first person that enjoys voting at the fire station in Ellsville can vote at the fire station in Ellsville but they also can get off work wherever they're working and they can find that location some counties start talking about reducing locations and I would encourage you to think about the robust number of locations so that we're adding to the ability of people to engage where they live whether it be Unionville or whether it be downtown Bloomington now in my council hat we will be tasked with figuring out those dollars and I know I'm probably not pleasing anyone in that kind of end particularly with constraints from the state before counties to do it right they have to think hard about how people get to those polls and again when we get stories of people turned away or people cannot vote I think it gets pretty difficult to swallow when we have all these things that we do so I look forward to seeing the plan as it continues to emerge and hope that if a vote center plan passes it's robust enough to serve the county in the way that it should so people reassure thank you , thank you. , go ahead sorry. My name is Carrie Nesbit I've worked early voting since 2020 and I question I love the idea of the vote centers fantastic all for it I do question whether we need three early voting centers open ten days before every election because there are some elections where I'm being paid to read a book because maybe it's a primary maybe it's you know there's not a lot on the ballot so I just maybe look at whether or not we have that extra ten days at three locations for every election because maybe we don't need it. Hi my name is Cedar Cohen and I have worked several different elections always downtown at election operations and by far the biggest challenge that we have is people coming in not realizing that on Election Day not everybody can vote there again and then you get a mishmash of people who are either mad and turn around walk out and say I'm never going to vote again people who have time to go to their location so they do and the people who don't have time so I am completely in favor of this I feel as everyone else does every vote counts and we're consistently losing a lot by people not understanding that election operations isn't for everyone on Election Day if for some reason this doesn't pass which I hope is not the case then I do hope also that we communicate better to the community that election operations it's only for specific precincts on Election Day I don't know that we've done the greatest job of that and that would be something I would recommend thank you thank you let's go to one of the speakers online hi my name is Hopi Stasberg and I would also like to add another voice in support of vote centers I moved here to Bloomington about 11 years ago almost and I moved here from Wayne County Indiana which was actually an early adopter of vote centers and it worked and when I left there they were kind of on the early end of figuring it out and it was not probably as smooth as it could have been but there's a fair amount of elections under the belts of many of these counties that have implemented vote centers and we can learn a lot from them and I think that it can be implemented and really smooth and positive ways to allow more people to vote as multiple other commenters have already mentioned I also experienced on election day a couple of years ago people rushing in at maybe 545 going I hope I'm in the right place and coming out a couple of couple minutes later going yeah I'm not in the right place and I don't have time to get there now and that's just always really disheartening because you know you want everybody to be able to vote who wants to vote so I hope that you implement vote senators that I hope that in doing so you know we reach out to all those other counties that also do it here in Indiana to make the transition as smooth as possible for voters of Monroe County thank you thank you we have another hand on up online when we go to is now exiting hi my name is Andrew Hodges I'm a junior at IU and I did some of the get out the vote stuff on I use campus and I just wanted to speak in favor of vote centers I agree with all the reasons given by the other student speakers about how it would make voting more accessible for students see I just want to say thank you for the work that the committee has done thanks thank you we have other public comment online or in the room people shut up and you don't want to talk oh we have another person online once you're unmuted will you just state your name before you began can we unmute the person who has her hand up online you're unmuted miss all of that okay well why we contemplate that oh here we go I think I got it figured out thank you okay that's that's my dog speaking in favor of those centers now my name is Erica Oliphant I have lived here in Monroe County for 26 years I have been serving as your prosecuting attorney for six years and I would just echo the overwhelming support for vote centers I have a tendency to vote downtown on early voting because it is more convenient for me to be closer to my resident or sorry to my workplace and to my residents and I have to squeeze it in and my busy day as everybody else does so I think it's a great idea to have these vote centers where people can go to the most convenient location and get hopefully in and out easily so thank you so much everyone for your hard work on this and thank you for taking the time to listen to all of us I appreciate it thank you anyone else online that wants to make a public comment all right seeing now we'll bring it back to the room we have a couple more it looks like great my name is Perry Robinson and I've lived here all my life and my question is have we did a mileage there's people living Gossport Indiana that vote here do you know the mileage it takes from them to get where they live and where they vote which is on believe it's Dunsville Road it's a lot of mileage my question is where are we going to put the vote centers if we get vote centers where will be the closest one for those people or will it move into town because those people are I don't know last person I talked to was 89 years old and they have a hard way of getting around but they still vote and they know where to vote so I guess my question would be and I'm I'm gonna be honest am I for no am I against it no I'm for everybody wanting to vote and we have elders that live in rural areas and gospel it is it's it's in our voting and it's a long ways away and I emailed you guys I don't know it's been a while that question never heard back mileage is a big thing right I mean I believe Steinsville is yeah the Lions Club is where this person votes and I know what they drive now and it's a pretty good distance to get there let alone the distance to get wherever the vote center will be and if it's going to be there so it'd be a good question a just a nice answer to find out exactly where these vote centers are going to be placed and if they're ever going to move those vote centers or will those vote centers stay there because if you go to other counties those vote centers do move I don't live in the city of Bloomington I live in a rural area and I just think there's real people would like to know those questions too so I appreciate it if you can get me an answer back I'd love to know thank you yeah I just want to answer that in the current plan it would be the Steinsville Lions Club again it would be the location so if you put themselves in the report and it's a great question that's one of the reasons why we we we did more rural areas such as Unionville to get feedback on that and yes so so Steinsville would be the most look locust area and I will say as a person on that committee I'm a very data driven person and some of those areas such as Burgund don't have very big turnout but I do see the reason to have one in every single one of the townships even if data is not avail does not really from a financial perspective justify those particular locations and I think that's something that the committee is kind of returned to over and over again it is a good point once the vote center plan is created it can then be adjusted yearly by unanimous vote of the election board so a really great example of a change that will probably be coming to this in 2027 which I was talking to one of my co-committee members is so we we have 29 currently planned for the midterms but in 27 it will be a city election and so obviously it would be confusing for voters to have vote centers in the county since they wouldn't be able to vote in those elections so we may if we only did vote center locations that were in the city that would be of Ellitsville or then we would we would have 26 that year so that would lead to a change in terms of it but I think that's a great point I do think that we have a much bigger county than just Bloomington and there's a lot of room in terms of it and and I do appreciate your comment hello I'm Liz vital with a and I'm current County Council at large and just got caucused in January of this year I also come with a different hat on for about ten years I was the voter service chair for the League of Women Voters of Bloomington Monroe County have some experience there with voting and working with elections but I think the question I have at this point and I don't know if it's in the report somewhere else or if someone can answer it at this point and that is that there are other counties who have had vote centers occur and I would like to know if they experienced an increase in voter turnout when they occur when those vote centers took place did they did those counties experience a turnout increase I think that would be good information to have and I don't know if you have that but I think that merits really if it is and then I think that that's a really winning argument you know if you have success at what you're doing and it achieves the goal you're after I think that that says something so I'd be interested to know that thank you we do have that information go ahead so I I'm gonna be I was just looking up this and in prep for this meeting and so just to say once again I'm a librarian I'm a data person in terms of it so you have to really convince me for a noticeable change in terms of it and I did I did I do want to say that there has been an analysis by Tippecanoe County of comparison of themselves pre-vote centers and post-vote centers and they did see an increase in turnout and it and it and that increase in turnout also happened with rural voters as well as I forget their particular thing but more like differently abled voters now I'm critical of that because the two elections that they compared are 2004 and 2008 which makes me think that there were also other things going on between those two different years that led to some historic turnout in terms of this so I just I just don't so so to answer your question yes a study has been conducted and and it did show an increase in turnout and a rather substantive increase in turnout but I think there are other factors that were affecting those two historic elections but I guess I will say also speaking as the election and then the the the Monroe County Vote Center committee is I I definitely am aware that that too much of an increase in turnout I think it I think I want there to be lots of increase in turnout but I also I also think there are larger issues that affect the ways that people vote such as in here in Indiana are our voting times have a strong effect in the lack lack of note no excuse the voting so I think those really affected and so I think it's harder to get a really big difference in terms of that that being said one more thing I do think that those who have have have seen an increase in turnout on Election Day so so though obviously here in Monroe County we have a real shift in our voting towards early voting so I don't know if we would see the same shift to people to Election Day that's that's a very long-winded answer to say yes but I have thoughts in terms of it and I could tell that Nicole was trying to jump in in terms of it did you have some thoughts as the clerk my thoughts were about the previous comment and I was wondering how many Gossport addresses fall on the Monroe County line if Gossport largely lies in Owen County oh it's gospel do you see what I'm saying yeah so there may be a few addresses just as there are a few Bloomington addresses that are actually in Brown County how many of the of the Gossport addresses actually fall on the Monroe County side of the line and for our 89 year old voter to whom he was referred we're not nothing's taking away the other areas to vote so if you're 89 and you can't come to a polling site we will send travel board to you the board has voted to send to hospitals outside of Monroe County if you want to vote on Election Day and you can't make it because you are infirm or any that that tends I don't know a time that we've turned it down except for were they in Chicago we didn't go to Chicago because that travel board that's all they would have done done is gone up and I have a comment for the end I want to hear everybody else's comments in terms of the increase in voter turnout I have something to say about that thank you hey do you have any other public comment seeing none then we'll bring it back to the board I was just gonna say I assume that means then you're gonna we're gonna be wrapping this up I was on the phone earlier today we had the executive board had a call with a vendor and so after the meeting I reached out to the president about something else and I just made a comment I didn't ask pro against anything I just made a comment that we had a public meeting tonight on vote centers and she said this is one of my clerk's siblings it's seriously the best thing since buttered bread she said we never had an inch of trouble or regret and she said voters love emphasizing the word love that they don't get turned away from being at the wrong polling location it reduces frustration and it reduces provisional voting and so I asked her if I could quote her today because especially for my IU students I love you we had a significant number of IU students who tried to vote at the Union and they were not successful I want to be clear publicly that was not any doing of the Monroe County Election Board or my office we believe that there was a third what do I want to say club organization something that kind of but it themselves up to our people and gave out wrong information letting those students think that they could bring their ballots down to election central and that we had nothing to do that with that we don't know who that organization was or why they would give out that misinformation I am so very sorry that that happened but I just want you to know that that had nothing to do with the clerk's office or the Monroe County Election Board thank you I do want to make a comment about the provisional ballot hearing day on our provisional ballot daily hearing day we had 390 provisional ballots that we reviewed 300 of which of those were from the IMU alone and 280 of them were just solely from being at the wrong location and the other 20 were for not being registered voters in Monroe County or Indiana see no other correct so on provisional day any ballots that were casted at the incorrect location cannot be accepted just a reminder that we'll have our second hearing May 19th members of the public are encouraged if they're so inclined to comment on the proposal prior to the 19th you can either do it electronically with the online form or send your comments to election central I think as we move this forward I think there are a couple of questions that or a couple of points we'll want to emphasize I know that the committee referenced that the current plan with 29 precincts ensures that there's a vote center in every township does it require that there's a vote center in every township or it's just part of the plan but we can amend the plan at this level right the other thing that I was interested in is that you know the elephant in the room that we haven't talked about is fiscal impact and while it's councilmember Decker reference in his comments that's kind of the responsibility of the County Council but the election board is charged with putting together budgets for the administration elections too so I think we'll want to have that information prior to us taking a formal vote on on this and and I mentioned this at a previous meeting just think that's going to be important to know for all of us to be able to vote up or down I don't think our primary responsibility as an election board is on the cost side of things but we do have an obligation to you know put together those numbers for others so I think it would be hard to vote for something without having a reasonable us and with that I you know the bells are tolling so I think that's probably a cue here but I really appreciate everyone coming to today's hearing for all of you who participated thank you for your input in the room or and online and we will look forward to continuing to receive input up until the hearing on May 19th thank you all (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music)