11062018 - NEWS ARTICLES - INVESTIGATION OF PORTER COUNTY ELECTION

NEWS ARTICLES - INVESTIGATION OF PORTER COUNTY ELECTION

Porter commissioners provide update on election investigation
NWI Times
December 14, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/porter-commissioners-provide-update-on-election-investigation/article_8f4bef1d-bc1b-5821-9280-98d82027d1ff.html

VALPARAISO — As a variety of state agencies investigate the troubled Porter County election in November, some local officials are hoping to educate residents on the election responsibilities.

"The commissioners’ office has also been advised that an independent investigation into the Porter County general election breakdown has been launched by the Indiana Secretary of State’s Election Division in coordination with the Indiana State Police and Indiana State Board of Accounts. The commissioners’ office will fully cooperate with the election division, state board of accounts and state police, including providing complaints, emails and other correspondence received that pertain to the election, and urges all other officials to do the same," Porter County Commissioners Jeff Good, R-Center, Laura Blaney, D-South and Jim Biggs, R-North, stated in a news release Friday.

The statement also said the commissioners will not comment about the investigation while it is pending.

The November election was marred by a variety of problems, including a lack of poll workers, which delayed the opening of a dozen election sites causing those sites to be open past the traditional 6 p.m. voting deadline. That led to issues with provisional votes and a three-day delay in announcing election results.

Biggs said the commissioners wanted to give the public an update on the situation, letting residents know an investigation is underway.

Commissioners met with the FBI following the election and called for the resignation of Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, who many held responsible for the election problems. Martin's term expires Dec. 31. She was defeated in her effort to gain the Porter County auditor's seat during the election last month.

In addition, Biggs and Blaney said the second part of the release, a 19-page presentation titled "The Election Process: Roles & Responsibilities," was put together as an educational tool. The presentation can be found at porterco.org/DocumentCenter/View/5289.

"We felt that many of the residents calling us, voters or even the poll workers didn't know who has the responsibility in the election," Biggs said. "There were certainly a lot of questions people had."

"For me, the main reason was that very few people realize how elections work in Porter County," said Blaney, adding some of the issues which arose last month have to be addressed and people need to know how the system works.

"Knowledge is power," she said.

Late absentee ballots, early voting errors and lack of staff among red flags preceding 'chaos' of Porter County election
Chicago Tribune
November 30, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-election-changes-st-1202-story.html

Sundae Schoon, the Republican director in Porter County’s voter registration office, started worrying about how the county’s midterm general election was being handled in late September.

“There was such an influx of (requests for) absentee ballots coming in,” she said, adding there were only two people in Clerk Karen Martin’s office to handle them.

By the Saturday before the Nov. 6 election, her concerns grew deeper, because the suitcases for precinct inspectors weren’t ready to be picked up. Many inspectors pick up the supplies that day if they can’t get them the day before the election.

She began to wonder.

“If that’s not ready, what else isn’t?” she said, adding she called David Bengs, president of the election board, about the suitcases and he directed her to do whatever needed to be done to get them ready.

That was just one of many problems county and party officials said preceded an Election Day that became a whirlwind of chaos, as poll workers couldn’t get into polls, two court hearings were held to keep late-opening polls open, and poll workers waited long hours for absentee ballots that had never been sorted to arrive.

The ensuring few days brought an effort to count the 18,562 absentee ballots; a protest in front of the county administration building with demands for votes to be counted; calls for an assortment of investigations into how the election was handled, including to the FBI; and a three-day wait for preliminary election results that was capped with calls for Martin, a Republican, to resign for her mishandling of the election. She refused.

Officials attribute the breakdown in the county’s electoral process to a number of factors, including reassurances from Martin that her office could handle the election, a lack of communication with the election board, and an election that was wanting in one of its most basic of needs – workers to answer calls, handle absentee ballots, and usher voters through the polls.

Martin declined to answer a series of questions about the handling of the election posed to her by the Post-Tribune via email. She is finishing her second term as clerk and, under state statute, could not seek another term. Martin made an unsuccessful run for auditor.

Past elections and staffing
The voter registration office handled elections until March when, with a 2-1 vote along party lines, the election board voted to move elections to the clerk’s office. The switch came after Kathy Kozuszek, Democratic director in voter registration, said that office handling the elections, which it had done for decades, ran afoul of state law and she wouldn’t do it any more.

Once responsibilities for the election moved to the clerk’s office, two people from voter registration, one Democrat and one Republican, also shifted to the clerk’s office, Schoon said.

Primary turnout, at just over 14 percent, was typically low and didn’t prepare the office for the general election.

“I think it was just overwhelming and unexpected because the primary was so slow,” Schoon said, adding turnout for the general election hit almost 53 percent.

Through the payroll before Election Day, Auditor Vicki Urbanik said, the election board had spent 43 percent of its personnel budget for the year

Martin has said the county’s 123 precincts required 615 poll workers for Election Day; 471 workers were in place for the general election this year, based on payroll data provided to Urbanik.

Additionally, Sheriff David Reynolds has said that he typically provided between six and eight deputies to deliver sorted absentee ballots to the precincts to be counted at the end of the day. Martin only requested four, and the ballots were never ready for pickup.

“There was an assumption made that there was sufficient staff. There was an assumption made there was contact with the sheriff and poll workers,” said J.J. Stankiewicz, the election board’s lone Democrat. “We never received a call that anything was amiss.”

Bengs, who with Martin serves as the two Republicans on the board, said the election board’s role is to serve as a watchdog for the election process, but the actual handling of the election and delegation of duties was by the clerk.

“We didn’t receive any request (from Martin) that there was additional staff needed. We could have done that, gone to the council, and they would have provided it for us,” Bengs said.

The county council never got such a request, said Vice President Jeremy Rivas, D-2nd, who was on the ballot unopposed for a third term in office. He and Councilman Dan Whitten, D-At large, joined commissioners in calling for Martin’s resignation.

When the council started hearing there were needs for the election, Rivas said, “we were moving to have the matter before the council but we were told everything was fine.”

Red flags
Certainly before election night, when poll inspectors and judges flooded the lower level of the county administration building to drop off ballots, officials other than Schoon began to sense there were problems building.

On Oct. 24, on the steps of the county administration building, Valparaiso attorney Jim Harper, a Democrat who made an unsuccessful bid for Secretary of State, held a news conference listing concerns about the election, including voters not receiving absentee ballots in a timely fashion and poll workers who were still waiting on their Election Day assignments.

Days later, on Oct. 27, the ballots of more than 100 voters cast at an early voting site in Portage were not properly initialed by two poll workers. While the number of ballots fluctuated over time, the snafu generated an emergency meeting by the election board and a preliminary decision to reach out to as many of those voters as possible and ask them to recast their ballots during early voting.

On Halloween, the election board again met to discuss the matter in a meeting that degenerated into a shouting match. Stankiewicz tried unsuccessfully to pass a resolution that the ballots be counted as-is instead of having people come back in.

“I realized it was becoming chaos,” said Whitten, who, like several other officials, attended the meeting, which he said descended into “screaming and a blame game.”

Still concerned about the staffing for the election, one of the issues brought up at the meeting, Whitten said that, “even after that, we reached out and said do you have what you need.”

Rivas and Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, said in the days before the election, there was a lot of “noise” coming out of the voter registration office, but it seemed to be the usual concerns about finding poll workers.

“It was normal noise, normal politics,” Rivas said.

At 10 p.m. the night before the election, Blaney got a text from someone she knows who signed up as a poll worker but still didn’t know where to go on Election Day.

“It was one person, and it’s hard to get things perfect,” Blaney said. “Even then, I didn’t have major alarm.”

By the morning of the election, Blaney, Rivas and many others throughout the county knew there were significant problems. In all, voting places for 13 precincts opened late because poll workers couldn’t get into buildings or not enough workers showed up. One polling place opened 2½ hours late. Two court hearings followed to keep 12 of those polls open a full 12 hours.

Because elections aren’t under the purview of commissioners, Blaney said she had a “really helpless felling” as the scene unfolded.

“We are not set up in any way to solve that problem,” she said. “Once all the polls were open, I breathed a sigh of relief but that didn’t last very long.”

The night of the election it became increasingly apparent that almost 19,000 absentee ballots were not going to be counted at the voters’ precincts of origin. Bengs consulted with Stankiewicz and Ethan Lowe, the election board’s attorney, to figure out what to do, since Martin wasn’t at the county administration building.

“At that point, we had to try to conduct the election and the count the best we could with what we were dealt,” he said.

In the ensuing three days, the election board and commissioners provided ongoing updates on when preliminary results might be released. That occurred around noon on Nov. 9. As per state statute, the election board certified the results on Nov. 16, 10 days after the election, after spending more than 3½ hours going through provisional ballots.

Call for investigation
Throughout the week of the election, a growing number of officials called for an assortment of investigations.

Commissioners brought in the FBI to determine whether the election merited an investigation. Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, said then that the potential violations of election law included the chain of custody for ballots brought in from polling places.

Commissioners also called on the Secretary of State’s office to investigate, and for that agency to contact the Indiana State Police. The Valparaiso Democratic Committee asked for an independent investigation, and the Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union was contacted, too.

“We started to get a lot of calls with people concerned about voter suppression, voter fraud, the big items that take away from the integrity of the election. We felt the need to call an agency that would investigate that. For me, calling the FBI was all about restoring faith in the election,” Blaney said.

Stankiewicz doesn’t suspect the investigations will turn up criminal activity.

“It was total unpreparedness and a lack of knowledge of what’s involved in holding an election. There’s no standard operating procedure for handling an election. There’s no checklist to be checked off,” he said.

The clerk’s office was set up for failure in handling the election from the beginning, sad Jeff Chidester, chair of the county’s Democratic Party, questioning whether anyone had proof that something criminal took place.

“It was sloppy work, incompetence, stubbornness – those are not criminal acts,” he said.

A way forward
Democrat Jessica Bailey takes over as clerk at the start of the new year and officials said she will play a large part in determining how elections are handled going forward.

Candidate filing for the county’s municipal elections starts in January, and officials also have pledged to buy new voting equipment, again with Bailey’s input, so it can get a dry run of sorts next year before the presidential election kicks into gear in 2020.

“I think the duties are very important. Whether or not it’s our office is not clear yet,” she said, adding that decision also will rest with the council and commissioners.

It’s up to the incoming clerk and the election board to determine what the best format for handling the election is, Porter County Republican Party Chair Michael Simpson said, adding he thinks it should stay with the clerk’s office, under a new system.

Rivas said he is encouraged by Bailey, who comes to the office without any baggage, to look at the vehicle that runs the election.

“It needs to be rebuilt,” he said. “Maybe good will come out. I hate to see a voter or a candidate go through this, but maybe this was the only way to get things in line.”












Lawsuit claims Porter County election chaos caused by retaliation
NWI Times
November 29, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/lawsuit-claims-porter-county-election-chaos-caused-by-retaliation/article_787dcf2b-4fe0-5f44-85dd-ba79b2c9265f.html

HAMMOND — Retaliation against a county employee could be at the base of this year's election debacle in Porter County, according to a federal lawsuit.

Kathy Kozuszek, the Democrat representative in the Porter County Voter Registration Office, has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court claiming her fight for overtime pay led to the voter registration office being stripped of its responsibilities to run elections. Instead, she contends, the responsibility was put into the hands of the Porter County clerk.

Kozuszek names the county, Porter County Election Board, Porter County Clerk Karen Martin and Porter County Election Board Chairman David Bengs as defendants in the lawsuit.

"As a result of the retaliatory transfer to the Porter County Clerk, the November 2018 election in Porter County was a well-publicized embarrassment, with several Porter County officials attributing the mismanagement of the election to defendant Martin and her lack of experience in conducting an election. In fact, several county officials called for Martin's immediate resignation," reads the filing by Kozuszek's attorney, Ivan E. Bodensteiner, of Valparaiso.

In the lawsuit, Kozuszek contends everything was fine until the last quarter of 2016, when the county changed her employee status from "nonexempt" to "exempt" to save the county money. As a "nonexempt" employee, she received overtime.

In February 2018, county attorneys were notified they were in violation of the Federal Labor Standards Act for refusing to pay her overtime for the time she worked over 40 hours each week.

She also contends the action violated the First and 14th amendments.

Less than a month later, according to the lawsuit, the Porter County Election Board, "with encouragement from members of the Porter County Council, took retaliatory action" by transferring election-related duties from her office to that of Martin.

The Nov. 6 Porter County election was plagued with issues, including a lack of poll workers, which caused some polls to open late. A court order opened the polls for the full 12-hour voting period, but that and other issues resulted in vote totals not being released until three days after the election.

Kosuszek is seeking a declaratory judgment against the defendants, compensation for overtime she worked and future overtime, compensatory damages, liquidated damages and punitive damages and costs, including attorney fees. She is also demanding a jury trial in the matter.











Officials: Porter County election director bailed on job before she was removed
NWI Times
November 29, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/officials-porter-county-election-director-bailed-on-job-before-she/article_f98d1920-9d49-523e-a410-9bd8926a2490.html

VALPARAISO — In a December 2017 email, Kathy Kozuszek told officials running elections was "not our job."

"That email made it clear that the voter registration office would no longer be running the elections," said David Bengs, chairman of the Porter County Election Board.

The Election Board soon after moved the responsibility of running elections from the Porter County Voter Registration office, where Kozuszek works, to the Porter County Clerk's office.

In a federal lawsuit filed earlier this week, Kozuszek contends election responsibilities were removed from the voter registration to clerk's office in retaliation for her requesting overtime pay from the county. The request for overtime pay came after the employee status of Kozuszek, the Democrat director in the voter registration office, and Sundae Schoon, the Republican director, was changed from "non-exempt" to "exempt." The change denied the two payment of overtime.

Kozuszek also contends moving the election responsibility to the clerk's office was the direct cause of the problems within the Nov. 6 election, delaying vote counts for about three days.

Kozuszek's attorney, Ivan Bodensteiner, of Valparaiso, said Bengs and others are not interpreting Kozuszek's email correctly.

"It certainly was not a refusal to run the elections. It was not an indication she wouldn't do the job," said Bodensteiner, adding the email does not change the veracity of the lawsuit.

County Council President Andy Bozak, R-1st, agreed with Bengs, saying when the email was forwarded to the County Council he took it as "giving her notice" and she was no longer going to be involved in running elections in the county.

In the email, Kozuszek tells members of the Election Board and the Republican and Democratic Party chairmen that elections in Porter County are being run in violation of state law. She included attachments of state code outlining the responsibilities of both the Election Board and voters registration office.

"Sundae and I have conducted all elections for Porter County operating outside the scope of the law. NO more for me!" Kozuszek writes.

She also suggests the Election Board hire deputy election commissioners in lieu of elections being run by her office. She dissuades the board from giving the authority to the county clerk, which the Election Board did about two months later.

"Make the elections in Porter County legal!  I don't relish the thought of turning potential candidates away from the Voters Registration office when they come in to file for office by sending them to our absent (from any and all elections) clerk, or (Porter County Election Board members) Dave (Bengs) and JJ (Stankiewicz). If the decision is made to ask for Deputy Election Commissioners it must be done soon and in a public meeting per Indiana State Statute," Kozuszek wrote.

Bodensteiner said Kozuszek didn't bring up anything new in the discussion of Porter County elections in the email. Others had raised the same issue of changing who ran elections to comply with state law, several times in the past, but nothing was done then.












Kozuszek files federal complaint for overtime for election work
Chesterton Tribune
November 29, 2018
http://chestertontribune.com/Elections/kozuszek_files_federal_complaint.htm
Democrat Director of Porter County Voter Registration Kathy Kozuszek filed a complaint Tuesday with the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Indiana alleging that Porter County has violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by not compensating her for overtime, according to a court document.

The defendants named in the complaint are Porter County, Porter County Election Board, Porter County Clerk Karen Martin (individually, and in her capacity as the Clerk and a member of the Election Board), and David Bengs (individually and in his capacity as a member of the Election Board).

Background
Kozuszek and her Republican counterpart Sundae Schoon have historically been paid overtime, but on Oct. 1, 2016, they were reclassified from non-exempt employees, who are compensated for overtime in excess of 40 hours per week, to exempt employees, who are not compensated for overtime. The Porter County Council approved one-time raises for Kozuszek and Schoon as a compromise.

Kozuszek made a request to receive overtime pay for hours worked during the 2016 general election through her lawyer, Ivan Bodensteiner, on Feb. 12 of this year.

At a March 8 Election Board meeting, the Board voted 2-1, with Democratic member J.J. Stankiewicz dissenting, to transfer election duties to Martin. Part of Stankiewicz’s dissent was the accusation that the move was blatant retaliation for Kozuszek’s request for overtime pay. Stankiewicz also objected to Martin running the election while she was on the ballot running for County Auditor.

Bengs, at the time, said the move brought Porter County election procedures into compliance with state law, as Porter County was at that time the only County where the Voter Registration office ran elections.

The Complaint
Through her lawyer, Kozuszek’s Nov. 27 complaint alleges that her reclassification was a violation of the FLSA because it was a cost saving measure for the County that came with no change in her duties, which have included for nearly 18 years running the elections in Porter County.

The complaint also alleges that the Porter County Election Board’s decision to transfer election duties to the Clerk was retaliation in response to her request for overtime pay.

The complaint says, “As a result of the retaliatory transfer to the Porter County Clerk, the November 2018 election in Porter County was a well-publicized embarrassment, with several Porter county officials attributing the mismanagement of the election to the defendant Martin and her lack of experience in conducting an election.”

The complaint continues, “In an effort to mitigate the failures of the Porter County Clerk, Kozuszek worked several hours of overtime, and the election results were finally announced around mid-day on November, 9, 2018, several days after the election on November 6, 2018.”

“As a result of the willful, continuing illegal actions of the defendants, Kozuszek has been deprived of compensation to which she is entitled and has suffered mental and emotional distress, as well as physical health problems,” according to the complaint.

Kozuszek seeks relief including: “a declaratory judgment determining that the challenged actions of the defendants violated federal and state law;” “equitable relief requiring the defendants to compensate the plaintiff for the overtime she worked, including statutory penalties, and future overtime;” “compensatory damages and liquidated damages and punitive damages from the individual defendants, in an amount to be determined by the jury;” and costs/attorney fees, according to the complaint.

Poparad holds on to 15 vote lead in final Porter County election results
Chesterton Tribune
November 19, 2018
http://www.chestertontribune.com/Elections/poparad_holds_on_to_15_vote_lead.htm

The Porter County Election Board certified the 2018 General election Friday--no results changed.

The Election Board met and the counting took place in a back room of the Voters Registration office in suite 105 at the County Administration building while a live feed was broadcast to suite 205 for public viewing.

The final count ten days after the election is usually for provisional ballots, but this year it included all votes cast after 6 p.m. at a dozen polling places that opened late on the morning of election day and stayed open past 6 p.m. by court order. In total, 329 of the 342 ballots reviewed Friday were added to the count. The only 13 ballots tossed were absentee ballots mailed and received after the deadline.

The only race close enough to be decided by those votes was the race for the district 1 County Council seat where incumbent Andy Bozak (R) faced a challenge from former Council member Bob Poparad (D). In the unofficial totals released Nov. 9, Poparad had a razor-thin lead of 15 votes over Bozak.

After the final count, both candidates had garnered more votes, but the margin remained the same with Poparad leading Bozak by 15 votes.

“I want to thank my supporters, and I want to thank Andy for running a nice clean campaign. There’s too much negativity in politics,” Poparad said. He was one of few spectators who stayed to watch the process beginning to end--which was 12 p.m. to 3:45 p.m.

Bozak has until Nov. 20 to request a recount, if he goes that route. Local Republican Party Chairman, Michael Simpson could request a recount as late as Nov. 26.

No recount sought in narrow Porter County Council race as Dems prepare to take over
NWI Times
November 19, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/no-recount-sought-in-narrow-porter-county-council-race-as/article_58a96a28-4b3b-5b57-bc1e-f5e806a14946.html

VALPARAISO — Republican Porter County Councilman Andy Bozak said he will not seek a recount in his 15-vote defeat to returning Democratic Councilman Bob Poparad.

"The people of Porter County have been through enough garbage," he said, referring to the delays and other problems with the local midterm election. "I don't know a recount would do anything anyway."

Bozak will have served on the council for two years when he wraps up his term at the year's end. He was elected in January 2017 by party officials to replace Jim Biggs, who had resigned to return to the Porter County Board of Commissioners.

Bozak thanked Poparad for running a clean campaign and said he believes Poparad will do a good job on the council. Bozak said he will remain available to help the council or the public, to whom he gave his cellphone number after taking office.

"It remains out there," he said of his number.

While he plans to seek elected office again at some point, Bozak said he will first offer to serve as an appointment to a county board to continue giving back.

"I want to stay involved and continue to help," he said.

Bozak was serving on the Burns Harbor Town Council when he was elected to the County Council.

Noon Tuesday is the deadline for candidates to file a challenge or recount of the recent midterm election, and party chairs have until noon Nov. 26, said Porter County Election Board President David Bengs.

Now time to figure out what went wrong
Poparad was among the few people who stuck around for the nearly four hours it took Friday afternoon for county election officials to wrap up the final vote from last week's trouble-ridden midterm election.

"I want to thank my supporters and want to thank Andy for running a nice, clean campaign," he said.

Bozak said Friday the race shows every vote does count.

"It couldn't be more true," he said.

Poparad's victory helped Democrats take back control of the County Council.

The final vote count is posted on a link from the county's website at porterco.org.

The final vote count came one week after the initial tally was wrapped up three days late as a result of numerous problems with the election, including 12 polling places opening late, a shortage of poll workers and accusations of mishandled ballots.

Secretary of State Connie Lawson agreed last week to assist Porter County election officials in figuring out what went wrong and put in place processes that ensure future elections run far more smoothly.

Drew Wenger, chairman of the Valparaiso Democratic Committee, said he would prefer an investigation of the local elections by the Indiana State Police. 

"Instead of more political involvement in this chaos, we actually need less," he said. "We need an investigation handled locally by the Indiana State Police branch in Lowell, not by an Indianapolis politician."

The Porter County Board of Commissioners has called on the county election board to seek an investigation into the election by the Indiana Secretary of State's Election Division and Indiana State Police.

The commissioners also have called for the immediate resignation of Republican Election Board member and Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, who has been held largely to blame for the election problems.

Democratic Porter County Council members Dan Whitten and Jeremy Rivas made the same request.

Northwest Indiana county begins counting votes after delay
NWI Times
November 07, 2018
Nov 7, 2018 Updated Nov 7, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/northwest-indiana-county-begins-counting-votes-after-delay/article_4020c0bc-d824-52d8-8d56-e302c865d1b5.html
VALPARAISO, Ind. (AP) — The commissioners in a northwestern Indiana county plagued by a mix of Election Day problems asked the FBI on Wednesday to investigate what they called "scores of alleged violations of Indiana Election Law" reported following Tuesday's election.

Porter County has released no election results, and officials did not begin counting votes until Wednesday morning, more than 15 hours after the first polling places closed. The delay was holding up final election results in three state legislative races, those for House districts 4 and 19 and Senate District 7.

The commissioners' office said in a statement late Wednesday afternoon that the commissioners had asked the FBI to investigate the alleged election violations reported "by poll workers, voters and the public." The commissioners' statement did not specify what those alleged violations involved.

Messages left Wednesday seeking comment from the FBI were not immediately returned.

County Commissioner Laura Blaney said the vote counting delay was caused by several problems, including the need for 12 county polling sites to stay open late Tuesday after those sites failed to open on time. Absentee and early ballots had also not been sorted in a timely fashion Tuesday, she said.

County election board deputies who began counting election ballots sat around folding tables Wednesday in the county's voter registration office in the county seat of Valparaiso, about 15 miles southeast of Gary, The (Northwest Indiana) Times reported.

The commissioners said they have ordered the sheriff's department to guard all of election ballots and to secure the county's election office.

Sundae Schoon, the voter registration office's Republican director, said all votes cast between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesday, as well as absentee ballots and early votes, would be counted Wednesday before any results will be released.

Provisional ballots and those cast after 6 p.m. Tuesday at the dozen precincts where voting was extended would be counted Nov. 16.

Schoon and her Democratic counterpart, Kathy Kozuszek, were appointed by the election board and political party chairs to monitor the vote tabulation.

"We are being very thorough," Kozuszek said.

Porter County Commissioner Jim Biggs attributed the county's woes to a variety of factors, including heavy voter turnout, but said "big changes" were needed to prevent a report of the situation in the county of about 170,000 residents.

"What we have here is a total breakdown in the process," he said.

UPDATE: Porter County finalizes troubled vote count with no changes in election results
NWI Times
November 16, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/update-porter-county-finalizes-troubled-vote-count-with-no-changes/article_23348329-a2a5-5fcc-a89b-23d77cfda106.html

VALPARAISO — Bob Poparad was among the few people who stuck around for the nearly four hours it took Friday afternoon for election officials to wrap up the final vote from last week's trouble-ridden general election.

The waiting paid off, however, as Democrat Poparad learned he held on to his slim victory to unseat Republican Porter County Councilman Andy Bozak in the only race with a close enough margin to be impacted by Friday's vote certification.

While both candidates gained some votes as a result of election officials tallying up a final 329 ballots that were flagged for various reasons to be reviewed, the margin between them remained the same, at 15.

"I want to thank my supporters and want to thank Andy for running a nice, clean campaign," Poparad said.

When contacted later, Bozak said he planned to talk to his wife and those with more knowledge about elections before deciding whether to request a recount. Candidates have until noon Tuesday to challenge the election outcome.

"I really just don't know," he said. "It's been hills and valleys these past weeks."

The outcome of the race shows every vote does count, Bozak said.

"It couldn't be more true," he said.

The final vote count is posted on a link from the county's website at porterco.org.

Election officials were left with 342 ballots to sort through Friday, of which 13 were tossed out, primarily because they had been mailed in beyond the deadline, said Porter County Election Board President David Bengs.

As he and other election officials worked their way through the ballots in the lower level of the county administration center Friday afternoon, the crowd that gathered at noon in a meeting room upstairs to watch a live feed slowly dwindled to just a few people by the time the work was done at 3:45 p.m.

Final tally triggers effort to repair problems

The final vote count came one week after the initial tally was wrapped, three days late as a result of numerous problems with the election, including 12 polling places opening late, a shortage of poll workers and accusations of mishandled ballots.

Secretary of State Connie Lawson agreed this week to assist Porter County election officials in figuring out what went wrong and put in place processes that ensure future elections run far more smoothly.

Lawson said she would not get involved until after Porter County certified its election results Friday because she was a candidate on the ballot, even though her unofficial statewide victory margin was greater than her Porter County vote tally.

Drew Wenger, chairman of the Valparaiso Democratic Committee, also is seeking an outside review of the Porter County elections.

But he contends Indiana State Police should lead it.

"The people of Porter County deserve to know if the election was fair or not," he said. "We all deserve to know the truth about exactly what happened during the weeks and months leading up the election, who created this mess and why it happened."

Wenger objected to Indiana state Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, calling in Lawson to lead the effort to restore public confidence in Porter County elections.

"It’s no surprise to me that Indiana state Rep. Ed Soliday has called in a politician from Indianapolis to investigate this. Instead of more political involvement in this chaos, we actually need less. We need an investigation handled locally by the Indiana State Police branch in Lowell, not by an Indianapolis politician."

The Porter County Board of Commissioners called on the county election board last week to seek an investigation into the election by the Indiana Secretary of State's Election Division and Indiana State Police.

On Tuesday, the commissioners directly approved that request to the secretary of state for a state police investigation.

Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, also revealed that he and county attorney Scott McClure already have given information to the FBI.

The county commissioners also have called for the immediate resignation of Republican Election Board member and Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, who has been held largely to blame for the election problems. Martin lost her bid last week to unseat Democratic Porter County Auditor Vicki Urbanik.

Democratic Porter County Council members Dan Whitten and Jeremy Rivas made the same request of Martin, saying they as council members were assured by Martin and the Election Board that they had the resources necessary to carry out the election.

Wenger contends that Porter County Republicans actually are using the election problems to "justify eliminating precinct polling locations" and replacing them with 13 countywide vote centers that he said would "disenfranchise voters."

Soliday said vote centers "could have solved a lot of problems" this go around. But he insisted, "I don't want to be in that fight."

Fallout from Election Day chaos continues in Indiana's Porter County
The Intercept
November 16, 2018
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/porter-county-election-results/

AGENTS FROM THE FBI walked into an office building in the town of Valparaiso, in Porter County, Indiana, last Thursday. County officials had called them for help.

Two full days after the election, ballots for local races still had not been counted. Final election results weren’t released until early the next morning. The delays have caused alarm among local politicians and angered some voters and poll workers, who are calling on the county clerk to resign. More than a week later, one county council race is still too close to call — hanging on a margin of just 15 votes.

Since last week’s elections, reports have come in that raise concerns about alleged efforts to suppress and or manipulate votes across the country, particularly in places like Georgia and Florida. Accounts from local poll workers and voters on Twitter and in the news indicated a broader national breakdown of an overwhelmed electoral system: polling places that ran out of supplies, lines much too long for the elderly or chronically ill to wait in, malfunctioning machines, and even instances where some machines changed votes from one candidate to another. (President Donald Trump and some other Republican politicians, meanwhile, have amplified unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud.)

But in Porter County, the logistical problems were so bad that local officials felt they needed to call for outside help getting to the bottom of things. And as in many other places, it’s not clear whether the issues were caused by politics, mismanagement, or some messy combination of both.

“My concern was more about the lack of organization, the lack of planning, the lack of communication, quite frankly,” said Vicki Urbanik, a Democratic incumbent who was re-elected as county auditor. “Clearly they dropped the ball on this.”

This year, the county’s three-person election board voted to transfer administration of elections from the Voter Registration Office to the county clerk’s office, mirroring the way other counties in the state run elections. But Urbanik and other Democrats, as well as Republicans, say that the change caused unusual disruptions in voting this year.

“I will say that [in] most counties that I’m aware of in Indiana, the clerk’s office actually does run the elections. But this represented a real change here in Porter County, because the Voter Registration Office always ran the elections,” Urbanik explained.

County Clerk Karen Martin was one of the board’s two Republican members who voted in favor of the transition; the Democrat, J.J. Stankiewicz, opposed it. Martin was Urbanik’s Republican opponent for county auditor this year. None of the board members responded to multiple requests for comment. Reached by phone, a deputy in Martin’s office declined to comment.

Martin was on the election board for eight years, Urbanik said. “So, in some people’s minds, the switch really should not have been that big of a deal, in terms of disruption to the election process.” But, she added, “when the Voter Registration Office ran the elections, we never had the problems that we experienced like we had this year.”

AT LEAST 13 polls in Porter County did not open until between one and two hours after the slated 6 a.m. start — and one poll opened two and a half hours late.

“I do know for a fact the people left,” Urbanik said. Other poll workers independently confirmed this in interviews with The Intercept. A local Republican judge had to issue an order — requested by the county election board and Indiana’s Democratic State Central Committee, and opposed by the state GOP — to keep 12 of those locations open late so voters could make up for the time lost.

On the morning of the election, more than 18,000 absentee and early voter ballots had not yet been sorted for delivery to designated polling places, where they would be tabulated alongside in-person votes. Sheriffs reportedly delivered the missing ballots at 6 a.m., when polls were supposed to open. (Another court order was issued later that day to ensure absentee votes were counted as normal rather than provisional ballots, which are tallied the next day.)

Several voters who requested absentee ballots never received them, Drew Wenger told The Intercept. He chairs the Valparaiso Democratic Committee, which called Tuesday for state police “to investigate any potential wrongdoing connected to the 2018 Porter County election fiasco.” One 85-year-old woman who voted absentee in every election, Wenger said, didn’t receive her ballot for more than two and a half weeks after her initial request. That was only after she inquired in person with the clerk’s office about the delay.

By county law, two inspectors — one from each party — are appointed to monitor polls on each election. But this year, there weren’t enough inspectors, and when polls were supposed to open, several locations still didn’t have their team assembled.

“My husband and I had been contacting Republicans the day before by phone to try and get the gap filled that there weren’t enough Republican inspectors to run the election,” said Candace Shaw, whose husband, Democrat Frank Szczepanski, failed to unseat the local state representative, Ed Soliday, in Indiana’s 4th District. Soliday has himself called for the Indiana secretary of state’s office to investigate what happened in Porter County.

A self-described political junkie, Shaw has been deeply involved in Indiana politics for years, working polls and coordinating poll staffers on Election Day. She offered that growing up, she identified as a Republican and was vice chair of her local young Republicans committee, until she began to study political science in college and re-evaluated her political views. She said most of her family voted for Trump and remains “very, very Republican.” Despite posturing between the state parties on each side, the mishandling of the election isn’t a partisan issue, Shaw said. “I’m friends with a lot of Republicans here in Porter County, and a lot of them are really upset as well about what happened.”

On top of the absence of coordination and communication, poll workers cited myriad technical difficulties. “At 6am the ballot boxers weren’t working. Inspectors were still MIA. We couldn’t open. My stomach sank. I was trying to do something good and now I’d probably be on the local evening news,” poll worker Michelle Senderhauf wrote in a viral thread posted last week on Twitter. She also echoed Shaw’s account, saying that at her polling place, inspectors appointed by each party to monitor voting were not present.

The clerk’s office had also listed the incorrect address for one precinct, and the local newspaper reprinted the error. When voters from that precinct arrived, mistakenly, at Senderhauf’s polling place, workers didn’t have ballots for them. Senderhauf had to call the election hotline for guidance and redirect voters to the correct location.

Senderhauf told The Intercept that lack of training played a major part in the understaffing of precincts. Poll workers didn’t receive training until less than two weeks before election day. “Classes were announced last minute or would only be during the work day. I’m not surprised people refused to show up,” she wrote in an email. “Even though I watched the online training videos and read through the dense state election manual, I didn’t feel confident at all about what I was going to be doing on Election Day. … The incredibly kind and patient woman who was a clerk with me basically gave me on the job training.”

She added that “the state and county have standard procedures, though, and it sure seems that if those procedures had been followed, much of the chaos that day would have been avoided. I can’t help but think that disorganization and ineptitude caused the problems I saw in Porter County on Election Day. I certainly hope it wasn’t done out of malice.”

Other poll workers and county officials interviewed by The Intercept say the problems were not merely a matter of the clerk’s office being unprepared and overwhelmed, and placed the blame squarely on Martin.

Election board member Stankiewicz raised concerns as early as October 31, at a board meeting, that polling locations would not open on time because inspectors had not yet been assigned. “And nothing was done,” Wenger said.

At 1 a.m. the day after the election, the Northwest Indiana Times reported that poll workers were sitting on the floor of the county courthouse counting early and absentee ballots that were delivered late. That situation was avoidable, Shaw argues.

“We did not want to have 18,000 early voters disenfranchised just because of what the clerk chose to do,” Shaw said. “Those are choices that she made.”

THE ELECTION FIASCO has led to calls for Martin to resign. The clerk has been difficult to reach in the days following the election; she was most recently seen hiding behind a voter at an election board briefing, a local affiliate of CBS Chicago reported.

The FBI confirmed that the Porter County Board of Commissioners contacted them regarding the election, but could not comment on any investigation. “The FBI is always willing to accept information, complaints and tips from public officials and community members,” Chris Bavender, public affairs officer for the FBI’s field office in Indianapolis, wrote in an email to The Intercept. “Per DOJ policy I can neither confirm nor deny an investigation.”

Members of the Porter County Board of Commissioners did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The county is set to verify vote totals Friday.

Urbanik, Martin’s challenger, believed that the elections were clearly mismanaged. While she made clear that she did not suspect a deliberate attempt at voter suppression, as a former reporter who observed elections in the county for 25 years, she said it was not out of the question.

“When you look at the polling sites that were not adequately staffed, and that they didn’t open on time, most of them were in one particular area. Which tends to vote Democrat. Not necessarily Democrat, but it tends to be Democrat,” Urbanik told The Intercept in a phone interview.

Shaw called the chaos that ensued in Porter County and elsewhere “completely un-American.”

“It goes against everything that I’ve ever been brought up to believe. Even when I was a Republican, compared to now that I’m a Democrat,” she said. “It’s against everything that we believe about the way that our voting system is supposed to work.”

Porter County to certify vote totals Friday
Chicago Tribune
November 15, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-elect-advance-st-1116-story.html

Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, under siege by county officials and the public for her handling of the county’s Nov. 6 midterm election, is expected to attend an election board meeting Friday to go through provisional ballots and certify the results of the election.

Martin, one of two Republican members of the election board, told the Post-Tribune via text message that she plans on attending the meeting in the county’s voter registration office.

Also in attendance will be board president David Bengs, the second Republican on the board. J.J. Stankiewicz, the board’s lone Democrat, said he cannot be at the meeting because of a personal matter but has designated attorney Monica Conrad as his proxy.

Conrad was one of the attorneys who successfully argued in court on Election Day to extend the hours for late-opening polling places so voters who were turned away earlier in the day would have the opportunity to vote. The decision impacted 12 precincts.

County commissioners and members of the county council demanded Martin resign shortly after the release of preliminary election results Friday, three days late. Martin refused.

She is completing her second and final term as clerk, per state statute; she made an unsuccessful run for county auditor and lost to incumbent Vicki Urbanik, a Democrat.

Election Day in Porter County was rife with problems, including delayed election results and absentee ballots not being distributed to precincts to be counted by the time the polls closed. The day also included two court hearings in a battle to keep open the polling places that did not open on time.

The fate of an assortment of investigations into what went wrong on Election Day remains unclear.

Commissioners this week passed a motion asking the county attorney to request the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office investigate problems with the election, and for the state agency to ask for an inquiry by the Indiana State Police as well.

The move follows a request by commissioners on Nov. 7 for the FBI to investigate “scores of alleged violations of Indiana election law made by poll workers voters and the public” received by the commissioners. Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, and county attorney Scott McClure met with the FBI the following day for two hours. There has been no word yet on whether the FBI will initiate an investigation.

Secretary of State Connie Lawson does not have investigatory authority or jurisdiction over Porter County, Valerie Warycha, deputy chief of staff and communications director in that office, said via email.

State Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, has requested the office review the process in Porter County, she added.

“Secretary Lawson has agreed to the request. The office is currently determining how the review will work,” Warycha said.

State police also are not yet handling the matter, said Sgt. Ann Wojas, public information officer for the Lowell post.

“We are not involved in any investigation at this time. If we did, it would come from the Secretary of State,” she said via email, adding that would include what type of investigation to conduct, and would center on the type of allegation being made.

Numerous poll workers also have contacted the Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union with complaints, too. That agency demurred in discussing its investigation as well.

“As a matter of policy, we do not comment on incoming intake,” Ariella Sult, the agency’s communications director, said in an email. “However, our legal team is continuing to investigate the situation and is obviously concerned about the irregularities that took place.

Indiana Secretary of State investigation of Porter County election sought
Chesterton Tribune
November 15, 2018
http://www.chestertontribune.com/Porter%20County/indiana_secretary_of_state_inves.htm
The Board of Commissioners is calling on the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office to investigate the handling of Tuesday’s general election after 12 polling places didn’t open on time, absentee and early votes were never delivered to many precincts on Election day, and a multitude of poll worker and voter complaints.

Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, made the motion at Tuesday’s Board of Commissioners meeting directing County Attorney Scott McClure to draft a letter outlining the problems with the Election and asking for investigation by the Secretary of State’s Office and the Indiana State Police.

Biggs and Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, made the choice to involve the FBI last week, and FBI officials visited Porter County last Thursday. Tuesday, Blaney made a point to explain the multiple calls. “The FBI and the agencies we talked about contacting today, they have different roles and different things they’ll look at.”

For instance, Blaney said the FBI would focus more on voter suppression and voter fraud, whereas the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office would determine what areas of Indiana code may have been violated.

Biggs said the Board will make every effort to be sure nothing like this happens again in Porter County.

“Many people probably don’t know that all three of the County Commissioners are native residents of Porter County. I think I can say on their behalf, that was a very embarrassing situation to see our County experience,” Biggs said. “There are very few things this County could have experienced that would damage its reputation as much as what happened Tuesday [Nov. 6] night.”

Blaney added, “I think what’s most important to us is to have a fair election and have it go smoothly. We’re proud to be from Porter County, and we want everyone else to be proud too.”

Three members of the public--all of whom worked the polls this past Election and in the primary--addressed the Board hoping to see change in how the workers are treated.

Kathy Sipple, of Valparaiso, proposed that “an ad hoc committee of both parties and poll workers with varied amounts of experience would be very beneficial to be sure the poll worker experience is included in addressing training.”

The inspector who worked with Sipple reported hearing a lot of first time poll workers vow to never work an Election again. Sipple provided the Board with a printout of a Google Document where at least five poll workers have shared their experiences in detail.

Robert Haver, who has worked the polls for 30 of the 32 years that have passed since he turned 18, asked that the payment for poll workers be processed faster this year as a nod to the fact that many workers had a 20-hour day and took on extra duties. He also mentioned that the Board should consider allocating extra funds to increase the pay. “I walked out the door at 4 a.m. and pulled in my driveway a few minutes to midnight. I was given one precinct and at 6:30 Monday evening, was asked to do another one,” he said.

Biggs agreed that “no one signed up” for what happened in the Election and said he has informally talked to three members of the County Council who would be in favor of increasing the pay.

In the meantime, County Auditor Vicki Urbanik said she has a plan to fast track the payments once she gets all the required information from the Clerk’s Office.

“They need to tell us who worked the polls and in what position,” Urbanik said. Then, she’ll need to obtain up-to-date payroll forms from everyone if they are not already on file. This is the part Urbanik has a plan for. The Clerk’s Office, however, has given her no indication of when the data on who worked will be ready.

Other approvals
The Board accepted the Porter County Substance Abuse Council third quarter report. Executive Director Dawn Pelc reported that the Council has received $375,000 in grant funding to provide mental health education to the public over the next five years. The education will be done working with Porter-Starke Services. Pelc says it will be for teachers, police officers, and anyone else interested.

The Board approved a contract brought by Porter County Assessor Jon Snyder for Appraisal Research Counselors to help the Assessor’s Office meet its annual adjustment deadline, which has been moved up from August of next year to March 1. Appraisal Research was the low bidder of three, proposing a $41,500 contract.

Commissioners call for state investigation of Porter County election
Chicago Tribune
November 13, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-commissioners-meet-st-1114-story.html

After hearing first-hand stories from poll workers about the chaos that ensued on Election Day in Porter County for the midterm elections, the Board of Commissioners on Tuesday asked the county attorney to request an Indiana Secretary of State’s Office investigation and for the state agency to ask for an inquiry by the Indiana State Police.

The move follows a request by commissioners on Nov. 7 for the FBI to investigate “scores of alleged violations of Indiana election law made by poll workers voters and the public” received by the commissioners. Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, and county attorney Scott McClure met with the FBI the following day for two hours. There has been no word yet on whether the FBI will initiate an investigation.


The various agencies asked to investigate the election “look at things differently and have different roles,” said Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, adding the FBI can investigate voter fraud and suppression, while the state agencies can determine whether state code and processes were followed. “We’re hoping to cover all the bases.”

Election Day in Porter County was rife with problems, including delayed election results that came in three days late, 12 precincts that stayed open later than planned because they did not open on time, and absentee ballots not being distributed to precincts to be counted by the time the polls closed.

The day also included two court hearings in a battle to keep open the polling places that did not open on time.

Commissioners President Jeff Good, R-Center, who was on the ballot in a successful bid for a second term in office, had to recuse himself from the process because he was on the ballot.


“I want to thank the board for stepping up during the crisis,” he said, adding those responsible for the problems “ran from the mic,” an apparent reference to Clerk Karen Martin, who was unreachable as the problems unfolded.

Shortly after preliminary election results were released Friday, commissioners and members of the county council asked Martin to resign; she has refused. Martin, one of two Republican members of the election board, is completing her second and final term as clerk, per state statute; she made an unsuccessful run for county auditor and lost to incumbent Vicki Urbanik, a Democrat.

“It really didn’t fall under this board’s responsibility to do a lot of what this board did” in the aftermath of the election, Good said. “For a guy being on the ballot, you have no idea what it meant to me to see people step up and do what needed to be done.”

Biggs said it was “very embarrassing” to see what the county went through on Nov. 6, and the county has “always avoided those types of headlines.”

“We are not going to allow this to happen again,” Biggs said. “There are very few things that could happen that could damage this county’s reputation as what happened Tuesday.”

The election board meets at noon Friday to certify the results and determine the fate of 250 ballots cast during the election, including those cast by voters the morning of Oct. 27 in Portage that weren’t properly initialed by poll workers; any ballots set aside during normal polling place hours on Election Day; and ballots cast at 12 precincts that remained open after regular voting hours ended at 6 p.m.

The County Council District 1 race hangs in the balance, as Democrat Bob Poparad, seeking a return to the council, has a 15-vote edge over Republican incumbent Andy Bozak, the council president.

Valparaiso residents John Vigilante and Kathy Sipple, who served as poll workers, requested an ad hoc committee going forward that includes poll workers from both parties with various levels of experience so their voices could be heard as county officials come up with solutions.

“We really appreciate your positive and proactive approach,” Blaney said, adding next year will see a new clerk in Democrat Jessica Bailey and changes in the makeup of the rest of the three-member election board.

Portage Township resident Robert Haywood noted he worked a 20-hour day on Election Day and, as a veteran of many past elections, said it typically takes six weeks to get paid for working the polls. He asked commissioners and Urbanik to expedite the process.

Biggs said he has talked to three members of the council about increasing pay for Election Day because of the unusual circumstances, though the final decision would rest with the council.

“Thank goodness you all did not jump ship,” he said. “For me, that needs to be rewarded.”

Urbanik said she already has a plan in place to fast track pay for poll workers but needs payroll data from the clerk’s office, which she has not yet received.

State Rep. Ed Soliday calls for Indiana secretary of state's office to investigate Porter County election issues
NWI Times
November 13, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/state-rep-ed-soliday-calls-for-indiana-secretary-of-state/article_1a0a8a03-e040-55e4-938a-04cb54627d63.html

State Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, is requesting the Indiana secretary of state's office review the Porter County election system after mistakes caused a three-day delay in the release of results.

Soliday said in a letter Monday sent to Secretary of State Connie Lawson he believed last week's election disaster was due to last-minute changes in responsibility for general election management, which caused polls to be understaffed and open late. Early voting ballots were also not sent to their proper ,precincts and there were reports poll workers lacked proper training.

He said Porter County's election process had for years shown signs of “weakness and unresolved issues,” including a resistance to modernization, public personality conflicts and difficulty recruiting and training election staff.

He requested the secretary of state, and any other agencies necessary, conduct a review, which he hoped would lead to recommendations to correct issues with the county's election process.

Soliday, who is on the House Committee for Elections and Apportionment, told The Times Monday he had spoken with the secretary of the state's staff about the issue.

“This did not start on election night,” he said. “It's been going on for years.”

Soliday won his own bid last week to remain representative for House District 4, which represents the city of Valparaiso and nearby rural areas. He said he babysat his grandson to take his mind off the election, but the late results meant he could not vote Nov. 7 for his party's caucus leadership.

Worse than that, the disarray undermined voter confidence, Soliday said.

The representative said his experience as vice president of quality assurance and security for United Airlines guided his thinking on how to address the election problems.

He said there was no doubt some election officials erred, but checks and balances in the system should have prevented the chaos the county saw last week.

He said it was about the process, not the people.

“Where did the process fail, and where should there have been a second set of eyes?” he asked.

He said the Porter County Council* nixed an idea in January to purchase new digital election equipment and switch from traditional, neighborhood-based precinct voting to more flexible voting centers, which allow residents to cast their ballot at any polling place in the county, rather than exclusively in their precinct.

He questioned whether modernizing the system would have prevented last week's problems.

Porter County poll works voice their Election Day Anger: 'A disastrous debacle'
Chicago Tribune
Jerry Davich Column
November 13, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/opinion/ct-ptb-davich-porter-county-election-fiasco-st-1114-story.html

On Election Day, the first call I received from an angry Porter County poll worker came in at 5:54 a.m., immediately followed by a frantic Facebook message.

“We are at our polling place in Liberty Township. NO INSPECTOR, CHURCH LOCKED, ELECTION OFFICE CAN’T HELP. KAREN MARTIN NOWHERE TO BE FOUND! RIDICULOUS!”

I fell back asleep, thinking this incident would be only a rare blip in the county’s electoral process that historic day. As we now know, the poll worker’s message turned out to be a canary in the coalmine of a voting disaster that eventually made national news.

At 8:58 a.m. that day, that poll worker contacted me again: “We are finally up and running! We are running with two high school students and three volunteers. All first time workers!”

As the morning progressed, I heard from many other Porter County poll workers with similar complaints, angry comments, and regular updates about their experiences. Many of those poll workers were serving Uncle Sam in this way for the first time.

“With the shape that our country is in, I wanted to dip my foot into the electoral process instead of just complaining about it,” said Rich Petrie, of Valparaiso, who worked as a judge at a fire station in his city.

He arrived there at 5 a.m. that day, eager to be a part of the American democratic process. He returned home at 11:30 p.m., angry and dejected.

Late that night at the Porter County courthouse, he waited for hours with other disgruntled poll workers while ballots were being handled, or mishandled, depending on your take of the situation.

“It was a true (expletive) show,” Petrie said.

Frustratingly long delays, unanswered questions, absence of leadership, and scores of angry, disillusioned poll workers.

“I’m a patient guy, usually with a positive attitude, but this experience really challenged me,” Petrie said. “It was chaos. A disastrous debacle.”

At 11:36 a.m. that day, the Liberty Township poll worker checked in again with me: “Busy! I hope the counting goes correctly when polls close.”

Again, at that time I assumed things would eventually be corrected by 6 p.m., when polling places closed. Again, I was wrong. I heard from other poll workers whose polling place hours were extended due to delays earlier that morning.

“We have heard nothing from the clerk’s office. Just hearsay. Somebody needs to shake these people up. They are not even returning calls. I am livid,” a poll worker told me. “Plus, we have not seen our absentee ballots.”

As we now know, absentee ballots cast early were not processed on election night, adding to the overall confusion, and to delays reporting the results, which came three days later.

“I feel sorry for all the wide-eyed, open-minded younger poll workers who served on the worst Election Day in our county’s history,” Petrie said. “I bet that 90 percent of them will never volunteer again as poll workers.”

One of those younger poll workers told me she returned home that night after midnight.

“I will get $110 for working 18 maddening hours. Never again,” she told me the next day.

Petrie describes Election Day this way: “I remember it like it was yesterday. ALL of yesterday.”

I also heard from a military spouse who was born and raised in Valparaiso, and who voted an absentee ballot while stationed at a U.S. Air Force base in England.

“I asked for, and received via email, confirmation that my votes would be counted. However, faith in that being true is thin considering the way the election was handled,” he told me.

Because his wife is an active duty officer, he requested his name not be published to avoid any repercussions against her.

“Upon filling out my absentee ballot in mid-October, I took it to the on-base military voting adviser to be sure it was filled out properly,” he told me. “There was a question at the bottom that was so misleading it provoked the adviser to say Porter County's absentee ballot was one of the most confusing she'd seen throughout the country.”

“Even with professional guidance, we apparently ‘misunderstood’ the question, and subsequently I was asked to fill out a waiver two weeks later, allowing Porter County officials to open my ballot and transfer my votes to another ballot by hand,” he said.

He described himself as a registered Republican, but foremost a patriotic American.

“I vote by conscience and love of country, not exclusively party. Yet I felt firsthand all our voting rights were compromised,” he said. “One party appeared to be fighting to allow citizens to vote while the other was coordinating a fight to limit this right.”

It struck him as strategy, not incompetence.

“The strategy of limiting voter turnout that spiraled out of control,” he told me via email from England. “Incompetence would be the actions of one person (presumably the County Clerk), but the Republican party lawyers blocking an injunction to keep the polls open on Election Day, despite not opening polls properly, is coordination.”

“This is why we don't let the baseball pitcher also be the umpire,” he said.

On election night, at 10:11 p.m., I again heard from the Liberty Township poll worker who was still at the courthouse: “We were at the poll at 5 a.m., so 15 hours now. Heads need to roll over this.”

Will heads roll over this debacle?

On Monday, State Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, requested the Indiana secretary of state's office to investigate the Porter County election system.

On Tuesday, the Valparaiso Democratic Committee called instead for an investigation by Indiana State Police.

“We are concerned… that this should be investigated by Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, who ran for this election and thus cannot be considered impartial,” said Drew Wenger, the committee’s chairperson. “The people deserve an independent and experienced investigation into this election and any potential criminal activity.”

I asked Petrie if he would ever again work the polls in Porter County.

“In a heartbeat,” he replied, surprising me. “If only to document whether things get better or get worse on the next Election Day.”

Could things get any worse than what happened Nov. 6, 2018?

“I don’t think so,” he said.

EDITORIAL: New Porter County clerk must face fires of accountability in fixing predecessor's mess
NWI Times
The Times Editorial Board
November 13, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-new-porter-county-clerk-must-face-fires-of-accountability/article_e75860eb-0f83-5b0d-8c75-3d866dc343df.html

A week ago today, the general election collapsed into disarray and disenfranchisement in Porter County.

Voters and candidates finally learned the identities of the apparent winners Friday, some three days after unofficial results should have been tabulated in the county.

Now all eyes must be on county government leaders responsible for weeding out the factors that led to the fiasco so it doesn't happen again.

A large share of that burden rightly will be placed on the back of new Porter County Clerk-elect Jessica Bailey, a Portage Democrat.

Incumbent Clerk Karen Martin, who presided over the disaster and then apparently hid from public view for some 48 hours after Election Day, thankfully won't return as clerk.

Term limits prevented Martin from seeking that office in 2018, and voters opted not to elect her to the county auditor position she ran for instead.

Martin should heed the calls of Porter County commissioners and others to resign in the wake of the election disaster, even though she has two months left in her term.

Meanwhile, new Clerk Bailey should waste no time spearheading a plan to keep this from happening again.

There is very little breathing room. The May primaries of a municipal election year will be here in six months.

In last week's general election, a dozen polling locations didn't open on time, essentially turning away voters who sought to exercise their right and duty as Americans to vote.

A judge intervened, extending the operating times at those polling precincts. But an untold number of voters may not have been able to return to cast their votes for any number of reasons, including work and family obligations.

Even before the election started, the ballots of some 118 to 122 early voters in Portage also were called into question because election supervisors hadn't provided the bipartisan signatures required by law.

The insult of the tardy polling place openings gave way to injury when early and absentee ballots apparently weren't organized and ready to be counted on time Tuesday night.

Instead, it took election officials three days to sort out the mess and provide election results to the public.

Bailey must know this can never happen again.

Porter County residents should ensure Bailey enters her new office in January with the fires of accountability nipping at her heels.

Meanwhile, all county officials should offer their true assistance — not partisan political rhetoric or vitriol — in fixing the disaster.

Voters are watching. It's time to get to work.

EDITORIAL: Soliday right to call for state probe of Porter County election disaster
NWI Times
November 13, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-soliday-right-to-call-for-state-probe-of-porter/article_3838502a-fb20-5bd3-b5cf-ad3df11e24c8.html

Clear-headed investigative probes, not partisan shouting matches, are the antidote for the poisoned Porter County election process.

It's why Indiana House Rep. Ed Soliday's call for the secretary of state to help identify the causes and possible fixes of the Nov. 6 general election fiasco was so important.

Soliday's request was an essential complement to the Porter County commissioners' appeal for the FBI to probe for any possible criminal violations.

Soliday traveled to Indianapolis Tuesday to make the request in person.

Secretary of State Connie Lawson, the state's chief elections officer, pledged to aid Porter County after meeting with Soliday. 

No doubt many layers of problems led to a dozen polling locations that opened hours late, early absentee ballots not sorted or counted properly and a subsequent delay by three days in unofficial election results.

It's also clear Porter County officials aren't prepared to solve this mess on their own.

Part of a long-running problem can be seen in a video of the Oct. 31 Porter County Election Board meeting, addressed by Times Editor Marc Chase in his Sunday column.

Before the meeting even began, Election Board members can be seen and heard arguing as they took their seats.

It then became a vitriolic finger-pointing match between Republican and Democratic election officials, culminating with arms waving and shouting after the meeting adjourned.

Many Porter County officials confirm the vitriol among Election Board and voter registration officials has defined the county's electoral process for some time.

The election officials apparently were so busy yelling at each other prior to Election Day, the work to ensure a smooth election in which the public could be confident fell far short of what voters deserve.

A fresh set of eyes, ideas and analysis are needed, and the secretary of state's office, which includes the Indiana Election Division, is a prime authority to help sort it out.

Valparaiso Democratic Party Chairman Drew Wenger was working to discourage a secretary of state probe Tuesday stating Lawson, a Republican, would be too partisan.

Wenger wanted to call in the state police instead.

But the state police would only be looking for criminal activity. Porter County needs a clear path forward from failed processes, not just potential wrongdoing.

The secretary of state did not preside over Porter County's election mess, and her personnel will bring the fresh, authoritative eyes this situation requires.

The time for bickering is over. It has done untold damage to the faith of voters.

Those who can't give it up should resign.

We're glad the secretary of state agreed to help prescribe an antidote for what ails a seriously troubled Porter County election process.

Secretary of state pledges to help improve Porter County elections; Dems demand state police investigation
NWI Times
November 13, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/secretary-of-state-pledges-to-help-improve-porter-county-elections/article_ec22f7c3-ade3-5742-b41b-15085b4a283e.html

INDIANAPOLIS — Secretary of State Connie Lawson has agreed to assist Porter County election officials in figuring out what went wrong in last week's general election and to put in place processes that ensure future elections run far more smoothly.

The state's chief elections officer, a Republican, pledged to aid Porter County after a Tuesday meeting at the Statehouse with state Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, that followed a letter he penned to Lawson Monday detailing the late-opening and understaffed polling places, untrained poll workers and delayed ballot processing that voters encountered one week earlier.

Soliday explained that Lawson won't necessarily be investigating the Porter County election fiasco from a criminal perspective, though he said she could call in the state police or the state's inspector general, if necessary.

Rather, the secretary of state would be helping to identify the errors that occurred in preparing for last week's election and during the three-day ballot count delay, while sharing best practices employed by other counties that could be put to use in Porter County before the municipal primary election just six months away.

"There are people calling for an investigation. What's the crime alleged? Things did not happen smoothly," Soliday said. "Incompetence is not a crime."

"The goal is to restore voter confidence that my vote is going to get counted as I cast it, and it's going to be counted in a timely way."

Soliday said Lawson is the logical person to assist Porter County because more than anyone else "she understands state election law; she oversees state election law."

"There are so many accusations going back and forth that you just need to bring in a third party," Soliday said.

"Have a third party do an analysis of what went wrong, and then share that with the commissioners and the council and the new clerk," he said.

Lawson said she will not get involved until after Porter County certifies its election results Friday since she was a candidate on the ballot, even though her unofficial statewide victory margin was greater than her Porter County vote tally.

Democrats want state police review
Drew Wenger, chairman of the Valparaiso Democratic Committee, also is seeking an outside review of the Porter County elections.

But he contends the state police should lead it.

"The people of Porter County deserve to know if the election was fair or not," he said. "We all deserve to know the truth about exactly what happened during the weeks and months leading up the election, who created this mess and why it happened."

"After we find out the truth about what happened, then we can move forward to work on rebuilding the trust of the people," Wenger said. "Right now, we need to take this one step at a time to ensure that the people of Porter County know that justice is served."

Wenger objected to Soliday calling in Lawson to lead the effort to restore public confidence in Porter County elections.

"It’s no surprise to me that Indiana state Rep. Ed Soliday has called in a politician from Indianapolis to investigate this. Instead of more political involvement in this chaos, we actually need less. We need an investigation handled locally by the Indiana State Police branch in Lowell, not by an Indianapolis politician."

Soliday shot back by saying that Wenger's Democratic committee isn't really interested in a broad analysis of what went wrong, and what policies and procedures are needed to make sure it doesn't happen again.

"They want to find somebody guilty of something and punish them. And they want to make it all political," Soliday said.

"They know that they have as much responsibility in this as anyone else. This is not a one-party issue."

Soliday also condemned Wenger's implication that Lawson, the Indianapolis politician, would be unable to fairly assist Porter County because she is a Republican.

"I consider it despicable that they would suggest that the secretary of state of this state is dishonest, and I find it beneath them," Soliday said.

In addition, Soliday pointed out that Wegner's demand for a state police investigation has the same issue, since the state police commissioner was appointed by Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb and the political action committee for the state police officers' union endorsed Soliday's re-election bid.

Soliday also chuckled at Wenger's insistence that state police from the Lowell post lead the investigation.

"That's Lake County! They want Lake County to investigate? I'm somewhat shocked that Porter County people would want Lake County to investigate," Soliday said.

Wenger contends that Porter County Republicans actually are using the election problems to "justify eliminating precinct polling locations" and replacing them with 13 countywide vote centers that he said would "disenfranchise voters."

Soliday said vote centers "could have solved a lot of problems" this go around. But he insisted, "I don't want to be in that fight."

"I want a process, and I don't care what it is," he said. "I don't object to any recommendation that works."

Calls for action began last week
The Porter County Board of Commissioners called on the county election board last week to seek an investigation into the election by the Indiana Secretary of State's Election Division and the Indiana State Police.

On Tuesday, the commissioners, led by Republican Jim Biggs, directly approved that request to the secretary of state for a state police investigation.

Biggs also revealed that he and county attorney Scott McClure already have given information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

He said nothing criminal necessarily happened, but he wants every angle looked at to fully uncover what went wrong so there’s a complete fix before the next election.

"We're going to do everything within our statutory authority to find out exactly what happened here," Biggs said.

Valparaiso resident Sheila Sweeney, who was among a crowd of candidates and voters to wait more than two hours outside the county voter registration office Friday until the delayed vote count was released, said, "Right now I don't trust Porter County to host an election."

Missing from that gathering Friday was Republican Election Board member and Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, who has been held largely to blame for the election problems.

The county commissioners have called on Martin to immediately resign as clerk. Martin lost her bid this week to unseat Democratic Porter County Auditor Vicki Urbanik.

Democratic Porter County Council members Dan Whitten and Jeremy Rivas made the same request of Martin, saying they as council members were assured by Martin and the Election Board that they had the resources necessary to carry out the election.

Martin said Friday afternoon, "I will be finishing my term."

The county commissioners have said they want to see a bipartisan effort in the county to determine what actions must be taken to assure this type of election failure does not occur again.

"This cooperative and bipartisan effort is absolutely critical to begin the process of restoring voter confidence in our elections," according to the commissioners.

Democratic Commissioner Laura Blaney said there’s been talk of posting on the county government website the responsibilities of a poll worker to help with any future uncertainty about the job.

"There’s not many people who really know what’s supposed to happen, and I think that causes a lot of problems,"’ she said.

Biggs alleged there’s a rift between the offices of county clerk and voters registration, along with nepotism.

He said it’s possible the process to some degree was sabotaged because somebody should have noticed there were problems and stepped in so they could be fixed before the scheduled tabulating.

"I can't help to think some of it was deliberately set up," he said. "It's difficult for me to believe just one individual is responsible for the total unmitigated collapse."

Commissioners demand Karen Martin resign as Clerk in the wake of election
Chesterton Tribune
November 12, 2018
http://www.chestertontribune.com/Elections/commissioners_demand_karen_marti.htm
The Porter County Commissioners are demanding the resignation of Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, following the fiasco on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 6, in a statement released after deadline on Friday.

The statement appears beneath the Commissioners’ letterhead, which includes the names of all three: Jim Biggs, R-North; Jeff Good, R-Center; and Laura Blaney, D-South.

The text of the statement in full:
“To assure accountability for the serious problems in Tuesday’s election process, and to begin developing a plan to assure that the problems do not occur again, the Porter County Commissioners’ Office is demanding that the County Clerk and Election Board take the following immediate actions.

“(1) Porter County Clerk Karen Martin must resign, effective immediately. Should she win Tuesday’s election for the position of County Auditor, she must also resign before taking office.

“(2) As is the normal protocol, the Porter County Election Board must request any and all investigations that are available through the Indiana Secretary of State Election Division and Indiana State Police. Should the Election Board not make the requests, the Commissioners’ Office shall make every effort within its statutory powers to get those authorities to open an investigation.

“Further, the Commissioners’ Office is requesting that the Porter County Council, Election Board, Democrat Party Chair, and Republican County Chair join with the Commissioners to immediately begin a bipartisan effort to determine any and all actions that must be taken to assure that such a failure never happens again. This cooperative and bipartisan effort is absolutely critical to begin the process of restoring voter confidence in our elections.

“Finally, the Commissioners’ Office extends its sincere and deep gratitude to the hundreds of poll workers that gave of their time on Tuesday and to the Porter County Sheriff’s Department for the support they have given throughout this process.”

Martin, a term-limited Republican, failed in her bid on Nov. 6 to unseat Porter County Auditor Vicki Urbanik, a Democrat.

Good successfully fended off a challenge from Democrat Donna Perdue.

Porter County Election Board meeting | Digital Exclusives: Video
NWI Times
November 12, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/digital/video/video-porter-county-election-board-meeting/youtube_86d7b77f-2852-56fa-9876-53df5a6c01d9.html

VIDEO - 10312018  Porter County Election Board meeting                        

See for yourself the vitriol and finger pointing at a recent Porter County Election Board meeting that Times Editor Marc Chase referenced in his Sunday column. The meeting came just days before what would become a disorganized collapse in processes of the Nov. 6 general election. The Times has obtained a copy of the meeting, which can be found at this link.

Porter County Clerk-elect Jessica Bailey intends to bring confidence back to local elections
NWI Times
November 12, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/porter-county-clerk-elect-jessica-bailey-intends-to-bring-confidence/article_a1aaf15e-7c78-5b93-8e2e-07525b7ceac3.html

VALPARAISO — If it were any other year, Jessica Bailey would already have enough of a challenge ahead preparing to take over the leadership of the Porter County clerk's office.

But the newly elected Democrat takes over Jan. 1 in the wake of a general election that was so riddled with problems the initial vote count came three days late, and the confusion shook confidence in the system.

As clerk, control of the future elections will be on Bailey's shoulders. She is wasting no time learning what went wrong and to work alongside others to see it does not happen again.

"We need to make certain voters feel confident," she said.

Bailey, who works as director of marketing and community development at the Greater Portage Chamber of Commerce, said she will begin a "listening tour" this week with fellow county officials who play a role in the local elections. The list includes members of the Election Board and county Board of Commissioners.

Bailey said she also intends to explore how other counties are carrying out elections and what works for them in hope of hitting the ground running when she takes office.

"What that will look like next year is still up in the air," she said.

Bailey defeated Republican Jon Miller, the current county recorder, to win the clerk's seat. The current clerk, Republican Karen Martin, has caught much of the blame for the problems that resulted in 12 polling places opening late on Election Day last week, including a shortage of poll workers and mishandled ballots.

When the initial vote totals finally came in around noon Friday, Bailey described the prior three days as like being on a roller coaster stuck in a tunnel.

"You could see the light at the end of the tunnel; you just couldn't get there," she said.

Bailey had said if elected clerk, she would work with community and state leaders in a bipartisan effort to increase voter turnout and update voting equipment to maintain secure elections.

New clerk to seek continuous improvements
Bailey, who is serving her second term on the Portage Township School Board, described herself as having a strong work ethic, administrative background and good written and verbal skills.

"Serving six years on the Portage Township School Board has taught me how to collaborate with local government leaders, maintain a budget and work for the taxpayers of the community," she said.

She has a master’s degree in public administration and nonprofit management, has a strong background in technology, and described herself as a hands-on leader.

Bailey said in addition to reviewing the election process in preparation for taking office, she plans to review the system in place within the clerk's office to improve upon areas red-flagged during past state audits.

"I believe in continuous improvement for myself and the organizations I am involved with," she said. "I strive to find new ways to streamline tasks and redistribute money that is saved back to the organization."

"As a change-maker, I understand that I may not always have the answer, but I do know how to collaborate and work with others to get the answer and to complete the task," Bailey said.

Another priority will be to see about digitizing more records in the clerk's office, she said.

Republican Porter County Election Board President David Bengs said control of the elections will remain with the clerk, where the Election Board moved it earlier this year from its longtime home with the county voter registration office.

The move is appropriate under the law, he said.

Bengs appeared pleased to hear Bailey intends to discuss the process with local officials and said those entities should include the County Council, which will need to purchase new equipment, and the Board of Commissioners and Election Board.

"Because of the magnitude of what happened, this will be all levels," he said.

The final vote count will come Friday, when contested ballots are reviewed and included if deemed appropriate. The deadline for filing challenges will be noon Nov. 20, Bengs said.

MARC CHASE: Vitriol, dysfunction set table for Porter County election fiasco
NWI Times
November 11, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/opinion/columnists/marc-chase/marc-chase-vitriol-dysfunction-set-table-for-porter-county-election/article_499a9d20-2c24-58fc-8abd-e8f384405644.html

Dysfunction breeds chaos in human relationships.

Vitriol, anger and shouting are the precursor to collapse.

So it should surprise no one that the Porter County 2018 general election fell like a house of cards doused in gasoline and set ablaze just before being shoved into ruin.

Ask just about any Porter County official, and they'll describe the dysfunction that has been brewing for some time among the Porter County clerk, the elections board and the "leaders" of the voter registration office.

If you won't take their word for it, view the video of the Oct. 31 election board meeting. The angry, childish and misinformed antics on display in that meeting seem to foretell the impending doom that came to pass for the most sacred of democratic processes on Election Day.

VIDEO--Porter County Election Board meeting

Between the vitriol that built toward the election, and the climax of an Election Day collapse, Porter County voters should be clamoring for their leaders to rebuild the process.

By now, consumers of Region news are quite familiar with the fiasco of the Nov. 6 Election Day in Porter County.

A dozen polling locations opened hours late, prompting a judge to order the locations to stay open hours beyond the normal closing time.

A number of voters were disenfranchised in the process, but the disaster was only just getting started.

Scores of absentee ballots cast early by voters weren't processed on election night at the precinct locations, ultimately delaying any reported election results until an embarrassing three days after the polls closed.

It turns out a big reason for that delay was the state of chaos in which the early ballots were kept leading up to the election.

As top county officials begin to unravel the messy mechanics that led to the election collapse, they're noting early ballots weren't sorted properly as voters cast them in the weeks leading up to actual Election Day.

Rather than immediately being sorted by precinct, the ballots became a jumbled mess that no one began to rectify until it was too late.

The chaos of polling places that didn't open on time, lacked the requisite volunteers for operation or early ballots left in disorganized shambles should surprise no one.

It has become clear from speaking with numerous county officials and watching video of a recent election board meeting that chaos and division define the relationships between the people who are supposed to be running the show.

On Halloween, a mere six days before the Election Day debacle, the Porter County Election Board meeting, which was supposed to be sorting out a snafu that threatened to negate some 118 to 122 early ballots cast in Portage, turned into a complete meltdown of unintelligible shouting among voter registration and other officials in the visitors gallery.

The 118 to 122 voters all were being asked to return to a polling location to recast their votes because those ballots lacked the bipartisan initials from the Democratic and Republican supervisors at the early voting location in Portage. Under state law, ballots lacking the bipartisan initials don't count, election board attorney Ethan Lowe explained at the meeting.

That legal advice didn't stop Democratic election board member J.J. Stankiewicz from making a motion to try to count the ballots, state law be damned.

A nonsensical argument over the matter occupied most of the Oct. 31 board meeting, with Stankiewicz's motion failing to be seconded by another board member, and therefore rightly failing.

The dysfunctional grand finale of the meeting actually came after it had officially adjourned.

Kathy Kozuszek, Democratic director of the Porter County voter registration office, engaged in an unseemly shouting match with Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, who sits on the election board.

Several others in attendance joined in in a noisy bout of vitriol.

Remarkably enough, the venomous exchanges all seemed to center on whether enough volunteers had been identified to properly open and run polling locations at the Nov. 6 election.

As it would turn out, the answer to that question was no. But the childish shouting match seemed to stand in the way of any solution to the problem.

In the wake of the ensuing election debacle, many taxpayers and Porter County officials alike have been quick to blame Clerk Martin. She deserves a lion's share of the blame.

Martin, who incidentally lost her bid to become county auditor in the election, was the chief official in charge of Tuesday's election.

The election was a failure on so many obvious levels.

Rather than becoming a pair of willing hands trying to fix the problem, Martin was largely missing in action in the days following the election fiasco.

Porter County commissioners and others have called on Martin to step down in the wake of the disaster, and she should even though she has only a couple of months left in her term.

But this disaster in Porter County's electoral process goes beyond Martin.

Unprofessional vitriol from Kozuszek, an inept motion by Stankiewicz that appeared to fly in the face of state election law and a pattern of dysfunctional infighting among election and voter registration officials shows a system seriously broken.

Porter County Commissioners Laura Blaney, Jeff Good and Jim Biggs appear ready to identify and weed out all of the causes of the Porter County election collapse. Good and Blaney told me last week they're prepared to dissolve the voter registration office and start over if that is what it will take.

The commissioners also showed leadership in crisis by calling in the FBI and possibly state election officials to independently vet the election's integrity.

That's incredibly important.

The fiasco has left many in the public reeling, disenfranchised and in a state of distrust over the core American institution of democratic elections.

"Blow it up and start over," said one county official, telling me what needed to occur in the wake of the disaster.

The blowup already occurred.

It will take bipartisan leadership, free of lowly vitriol, to rebuild something in which voters can be confident.

UPDATE: Porter County election results bring relief, anger and more calls for investigations
NWI Times
November 09, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/update-porter-county-election-results-bring-relief-anger-and-more/article_b52fa514-61e1-5836-b294-1c3ff9637dd7.html

VALPARAISO — In the end, there were sighs of relief, heated exchanges and words of disappointment as Porter County finally released the local results of Tuesday's general election around noon Friday.

"Right now I don't trust Porter County to host an election," Sheila Sweeney, of Valparaiso, said.

Sweeney was among a sizable group that crowded into the narrow hallway just outside the county voter registration office Friday morning and waited more than two hours for word that the ballot counting was done, three days after Election Day.

The announcement came from the county election board, but missing was Republican member and Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, who has been held largely to blame for polling places opening late, a shortage of workers, mishandled ballots and the other problems that contributed to the delayed vote count.

"Karen Martin has to answer for herself," said J.J. Stankiewicz, the lone Democrat on the county election board.

The Porter County Board of Commissioners issued a prepared statement following the release of the election results that in part calls on Martin to immediately resign as clerk. Martin lost her bid this week to unseat Democratic Porter County Auditor Vicki Urbanik.

Porter County Council members Dan Whitten and Jeremy Rivas made the same request of Martin, saying they as council members were assured by Martin and the election board that they had the resources necessary to carry out the election.

Martin said Friday afternoon, "I will be finishing my term."

The commissioners also called on the county election board to seek an investigation into the election by the Indiana Secretary of State's Office Election Division and the Indiana State Police. If the Election Board does not make the request, the commissioners said they would do what they can to initiate an investigation.

The commissioners are staying mum about a meeting they had Thursday with the FBI that was requested in the wake of "scores of alleged violations of Indiana election law submitted by poll workers, voters and the public."

The commissioners also want to see a bipartisan effort in the county to determine what actions must be taken to assure this type of election failure does not occur again.

"This cooperative and bipartisan effort is absolutely critical to begin the process of restoring voter confidence in our elections," according to the commissioners.

Strong voter turnout
Voter turnout was strong at nearly 53 percent, said Republican County Election Board member David Bengs.

"That's got to be right up there near the top," he said.

The vote total released Friday is not the final figure. There are 250 provisional ballots to be sorted through on Nov. 16, which are ballots that are in question and are not guaranteed to make the final count.

The ballots may wind up playing a role in Democrat Bob Poparad's current 15-vote victory to unseat Republican incumbent County Council member Andy Bozak.

The delay in the vote count appears to be the longest in the county's history, according to election officials.

Kathy Kozuszek, Democratic director at the Porter County Voter Registration Office, who helped to oversee the vote count, said she reached out weeks ago to state election officials and the American Civil Liberties Union in response to complaints from voters and other warning signs that something was going wrong with the election.

"I saw this coming," said Kozuszek, an 18-year election employee, who lost to Martin four years ago in a race for county clerk.

"I'm truly saddened by what happened here," she said.

Bengs defended the decision by himself and Martin earlier this year to move control of the elections from the their long-time home at the county voter registration office to Martin, as clerk.

The change, which was opposed by Stankiewicz, was the right thing to do under the law, Bengs said. 

Sundae Schoon, the Republican director at voter registration office, defended the change, saying Martin said at the time she could handle running the election.

Election Day: Complete Region results
NWI Times
November 09, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/election-day-complete-region-results/collection_5baef1a2-fa4c-539e-aa01-92dba4abdedc.html

Full results from Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties for all races pertaining to the Region

Boy, Tallian officially winners
The Michigan City News Dispatch
November 09, 2018
https://www.thenewsdispatch.com/news/article_2f5b5549-7a6a-5103-bd4d-a97c20160de7.html

MICHIGAN CITY – Three days after Indiana's general election, two of La Porte County's Statehouse candidates officially won their races on Friday.

Porter County officials released their vote totals Friday afternoon, after days of confusion, anger and finger-pointing, which also saw the FBI called in to investigate complaints of election fraud.

The delay held up results in the Senate District 4 and House District 9 legislative races because those districts include precincts in both La Porte and Porter counties. And while both candidates had comfortable leads after vote totals were released, neither wanted to proclaim victory prematurely.

When the Porter County totals finally came out, Michigan City Common Council member Patricia Boy won easily over Republican challenger Dan Granquist.

Boy already had a 10,512-6,169 lead after La Porte County totals were released Tuesday night. In Porter County, Boy again beat Granquist, 2,562-2,460 for a final margin of victory of 13,074-8,629. That's just about 60 percent of the vote going to Boy and 40 percent to Granquist.

In the Senate race, incumbent Democrat Karen Tallian of Beverly Shores also handily won her race over Republican challenger Cole Stultz.

In La Porte County, Tallian received 7,653 votes to 4,365 for Stultz; and in Porter County, she outpolled her opponent 18,981-13,121. That meant a final victory total of 26,634-17,486, again a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent.

"I can't believe it took three full days to count the ballots for Porter County," Boy said Friday night. "There was definitely an issue with the process there. It didn't look good for one of the persons in charge of the election to also be on the ballot."

But, she added, "The problems that arose could not all have been caused by the leadership. Add to that the huge turnout, and things probably escalated. I question why they needed a judge to order the affected polls to remain open the full 12 hours."

As for her win, Boy said she is already getting prepared.

"I was in Indy on Wednesday ... It was a caucus to elect party leadership and meet some of the people who we will work with. We have orientation and training for newly elected officials next week, then organization day the following week (Nov. 20) when we will be sworn in."

She thanked Granquist "for a race based on the issues. I won't campaign any other way, and I'm grateful that he wouldn't either."

NW Indiana county releases delayed General Election results
Belleville News - Democrat
November 09, 2018
https://www.bnd.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article221424765.html
VALPARAISO, IND. 
Officials in a northwestern Indiana county have released election results three days after Tuesday's General Election.

Porter County officials posted the results Friday afternoon on their election board's website.

The election returns' release had been delayed as officials conducted a hand count of thousands of absentee ballots cast by mail or during early voting but which weren't delivered to polling places Tuesday.

The delay was blamed on several problems , including heavy voter turnout, the need for 12 county polling sites to stay open late Tuesday after failing to open on time, and the delivery problems with the absentee ballots.

Those problems had left the outcomes of two Indiana House races undetermined and prompted the county's commissioners to request an FBI investigation into alleged state election law violations.

NW Indiana county releases delayed General Election results
Seymour Tribune
November 09, 2018
http://www.tribtown.com/2018/11/09/in-election-2018-indiana-voting-problems-2/
VALPARAISO, Ind. — Officials in a northwestern Indiana county have released election results three days after Tuesday’s General Election.

Porter County officials posted the results Friday afternoon on their election board’s website.

The election returns’ release had been delayed as officials conducted a hand count of thousands of absentee ballots cast by mail or during early voting but which weren’t delivered to polling places Tuesday.

The delay was blamed on several problems , including heavy voter turnout, the need for 12 county polling sites to stay open late Tuesday after failing to open on time, and the delivery problems with the absentee ballots.

Those problems had left the outcomes of two Indiana House races undetermined and prompted the county’s commissioners to request an FBI investigation into alleged state election law violations.

Vicki Urbanik beats Karen Martin in race for Auditor; split tickets in other races
Chesterton Tribune
November 09, 2018
http://chestertontribune.com/Elections/vicki_urbanik_beats_karen_martin.htm
Republican Karen Martin--the term-limited Clerk who oversaw Tuesday’s general election in Porter County--has lost her bid to unseat incumbent Auditor Vicki Urbanik.

Urbanik took 33,486 votes to Martin’s 29,546. Urbanik won with 53 percent of the vote to Martin’s 47 percent.

Clerk
In the race for the open seat of Porter County Clerk, Democrat Jessica Bailey narrowly beat Republican--and term-limited Recorder--Jon Miller, 31,773 votes to 31,188. Bailey won with 50.46 percent of the vote to Miller’s 49.54 percent.

Coroner
In the race for the open seat of Porter County Coroner, Republican Cyndi Dykes beat Democrat Randy Wilkening, 32,895 votes to 30,027. Dykes won with 52 percent of the vote to Wilkening’s 48 percent.

Recorder
In the race for the open seat of Porter County Recorder, Republican--and term-limited Coroner--Chuck Harris beat Democrat Lily Schaefer, 32,366 votes to 30,355. Harris won with 52 percent of the vote to Schaefer’s 48 percent.

Valporaiso Dems want election breakdown investigated
Chesterton Tribune
Novermber 09, 2018
http://www.chestertontribune.com/Elections/valpo_dems_want_election_breakdo.htm
The Valparaiso Democratic Committee is demanding a “full and transparent investigation” into what it’s calling Tuesday’s “election breakdown,” in a statement released after deadline on Thursday.

The text of the statement in full:
“The day after Porter County citizens were impacted by the election problems on Tuesday, Nov. 6, Valparaiso Democratic Committee Chair Drew Wenger stood in front of the Porter County Administration Building and held a press conference to detail the many ways the Porter County Clerk's office failed to run an efficient and fair election. And today, Thursday, Nov. 8, more than 36 hours after the polls closed on Election Day, citizens are still waiting for results to be posted from any Porter County precinct. This chaotic situation is unbecoming of our proud and engaged county. In the interest of full transparency, this glaring issue must be addressed immediately to satisfy the rightful concerns of our citizenry.

“The task of managing elections was handed over to the County Clerk's office in March of 2018. We have been documenting numerous complaints this week dealing with absentee applications not being processed or absentee ballots not arriving in a prompt fashion, poll worker assignments not being communicated, poll worker trainings being short and insufficient, and a general lack of professionalism emanating from the office. These documented issues make it apparent that the management of our election was inept and perhaps suspect. Citizens are demanding to know that their votes counted.

“The incompetence seen in the months before the election manifested problems heretofore unseen in Porter County on the day of the election. Thirteen polling locations were not fully staffed and could not open until an hour after their mandated opening time, resulting in many voters becoming frustrated and forgoing voting altogether. As Election Day continued, it became clear that most polling locations were not going to receive their absentee ballots by the 6 p.m. closing time, leading to much confusion. The Porter County Clerk's office was unreachable by phone, forcing many precinct inspectors to make the call to pack up before properly counting the early votes into the total precinct results.

“The Valparaiso Democratic Committee is demanding a full and transparent investigation into the root cause of this breakdown of standard operating protocol, and an account of all complaints received by the relevant governmental bodies working on various aspects of the election. The people of Porter County deserve, at the very minimum, a detailed explanation as to why their voices are not being counted.”

Biggs on FBI
Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, told the Chesterton Tribune that he and County Attorney Scott McClure met with FBI officials for about two hours yesterday. He was not at liberty to discuss anything said in the meeting.

When asked if the County has considered contacting the Indiana Secretary of State’s office in the event the FBI declines to investigate, Biggs said “All I can say is they weren’t the only agency we contacted.”

Commissioners demand accountability for election issues
Chesterton Tribune
November 09, 2018
http://chestertontribune.com/Elections/commissioners_demand_accountabil.htm
The following press release arrived after press time November 9, 2018
For Immediate Release Commissioners Demand Accountability For Election Issues

To assure accountability for the serious problems in Tuesday’s election process, and to begin developing a plan to assure that the problems do not occur again, the Porter County Commissioners’ Office is demanding that the County Clerk and Election Board take the following immediate actions.

1.Porter County Clerk Karen Martin must resign, effective immediately. Should she win Tuesday’s election for the position of County Auditor, she must also resign before taking office.

2.As is the normal protocol, the Porter County Election Board must request any and all investigations that are available through the Indiana Secretary of State Election Division and Indiana State Police. Should the Election Board not make the requests, the Commissioners’ Office shall make every effort within its statutory powers to get those authorities to open an investigation.

Further, the Commissioners’ Office is requesting that the Porter County Council, Election Board, Democrat Party Chair and Republican County Chair join with the Commissioners to immediately begin a bipartisan effort to determine any and all actions that must be taken to assure that such a failure never happens again. This cooperative and bipartisan effort is absolutely critical to begin the process of restoring voter confidence in our elections.

Finally, the Commissioners’ Office extends its sincere and deep gratitude to the hundreds of poll workers that gave of their time on Tuesday and to the Porter County Sheriff’s Department for the support they have given throughout this process.

15 votes separate Bozak and Poparad
Chesterton Tribune
November 09, 2018
http://www.chestertontribune.com/Elections/15_votes_separate_bozak_and_popa.htm
According to the unofficial results released today, Bob Poparad (D) has defeated incumbent Andy Bozak (R) for the District 1 seat on the County Council by a mere 15 votes--in a 9,032 to 9,017 split.

The results for this race could change either way when provisional ballots--and all ballots cast after 6 p.m. at 12 polling places that stayed open late by court order-- are counted during the election certification Friday, Nov. 16.

Other Council races
Incumbent Mike Jessen (R) has defeated Democrat challenger Susie Talevski for the 4th District seat with 9,777 votes to Talevski’s 6,105 votes.

Greg Simms (D) defeated Mark “Coach” Hoffman (R) for the Council District 3 seat with 8,501 votes to Hoffman’s 7,826 votes.

Commissioner Center
Incumbent Jeff Good (R) has defeated Democrat challenger Donna Perdue for the Center District seat with 32,622 votes to Perdue’s 30,312 votes.

Porter County voting results released 3 days after election; officials call for clerk's resignation
Chicago Tribune
November 09, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-county-election-results-st-1110-story.html

In light of a lengthy list of election woes for Porter County’s midterm election, including a preliminary tally of results that wasn’t complete until Friday, the Porter County Board of Commissioners and two members of the County Council are asking for the immediate resignation of Clerk Karen Martin.

Commissioners made their request after election board officials announced the results were online during a sometimes heated news conference.

“Under normal circumstances, the board of commissioners would have never suggested anything like that. I think Karen’s conduct after Tuesday night is what convinced us that something had to be done,” said Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North. “Being MIA at a time when her leadership was at its highest need – short of someone taking my legs from me, I would have been there. I would have had to be there. It was unfortunate but it needed to be said.”

Martin said via text message that she will be finishing her term. She declined additional comment, including on commissioners’ request for the FBI to investigate the election for allegations of election law violations. Biggs and county attorney Scott McClure met with the FBI for two hours Thursday afternoon; it is not immediately known if the federal agency will undertake an investigation.

Once the results were known, Martin, a Republican, lost in a bid for county auditor to incumbent Vicki Urbanik, a Democrat, according to preliminary vote totals. Martin, in her second term, could not seek a third term as county clerk under state statute.

Democrat Jessica Bailey received more than 50 percent of the votes to lead in her bid for county clerk, according to preliminary election results, over Republican Jon Miller, the county’s current recorder.

Also calling on Martin to resign are Porter County Councilmen Dan Whitten D-At large, and Jeremy Rivas, D-2nd.

“Although elections do not fall under the council’s control, numerous, repeated inquiries were made to the clerk and the election board to ensure they had all the resources necessary to facilitate this election,” they said in a joint statement.

“Assurances were given that no additional resources were needed, that the election was under control. Clearly, that wasn’t the case. It is very clear the clerk recklessly failed at her duty. As elected officials, we believe it is our responsibility and obligation to call for the immediate resignation of Karen Martin.”

Election Day in Porter County was rife with problems, including delayed election results, 12 precincts that stayed open later than planned because they did not open on time, and absentee ballots not being distributed to precincts to be counted by the time the polls closed.

In early March, the election board voted 2-1 along party lines to give election duties to the clerk’s office after Kathy Kozuszek, the Democratic director in the county’s voter registration office, sent a letter to some election board and party officials stating she would no longer handle elections because doing so ran afoul of state statute.

During a sometimes testy exchange with the crowd Friday outside the voter registration office waiting on the election results, representatives of the election board and voter registration deflected criticism about how the election was handled.

“We did our best,” said J.J. Stankiewicz, the lone Democrat on the board, adding late-opening polls remained open longer to accommodate voters.

Kozuszek said her office didn’t handle the election.

“I did what I could from day one to protect voters,” she said, adding she, too, offered assistance to Martin, who said she didn’t need it. “There’s nothing I could do.”

Martin, who did not attend Friday’s announcement about the results, makes up the third member of the election board.

“To be running for office and be on a three-member board can tilt the way things are done,” Stankiewicz said “It stinks to high heaven.”

Commissioners also said the election board should request “any and all investigations” of the election that are available through the Indiana Secretary of State’s Election Division and the Indiana State Police, and said if the election board didn’t make the requests, the commissioners’ office “shall make every effort within its statutory powers to get those authorities to open an investigation.”

Additionally, commissioners requested the county council, the election board and party chairs join with them “to immediately begin a bipartisan effort to determine any and all actions that must be taken to assure that such a failure never happens again,” something they said is “absolutely critical to begin the process of restoring voter confidence in our elections.”

“We have to earn back the trust which is said to have been lost,” Stankiewicz said.

The election board is amenable to change.

“It’s going to be done across the board, with the council and commissioners, so it can be done on a united front that all parties are confident of,” Bengs said.

Porter County Voters Call On Clerk To Resign
CBS 2 News
November 09, 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/video/3975453-porter-county-voters-call-on-clerk-to-resign/

15 votes separate District 1 Porter County Council candidates
Chicago Tribune
November 09 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-county-election-st-1110-story.html

While Porter County preliminary election totals came in Friday, the wait isn’t over for the candidates for District 1 on the Porter County Council, who are separated by a 15-vote margin in a race.

Democrat Bob Poparad, who formerly served on the county council, had 50.04 percent of the vote. Incumbent Andy Bozak, a Republican who is council president and was selected by caucus for the seat in January, has 49.96 percent of the vote.

“I’m not thinking anything,” Poparad said, adding he would likely attend the meeting when the election board goes through the250 provisional ballots Nov.16 and certifies the results.

He called the delay for results “embarrassing” as he prepared for another long wait.

“We’ll see. I mean, 15 votes ain’t much,” he said.

Bozak said he was buoyed that more than 9,000 people voted for him.

“It really gives you some hope. I’m positive that things go well,” he said, adding he planned on spending the weekend with his family and starting to put up his massive Christmas decoration display so he didn’t focus on the wait. “Internally, it kills you.”

The counting of 18,000 absentee ballots, including tallies from early voters and mail-ins, held up the release of the preliminary results after they were not distributed to polling places to be counted as they should have been on Election Day.

A growing crowd gathered outside the county’s voter registration office, where the counting took place, to await word from the election board about when the results would go public on the county’s website.

That announcement, in an informal news conference before candidates, residents, county employees, elected officials and Chicago television stations, came at noon, around the time the crowd realized the results were up and began scrolling through their phones.

“We strove for accuracy over expediency. I apologize for the time it took,” said Republican David Bengs, president of the election board.

There are three sets of provisional ballots for the election board to comb through: one for voters who cast ballots the morning of Oct. 27 in Portage but whose ballots were not properly initialed by poll workers and could not come back in to vote anew; a second for any ballots set aside during normal polling place hours on Election Day; and the third for ballots cast at 12 precincts that remained open after regular voting hours ended at 6 p.m.

In all, Bengs said the midterm generated 65,130 votes, almost 53 percent of the county’s registered voters.

“It’s probably the highest in county history. It’s got to be right up there at the top for midterm elections,” he said.

Porter County Prosecutor Brian Gensel, a Republican seeking his fourth term in office, trailed Democrat Gary Germann, with Germann securing 54.06 percent of the vote according to preliminary results.

Germann, who previously served as prosecutor from 1978 to 1982, thanked Gensel for his 30 years of public service in the prosecutor’s office in a statement on his campaign Facebook page.

“On a historic note, as the second Democratic prosecutor in Porter County history, I intend to responsibly serve this county with honor, integrity and a strong work ethic,” he said.

In a statement released shortly after the election results went live, Gensel said it had been a privilege serving the county’s citizens.

“I trust that Mr. Germann will continue to build upon the foundation I have laid to keep Porter County a great, safe place to live,” he said.

Board of Commissioners President Jeff Good, a Republican, garnered 51.84 percent of the vote total over Democrat Donna Perdue in a bid for a second term representing Center District, according to preliminary figures.

In a prepared statement, Good said he appreciated his fellow commissioners and the county attorney for handling the turmoil of the election. Good stepped away from the process because he was on the ballot.

“As time plays out the true story will emerge as to what happened. All of us on the ballot deserve a full scale review by the authorities who have oversight, whether state or federal,” he said.

Regardless of the outcome of the race between Bozak and Poparad, Democrats will again have a majority on the county council.

Democrat Greg Simms had 52.07 of the preliminary tally over Republican Mark Hoffman for the District 3 seat, which is now held by Republican Karen Conover, who did not run for another term.

Incumbent Mike Jessen, a Republican, had 61.56 percent of the preliminary vote total over challenger Susie Talevski, a Democrat. Democrat Jeremy Rivas was unopposed for another term representing District 2.

At-large council members Dan Whitten and Sylvia Graham are Democrats, and Jeff Larson is a Republican.

Portage police chief wins seat on school board after resource officer firing
Chicago Tribune
November 09, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-county-school-boards-st-1110-story.html

Newly elected Portage Township School Board member Troy Williams said Friday he’ll focus on “moving forward” and “understanding the nuts and bolts” of the board.

After the dust of Porter County’s general election debacle last Tuesday night settled, Williams, a first time candidate and police chief in Portage, was declared the winner of the Dist. 1 seat over retired education administrator Joan Machuca, also an election novice.

Williams captured 58 percent of the vote to Machuca’s 41 percent, according to the Porter County website.

The win comes months after Williams’ contentious interactions with the school board and schools Superintendent Amanda Alaniz over Alaniz’s decision to fire Portage police officers as school resource officers, ending a 20-year relationship between the schools and the police department.

Machuca said she was “very disappointed” in the loss, congratulated Williams and said she hopes Williams’ “differences with the school district and the administration will be resolved.”

Machuca thanked the voters but said the three-day delay in releasing the results was very frustrating.

“That disenfranchisement of the voters was probably my largest concern,” she said, adding she hopes Porter County officials will give voters “a clear explanation” of what happened in Tuesday’s election

Porter County, Indiana Wants FBI To Probe Election Woes
WBBMTV News - Chicago
November 09, 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/video/category/spoken-word-wbbmtv/3974747-porter-county-indiana-wants-fbi-to-probe-election-woes/

Plagued by a long list of Election Day problems, commissioners in Porter, Indiana have asked the FBI to investigate what's been described as "scores of alleged violations in Indiana Election Law" following Tuesday's elections. Matt Yurus reports.

3 days after Election Day, Porter County finally gets some results
WLS-TV
November 09, 2018
https://abc7chicago.com/politics/3-days-after-election-day-porter-county-finally-gets-some-results/4657029/

PORTER COUNTY, Ind. (WLS) -- After days of delay, the voters and candidates in Porter County, Indiana, finally got some election results Friday.

The results come after Porter County officials met with the FBI to discuss alleged election law violations.

There was anger and concern as the local results from Tuesday's general election in Porter County were finally released after days of delays in counting more than 18,000 early voting and mail-in ballots.

"It's very disconcerting as a citizen of this country," said voter Harriet Fagan.

In all, more than 65,000 ballots were cast in Porter County. Counting started Wednesday morning.

The results were delayed by Election Day problems including a dozen polling places opening late, a shortage of workers, and allegations of mishandled ballots.

"We weren't getting our absentee ballots and we were not getting our early voters ballots," said Mary Jo Nuland, Election Day judge.

"We were given this catastrophe and we made the best with what we were dealt to. I didn't pick my hand," said David Bengs, Porter County Election Board Member.

Some voters and others are now blaming the Porter County's Republican clerk and election board member Karen Martin who, along with Bengs, voted earlier this year to move the local election process to her office from where it had been for years. Martin could not be reached for comment.

At issue now are another 122 provisional ballots that are yet to be counted.

Although Democratic candidate for county board Donna Perdue lost her bid for office, she says those votes could make a difference for someone else.

"Maybe I would have still lost, but it feels tainted now," Perdue said.

Porter County, Indiana Wants FBI To Probe Election Woes
WBBMTV News - Chicago
November 09, 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/video/category/spoken-word-wbbmtv/3974747-porter-county-indiana-wants-fbi-to-probe-election-woes/

Plagued by a long list of Election Day problems, commissioners in Porter, Indiana have asked the FBI to investigate what's been described as "scores of alleged violations in Indiana Election Law" following Tuesday's elections. Matt Yurus reports.

Porter County Voters Call On Clerk To Resign
CBS 2 News
November 09, 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/video/3975453-porter-county-voters-call-on-clerk-to-resign/

Porter County Clerk Urged to resign admist election problems
CBS Chicago
Novmber 09, 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/11/09/porter-county-election-problems/

CHICAGO (CBS)–Voters in Porter County, Indiana are calling for Clerk Karen Martin to resign after an Election Day disaster that has lasted days.

Numerous people who have worked on Porter County elections for the past few decades have said Tuesday’s election was the worst they have ever seen.

The severity of the problems has prompted an FBI investigation.

Voters and poll workers are blaming Martin, who recently gained authority over elections in Porter County and also ran unsuccessfully for County Auditor during this past election.

Valparaiso voter Kathy Hensley was surprised to hear the clerk was able to run for auditor.

“There should be a mechanism for that not to happen,” Hensley said.

Making matters worse, Martin has not appeared in public since the Election Day problems arose.

The Porter County Clerk’s Office declined to comment on Friday, only saying Martin wasn’t in the office.

J.J. Stankiewicz, Democratic Porter County Election Board member, said he doesn’t know where Martin is.

“I don’t know, and Karen Martin has to answer for herself,” Stankiewicz said.

The only sighting of Martin this week was when she was spotted hiding behind a voter in the corner at an Election Board briefing at an administrative building.

That voter, Kenard Taylor, said he thought it was strange when he found out the woman cowering behind him was Martin.

“I knew somebody was behind me but I didn’t know it was Karen,” Taylor said.

The results for the Porter County elections were finally posted around 12 p.m. Friday–almost three days late.

Meanwhile, voters and candidates gave up their mornings on Friday to be present for a briefing where Election Board members David Bengs and Stankiewicz apologized to voters and poll workers for the mess caused by staffing issues at the polls and issues delivering absentee ballots to the precincts.

Stankiewicz said Martin’s candidacy for auditor didn’t sit right, and he suspected a conflict of interest.

“Even if it’s not, it smells to high heaven,” Stankiewicz said.

Apart from the FBI investigation, County Commissioners are also launching an investigation at the state level.

Some details from the election: 
* A total of 65,130 Porter County Ballots were counted. Approximately 250 provisional ballots have yet to be counted during the certification process, the deadline for which is November 16. Turnout for the election was nearly 53 percent.
* The Porter County Commissioners office is requesting that the Porter County Election Board request any and all investigations that are available through the Indiana Secretary of State Election Division and Indiana State Police.
* The delay in results appears to be the longest in the county’s history.
* Here’s a link to the results: http://www2.porterco.org/election/index.txt

Provisional ballots may determine results in one Porter County Council race
NWI Times
November 09, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/provisional-ballots-may-determine-results-of-one-porter-county-council/article_fbb35459-cb8a-5476-a921-0ec35fd37133.html

VALPARAISO — After days of waiting for the results, candidates in the District 1 Porter County Council race are still in limbo.

Unofficial election results have Democrat Bob Poparad 15 votes ahead of incumbent Republican Andy Bozak.

County election officials confirmed there are 250 provisional votes yet to be counted. The majority are likely from polls which were court-ordered to stay open past 6 p.m. due to opening late. Another portion are from the Oct. 27 incident at the Portage early polling location where poll workers failed to sign ballots.

Provisional votes can be cast for other reasons as well, said Valerie Warycha, communications director and deputy chief of staff for the Indiana secretary of state's office, which oversees elections. Other reasons include identification or residency disputes.

Warycha said there is a lot of local rule involved in the handling of provisional ballots. However, the local election board must meet by noon 10 days after the election to consider the ballots and must report those results to her office by 3 p.m. This year, the certification meeting will be held Nov. 16. 

During the meeting, board members must determine whether or not to certify each of the provisional votes before that vote is counted, she said.

Poparad said Friday he would withhold any comments on the race until all the votes have been counted.

"It is obviously a blow to see it that close," Bozak said, adding of the 12 polls that remained open past 6 p.m., three are within the council's 1st District. He added that some of the ballots in question from the Oct. 27 incident may also contain votes from his district.

"There were so many irregularities in this election," said Bozak said. "Who knows what will happen after these are counted," adding if the totals are still close next week after the provisional ballots are counted, he will make a decision then as whether or not he will seek a recount.

Bozak added that win or lose, he is "humbled" that more than 9,000 people voted for him and "no matter what happens, I'll be back."

There were also elections in three other County Council districts.

District 2 incumbent Democrat Jeremy Rivas was unopposed in his bid for re-election.

In the District 3 race, Democrat Greg Simms won over Republican Mark Hoffman. The seat had previously been held by Republican Karen Conover.

In the District 4 race, incumbent Republican Mike Jessen defeated Democrat Susie Talevski.

Portage police chief wins School Board seat; longtime incumbent Nelson defeated
NWI Times
November 09, 2018
UPDATED: November 12, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/portage-police-chief-wins-school-board-seat-longtime-incumbent-nelson/article_fb7f8590-da7c-51f8-9411-ca1fec1162ee.html

PORTAGE — The makeup of the Portage Township School board will be changing due to this week's election.

Portage Police Chief Troy Williams won the District 1 seat over Joan Machuca. The seat is presently held by Cheryl Oprisko, who chose not to run again. Williams, however, won't take over the seat until January 2020. The District 1 seat is set up to lag a year.

Incumbent Rhonda Nelson came in third in a three-candidate race for the District 2 seat. Mary Clancy won the seat with Scott Falk coming in second.

At-large member Andy Maletta ran unopposed and will hold his seat for another four years.

In addition, the board will have another new member in January as District 3 member Jessica Bailey was elected to serve as the Porter County clerk and will have to resign from the School Board before taking that office.

"I'm happy and relieved," Williams said after vote totals were announced about noon Friday. "There was a lot of hard work by a lot of people who went into the effort." The voices of Portage Township residents were heard, he added.  

Williams, who served as school resource officer at Portage High School for six years, and most recently battled with the School Board and administration over school security, said he believes he can work with the district and has expertise along with his experience as police chief in budgeting, policy making and negotiations.

Williams and school officials squared off for months over the use of Portage officers within the schools as SROs. Eventually, the district ended its relationship with the Portage department.

Machuca said she hopes the two sides can mend and move on after the election.

"I hope they can come to terms," said Machuca, of Ogden Dunes and a longtime former educator and administrator. She gained much from the campaign experience and hopes to remain involved in the schools, she added.

Clancy, marketing director for NorthShore Health Centers, said she believes her fresh ideas and perspective put her over the top in the three-way contest.

As a 2015 Portage High School graduate, Clancy said she has a good perspective on how things are, from the use of technology in the classroom to code reds.

Nelson said she was disappointed in the loss.

"There were so many things I wanted to see finished. I'm hoping they can finish the stuff we started," she said. "I always did it for the kids."

EDITORIAL: Blame to go around in Porter County election fiasco
NWI Times
November 09, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-blame-to-go-around-in-porter-county-election-fiasco/article_44eae889-a40e-58ad-bb3f-dc0ec92f1ac1.html

At best, some top Porter County elections officials seem to have treated one of society's most important institutions as an afterthought.

At worst, polling places and some ballots appear to have been treated as inconsequential.

It's shameful, and both people and processes must be held accountable.

Through it all, Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, who is supposed to be in charge, has been largely missing in action as other county officials deal with the fallout.

Now Porter County voters and political candidates are reaping the reward: An election system that appears to have been in chaos long before election night and a lack of reported results 60 hours, and counting, after election night.

Adding shameful insult to injury, Indiana Republican Party leaders actually tried to block the efforts of county officials and a judge to extend polling hours at 12 voting locations that opened several hours late Tuesday.

A number of voters faced disenfranchisement in an era when national political scandals already have eroded public trust in our elections.

The state GOP was tone-deaf and shortsighted, placing politics above voters.

One of the few positives rising from the voting fiasco in Porter County is the leadership of county commissioners.

The three county executives pushed for the later operations of the affected polling locations, giving voters who were turned away in the morning more time to vote later in the day.

When various complaints flowed in from election workers, the details of which have not been fully disclosed, the commissioners called on the FBI to investigate.

It was an important step in beginning to restore trust, or in weeding out any possible transgressions.

Commissioners Laura Blaney, a Democrat, and Jim Biggs, a Republican, have been providing particularly visible leadership in the wake of the chaos.

Commissioner Jeff Good, the Republican president of the commissioners, is on the ballot this election cycle and rightly has kept himself removed from the situation.

But the solid leadership from commissioners aside, how did we get here to begin with?

Why are results not counted three days and counting after polls opened? Why were early and absentee ballots apparently not organized and counted timely and properly?

Who is responsible?

It will take more leadership from commissioners and other county officials to fully vet what caused this disaster and ensure it never happens again.

Porter County taxpayers deserve it — and should be demanding it. It doesn't get any more broken than what we're seeing play out in the Porter County 2018 general election.

Now who will step forth and fix it?

Porter County Clerk Urged To Resign Amidst Election Problems
CBS Chicago
November 09, 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/11/09/porter-county-election-problems/

CHICAGO (CBS)–Voters in Porter County, Indiana are calling for Clerk Karen Martin to resign after an Election Day disaster that has lasted days.

Numerous people who have worked on Porter County elections for the past few decades have said Tuesday’s election was the worst they have ever seen.

The severity of the problems has prompted an FBI investigation.

Voters and poll workers are blaming Martin, who recently gained authority over elections in Porter County and also ran unsuccessfully for County Auditor during this past election.

Valparaiso voter Kathy Hensley was surprised to hear the clerk was able to run for auditor.

“There should be a mechanism for that not to happen,” Hensley said.

Making matters worse, Martin has not appeared in public since the Election Day problems arose.

The Porter County Clerk’s Office declined to comment on Friday, only saying Martin wasn’t in the office.

J.J. Stankiewicz, Democratic Porter County Election Board member, said he doesn’t know where Martin is.

“I don’t know, and Karen Martin has to answer for herself,” Stankiewicz said.

The only sighting of Martin this week was when she was spotted hiding behind a voter in the corner at an Election Board briefing at an administrative building.

That voter, Kenard Taylor, said he thought it was strange when he found out the woman cowering behind him was Martin.

“I knew somebody was behind me but I didn’t know it was Karen,” Taylor said.

The results for the Porter County elections were finally posted around 12 p.m. Friday–almost three days late.

Meanwhile, voters and candidates gave up their mornings on Friday to be present for a briefing where Election Board members David Bengs and Stankiewicz apologized to voters and poll workers for the mess caused by staffing issues at the polls and issues delivering absentee ballots to the precincts.

Stankiewicz said Martin’s candidacy for auditor didn’t sit right, and he suspected a conflict of interest.

“Even if it’s not, it smells to high heaven,” Stankiewicz said.

Apart from the FBI investigation, County Commissioners are also launching an investigation at the state level.

Some details from the election: 
* A total of 65,130 Porter County Ballots were counted. Approximately 250 provisional ballots have yet to be counted during the certification process, the deadline for which is November 16. Turnout for the election was nearly 53 percent.
*  Porter County Commissioners office is requesting that the Porter County Election Board request any and all investigations that are available through the Indiana Secretary of State Election Division and Indiana State Police.
* The delay in results appears to be the longest in the county’s history.
* Here’s a link to the results: http://www2.porterco.org/election/index.txt

Porter County Election Woes Continue
WBBMTV News - Chicago
November 08, 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/video/category/spoken-word-wbbmtv/3974757-porter-county-election-woes-continue/

UPDATE: No Porter County election results until at least Friday, possibly longest delay in county's history; No comment concerning FBI meeting
nwitimes.com
NWI Times
November 08, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/porter-county-election-results-still-not-available-officials-to-meet/article_91b8db58-8ab4-5cbf-b232-d78cffb812de.html

VALPARAISO — Porter County voters and candidates are now going to have to wait until at least Friday before learning the outcome of Tuesday's general election.

And Porter County officials offered no comment following a Thursday afternoon meeting with the FBI over alleged election law violations.

The delay in the vote count appears to be the longest in the county's history, according to election officials.

"We told them reliable rather than fast," said J.J. Stankiewicz, the lone Democrat on the three-member county election board.

The update on the vote count came as the election board members made a noon visit to the county voter registration office and then held a short news conference that attracted anxious candidates, voters and community activists.

Republican Election Board Member David Bengs said more than half of the vote has been counted.

But unlike regular elections nights, the results will not be released until all ballots are counted, he said.

The count will still not be final, however. Normal provisional ballots and those cast Tuesday at the dozen precincts that had their hours extended by a judge due to a late opening will be counted Nov. 16, as is typically the case.

The election workers have been instructed to keep counting until it is clear that fatigue is threatening the integrity of their work, at which time they are to call it quits and resume after getting some rest, Stankiewicz said.

The group did not want to comment on the possibility of the count continuing into the weekend.

Republican Election Board member and County Clerk Karen Martin, who has caught most of the blame for the election problems, having taken over the process earlier this year, declined comment.

Martin is among the candidates on the ballots being counted. She is seeking to unseat incumbent Democratic Porter County Auditor Vicki Urbanik.

The count is being conducted by six employees of the election board and/or voter registration office — three Republicans and three Democrats, Stankiewicz said.

The two party-appointed directors of the voter registration office, and one Republican and one Democrat poll watcher are the only other people allowed in during the count. A Porter County police officer is posted just outside the door of the voter registration office on the lower level of the county administration center and outside the clerk's office on the lower level of the nearby courthouse.

In addition to facing problems of late starts at 12 polling places and reports of some mishandled ballots, Bengs said a lot of votes were cast during the contentious midterm election.

"Turnout was huge," he said.

The Election Board plans to make an announcement when the vote count is complete, at which time the results will be posted online on the election page of the county's website.

Kathy Kozuszek, the Democrat director at the county voter registration office, said earlier Thursday that after working 24 hours on Election Day as a result of all the problems, she did not get out of work until 10:30 p.m. Wednesday and was back in the office at 7:30 a.m. Thursday.

Indiana Democratic Party Chairman John Zody waded into the local election problems during a news conference in Indianapolis Thursday by saying, "It seems to be a miscarriage of election administration in a number of ways by the Republican clerk.

"It is unacceptable we don't have any election results two days after the election, and they're still counting. There were a lot of mistakes made in the administration of that election."

FBI asked to investigate
Representatives from the county commissioners' office met with the FBI after receiving "scores of alleged violations of Indiana election law submitted by poll workers, voters and the public."

"It's a special task force that does nothing but handle issues that deal with elections," said Porter County Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North before the meeting.

Following the meeting, Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, declined comment on advice of county attorney Scott McClure. 

Tampering with elections is a federal offense, Biggs said, addressing questions about why the FBI was contacted as opposed to Indiana State Police.

"It's right up there with bank robbery," Biggs said. "People take this very seriously."

The target of those allegations was not made known, nor were any further details released.

The Porter County Voter Registration Office had long run local elections until earlier this year, when Martin and Bengs voted to transfer the authority to the county clerk's office headed up by Martin.

While Martin, in her role as county clerk, has been singled out by some as the cause of the late polling places and alleged mishandling of absentee and early ballots, Biggs said the problem is a little wider.

"Karen is not the single problem here," Biggs said. "This was not only her mistake. There is plenty of blame to be passed around here.

"We're trying to maintain any validity that may be left with the election process here in this county."

Biggs said he does not want to see the election process returned to the voter registration office, which is staffed by appointees of the local Republican and Democratic parties.

"You have a five-headed monster down there," he said.

He was referring to the county clerk, voter registration office, county election board and the local Republican and Democratic Party chairs.

The elections should remain under the control of an elected official, Biggs said, but with clear instructions on how to properly carry out the task.

It is the intent of the commissioners' office to get at the bottom of what went wrong with Tuesday's general election and set up a system to see that it does not happen again, he said.

Problems at polls Tuesday
The ballot count for Tuesday's election did not begin until Wednesday morning, or more than 15 hours after the first polling places closed. Twelve polling places failed to open on time Tuesday.

Martin said Tuesday of poll workers, "We had a lot of people quit on us at the last minute."

Additional problems stemmed from poll inspectors not picking up cases of supplies, and sites not being opened when poll workers arrived, she said.

Porter County Sheriff Dave Reynolds said absentee and early voting ballots were not ready early Tuesday for his officers to deliver to the appropriate polling places required by law.

Stankiewicz said he walked into the county courthouse about 1:05 a.m. Wednesday, and there were women sitting on the floor of the rotunda counting absentee and early voting ballots.

The absentee and early ballots should have been delivered to the Porter County Administration Center a couple of blocks away, he said.

The Election Day problems resulted in emergency court hearings and judges' orders to ensure access to voting and secure the handling of ballots.

The current vote count underway includes all votes cast between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesday, and all votes cast at early voting locations and absentee ballots by mail.

Indiana GOP rejects allegations of voter suppression in move to close Porter County polls at 6 p.m.
NWI Times
November 08, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/indiana-gop-rejects-allegations-of-voter-suppression-in-move-to/article_d4dae72d-3f60-5a63-aeca-01964c1ef62f.html

INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana Republican Party is defending its courtroom efforts to shut down all Porter County polling places at 6 p.m. Tuesday, and is shrugging off the suggestion that the state GOP was attempting to suppress the vote.

A Republican attorney asked Porter Superior Judge Roger Bradford on Tuesday afternoon to rescind his earlier order for 12 voting sites that failed to open on time at 6 a.m. Tuesday to remain open for up to 2 1/2 hours beyond the state's traditional 6 p.m. closing time.

Bradford, a Republican, rejected the party's request. It's not known precisely how many Porter County voters would have been disenfranchised if he had granted it.

There are numerous anecdotal reports of Porter County residents simply giving up on casting a ballot Tuesday when their polling places didn't open, since they had to leave for work and could not get back before voting ended — even with the extended hours in some cases.

Indiana Republican Party spokesman Pete Seat, a Schererville native, said the GOP request that the judge close the polls at 6 p.m. was focused on ensuring election consistency throughout the state and was not aimed at preventing some Hoosiers from casting a ballot.

"We objected to the court's ruling because, as a simple matter of fairness, we believe all voters should be given the same opportunity to vote," Seat said.

In addition, Seat noted that the General Assembly is responsible for setting Indiana's voting hours, and the Republican Party believes decisions on changing those hours "shouldn't be left in the hands of individual judges across the state."

None of the statewide races on Tuesday's ballot, all of which were won by Republican candidates, were directly affected by Porter County's voting issues or the county's still-delayed final results.

Indiana Democratic Party Chairman John Zody declined to comment on whether he thought Hoosier Republicans were attempting to suppress the vote in Porter County.

But state Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Ogden Dunes, said: "How could you think anything else?"

"You have a Republican clerk who has never done this before, in charge of an election that she has been totally screwing up for two to three weeks," Tallian said, referring to Clerk Karen Martin's alleged improper storage and processing of absentee ballots prior to Election Day.

Tallian also observed that many of the voting sites that did not open on time are located in the northern part of the county where voters generally favor Democratic candidates. 

In addition, several of the affected sites contained multiple precincts, which compounded the number of voters impacted, she said.

Tallian admitted all of that might have been forgivable — until the Indiana Republican Party sought to reverse Bradford's order extending balloting hours so all Porter County residents would have a full 12 hours to vote on Election Day.

"What might have started out as basic incompetence now looks like a concerted effort," Tallian said.

Other Hoosier lawmakers joked Wednesday at the Statehouse that Porter County had become the new Lake County, whose typically slow election night vote counts usually are the subject of derision.

No Porter County election results until at least Friday, possibly longest delay in county's history; No comment concerning FBI meeting
NWI Times
November 08, 2018
UPDATED: November 10, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/update-voters-candidates-likely-to-wait-until-friday-for-results/article_91b8db58-8ab4-5cbf-b232-d78cffb812de.html

VALPARAISO — Porter County voters and candidates are now going to have to wait until at least Friday before learning the outcome of Tuesday's general election.

And Porter County officials offered no comment following a Thursday afternoon meeting with the FBI over alleged election law violations.

The delay in the vote count appears to be the longest in the county's history, according to election officials.

"We told them reliable rather than fast," said J.J. Stankiewicz, the lone Democrat on the three-member county election board.

The update on the vote count came as the election board members made a noon visit to the county voter registration office and then held a short news conference that attracted anxious candidates, voters and community activists.

Republican Election Board Member David Bengs said more than half of the vote has been counted.

But unlike regular elections nights, the results will not be released until all ballots are counted, he said.

The count will still not be final, however. Normal provisional ballots and those cast Tuesday at the dozen precincts that had their hours extended by a judge due to a late opening will be counted Nov. 16, as is typically the case.

The election workers have been instructed to keep counting until it is clear that fatigue is threatening the integrity of their work, at which time they are to call it quits and resume after getting some rest, Stankiewicz said.

The group did not want to comment on the possibility of the count continuing into the weekend.

Republican Election Board member and County Clerk Karen Martin, who has caught most of the blame for the election problems, having taken over the process earlier this year, declined comment.

Martin is among the candidates on the ballots being counted. She is seeking to unseat incumbent Democratic Porter County Auditor Vicki Urbanik.

The count is being conducted by six employees of the election board and/or voter registration office — three Republicans and three Democrats, Stankiewicz said.

The two party-appointed directors of the voter registration office, and one Republican and one Democrat poll watcher are the only other people allowed in during the count. A Porter County police officer is posted just outside the door of the voter registration office on the lower level of the county administration center and outside the clerk's office on the lower level of the nearby courthouse.

In addition to facing problems of late starts at 12 polling places and reports of some mishandled ballots, Bengs said a lot of votes were cast during the contentious midterm election.

"Turnout was huge," he said.

The Election Board plans to make an announcement when the vote count is complete, at which time the results will be posted online on the election page of the county's website.

Kathy Kozuszek, the Democrat director at the county voter registration office, said earlier Thursday that after working 24 hours on Election Day as a result of all the problems, she did not get out of work until 10:30 p.m. Wednesday and was back in the office at 7:30 a.m. Thursday.

Indiana Democratic Party Chairman John Zody waded into the local election problems during a news conference in Indianapolis Thursday by saying, "It seems to be a miscarriage of election administration in a number of ways by the Republican clerk.

"It is unacceptable we don't have any election results two days after the election, and they're still counting. There were a lot of mistakes made in the administration of that election."

FBI asked to investigate
Representatives from the county commissioners' office met with the FBI after receiving "scores of alleged violations of Indiana election law submitted by poll workers, voters and the public."

"It's a special task force that does nothing but handle issues that deal with elections," said Porter County Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North before the meeting.

Following the meeting, Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, declined comment on advice of county attorney Scott McClure. 

Tampering with elections is a federal offense, Biggs said, addressing questions about why the FBI was contacted as opposed to Indiana State Police.

"It's right up there with bank robbery," Biggs said. "People take this very seriously."

The target of those allegations was not made known, nor were any further details released.

The Porter County Voter Registration Office had long run local elections until earlier this year, when Martin and Bengs voted to transfer the authority to the county clerk's office headed up by Martin.

While Martin, in her role as county clerk, has been singled out by some as the cause of the late polling places and alleged mishandling of absentee and early ballots, Biggs said the problem is a little wider.

"Karen is not the single problem here," Biggs said. "This was not only her mistake. There is plenty of blame to be passed around here.

"We're trying to maintain any validity that may be left with the election process here in this county."

Biggs said he does not want to see the election process returned to the voter registration office, which is staffed by appointees of the local Republican and Democratic parties.

"You have a five-headed monster down there," he said.

He was referring to the county clerk, voter registration office, county election board and the local Republican and Democratic Party chairs.

The elections should remain under the control of an elected official, Biggs said, but with clear instructions on how to properly carry out the task.

It is the intent of the commissioners' office to get at the bottom of what went wrong with Tuesday's general election and set up a system to see that it does not happen again, he said.

Problems at polls Tuesday
The ballot count for Tuesday's election did not begin until Wednesday morning, or more than 15 hours after the first polling places closed. Twelve polling places failed to open on time Tuesday.

Martin said Tuesday of poll workers, "We had a lot of people quit on us at the last minute."

Additional problems stemmed from poll inspectors not picking up cases of supplies, and sites not being opened when poll workers arrived, she said.

Porter County Sheriff Dave Reynolds said absentee and early voting ballots were not ready early Tuesday for his officers to deliver to the appropriate polling places required by law.

Stankiewicz said he walked into the county courthouse about 1:05 a.m. Wednesday, and there were women sitting on the floor of the rotunda counting absentee and early voting ballots.

The absentee and early ballots should have been delivered to the Porter County Administration Center a couple of blocks away, he said.

The Election Day problems resulted in emergency court hearings and judges' orders to ensure access to voting and secure the handling of ballots.

The current vote count underway includes all votes cast between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesday, and all votes cast at early voting locations and absentee ballots by mail.

FBI asked to investigate Indiana county's delayed vote counting
Indianapolis Star
November 08, 2018
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2018/11/08/indiana-election-2018-fbi-asked-investigate-porter-countys-trouble-counting-votes/1930226002/

VALPARAISO, Ind. — The commissioners in a northwestern Indiana county plagued by a mix of Election Day problems asked the FBI on Wednesday to investigate what they called "scores of alleged violations of Indiana Election Law" reported following Tuesday's election.

Porter County has released no election results, and officials did not begin counting votes until Wednesday morning, more than 15 hours after the first polling places closed. The delay was holding up final election results in three state legislative races, those for House districts 4 and 19 and Senate District 7.

The commissioners' office said in a statement late Wednesday afternoon that the commissioners had asked the FBI to investigate the alleged election violations reported "by poll workers, voters and the public." The commissioners' statement did not specify what those alleged violations involved.

Messages left Wednesday seeking comment from the FBI were not immediately returned.

County Commissioner Laura Blaney said the vote counting delay was caused by several problems, including the need for 12 county polling sites to stay open late Tuesday after those sites failed to open on time. Absentee and early ballots had also not been sorted in a timely fashion Tuesday, she said.

County election board deputies who began counting election ballots sat around folding tables Wednesday in the county's voter registration office in the county seat of Valparaiso, about 15 miles southeast of Gary, The (Northwest Indiana) Times reported.

The commissioners said they have ordered the sheriff's department to guard all of election ballots and to secure the county's election office.

Sundae Schoon, the voter registration office's Republican director, said all votes cast between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesday, as well as absentee ballots and early votes, would be counted Wednesday before any results will be released.

Provisional ballots and those cast after 6 p.m. Tuesday at the dozen precincts where voting was extended would be counted Nov. 16.

Schoon and her Democratic counterpart, Kathy Kozuszek, were appointed by the election board and political party chairs to monitor the vote tabulation.

"We are being very thorough," Kozuszek said.

Porter County Commissioner Jim Biggs attributed the county's woes to a variety of factors, including heavy voter turnout, but said "big changes" were needed to prevent a report of the situation in the county of about 170,000 residents.

"What we have here is a total breakdown in the process," he said.

FBI investigating voting issues in northern Indiana county
TriStateHomepage.com
WEHT WTVW
November 08, 2018
https://www.tristatehomepage.com/news/local-news/fbi-investigating-voting-issues-in-northern-indiana-county/1581797799

The FBI has been asked to investigate why Porter County in northern Indiana still has no results two days after Election Day.

Porter County officials claim a series of problems led to massive delays in ballot counting.

Election workers say polls were understaffed and absentee ballots were not delivered on time.

At least a dozen polling locations did not even open on time
















FBI contacted as officials work to finish vote count
Chesterton Tribune
November 08, 2018
http://www.chestertontribune.com/Elections/fbi_contacted_as_officials_work.htm

“Unofficial results Friday night”--That’s the latest word from Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, who just before deadline today told the Chesterton Tribune when the final vote count would be available.

Following a special meeting of the Election Board at noon, Martin said that three Democrats and three Republicans were doing the counting, that around half of it was done, and that 68 precincts were completed.

Meanwhile, after deadline on Wednesday, the Porter County Board of Commissioners released two statements--one to say that all votes cast early, as absentees, and at the polls between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Tuesday will be counted with results expected Thursday. Provisionals, including any votes cast at locations that stayed open past 6 p.m. by court mandate, will be counted ten days after the election, as is normal procedure for provisional ballots.

As of this morning, Porter County Republican Committee Chair Michael Simpson and Democrat Chair Jeff Chidester both said they were last updated at 6 p.m. Wednesday. Simpson said he expected to hear more at noon today. Chidester said he was told yesterday that all the votes had been counted with the exception of Center and Portage Townships, but counting continued until nearly midnight Wednesday.

Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, for his part, reported counting has been almost nonstop and the concern now is for accuracy rather than speed. “There’s a hypersensitivity at this time to make sure that everything is done correctly.”

Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, attributed the hold-up to absentee ballots which hadn’t been sorted. “They’re doing what every precinct would have done during normal voting hours, and they’re being extra careful,” she said.

“They’re being very diligent, they’re very tired, but they’re doing a good job,” Blaney added.

Chidester said the Election Board is counting, not once nor twice, but three times to ensure it’s right. He also said, “They uncovered additional absentee ballots.”

As for rumors about lost or misplaced ballots, Biggs said, “I have not received any information that there’s any other ballots that can’t be found or are in another location.”

The other statement released yesterday: an announcement that the Commissioners have called in the FBI “to request an investigation into scores of alleged potential violations of Indiana Election Law.” The allegations have been leveled by poll workers, voters, and the general public, according to the Commissioners.

When asked her thoughts on potential FBI involvement in investigating the election--Martin’s first after the Republican majority Election Board voted earlier this year, in a decision split along party lines, to relieve the Voter Registration office of its election responsibilities and transfer them to the Clerk’s office--Martin declined to comment. Martin herself is on the ballot for County Auditor, and she also declined to say whether, if elected, she would turn down the position in light of the controversy.

Biggs said that the decision to call the FBI was a joint effort between himself, Blaney, and County Attorney Scott McClure. Commissioner Jeff Good, R-Center was made aware of the decision but did not weigh in due to his being on the ballot.

“It became more and more clear to us that there were enough complaints to warrant another set of eyes looking at this to ensure that everyone who took the time out of their days to vote, their vote counts, and every candidate that took the time and made the sacrifice of running for office is treated fairly,” Biggs said.

The allegations Biggs cited included these: chain of custody violations, incorrectly advertised polling locations, candidates breaching secured areas at polling places, insecure ballots, and deliberate sabotage of the process.

Blaney said, “To be honest, I don’t think we’ll find criminal behavior. But there are so many things that have gone on, I think we would be irresponsible not to have specially trained people take a closer look.”

Simpson said so far he only knows what the public knows about FBI involvement. “There’s wild speculation. If there’s been impropriety, I would certainly want to know about it.”

Simpson also said he thinks that the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office, which administers elections, might be a more appropriate contact than the FBI.

Chidester declined to weigh-in on FBI involvement, citing the fact that there may be a lot of blame to go around later. “I don’t want to engage in any armchair quarterbacking.”

Biggs said that no one involved--not the County Clerk, the party chairmen, or the Election Board--could explain what went wrong on election night. He reported that the FBI was chosen due to its special task force for investigating elections, for the complexity of the issue, and because election tampering is a federal crime. Porter County Prosecutor Brian Gensel was not involved due to his being on the ballot.

Blaney said, “This is about restoring voter confidence. People need to know the election was sound. There’s just not a lot of confidence right now.”

Biggs added the caveat that there is no guarantee the FBI will be inclined to investigate. Biggs, Blaney, and McClure are meeting with FBI officials this afternoon.

Biggs said every election has its speedbumps, but this one was “catastrophic.” He added, “We can’t have an election like this. It reverberates through the whole County, and it has long-lasting consequences going forward. It affects who votes in the future, who volunteers to help with elections.”

Biggs cautioned against blaming one person. “There’s not a single individual that could have messed up this election as bad as it was,” Biggs said. “To point the finger of blame completely at the County Clerk at this point I think is making a mistake. Without a doubt she has a role, but very likely there were other things at play here.”

Biggs said that he expects some might see a call to the FBI as heavy-handed, but he’s not concerned with anyone’s feelings. “I’m concerned about keeping intact what integrity is left in this election and this County’s reputation.”

“If you’re asking me to clean up your mess, don’t complain about what kind of mop I’m using.”

Porter County officials predict Friday release of vote totals
Chicago Tribune
November 08, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-county-votes-st-1109-story.html

Voters and candidates can expect the results Friday from Porter County’s general election.

During an announcement Thursday outside the voter registration office in the county administration building, members of the county’s election board said they are confident they have all of the ballots from Tuesday’s election.

Officials want a reliable, thorough counting of the ballots, said board president David Bengs, a Republican. Ballots are being counted in the administration building.

“When the count is complete in full, that is when the numbers will be released,” he said, adding the board estimates that will be sometime Friday, and the public will be notified two hours in advance before the results go live on the county’s website.

The last delay in election results was during the 2000 presidential race between Al Gore and George W. Bush, when results were held up for about two days, said J.J. Stankiewicz, the lone Democrat on the county’s election board.

More than 18,000 early voting and mail-in ballots are being tabulated, officials said, noting that taking each ballot out of its sealed envelope adds to the amount of time the count is taking. Tallying of the votes started Wednesday morning.

“They’re feeding the ballots through the machine manually,” Bengs said, adding that typically is done on Election Day at each precinct instead of in total at the administration building.

By noon Thursday, officials said they were more than halfway through the ballots; those remaining are from Center and Portage townships, the two largest in the county.

“Our main goal, getting it done, is code word ‘reliable.’ We hope we’ve got all the ballots. We hope we’ve got reliable people,” Stankiewicz said, adding there is spirit to get the job done but the focus is on reliability rather than speed.

“We think we’ve got our eyes on the prize,” he said.

Election Day in Porter County was rife with problems, including 12 precincts that stayed open later than planned because they did not open on time, and absentee ballots not being distributed to precincts to be counted by the time the polls closed.

Representatives from the board of commissioners met with the FBI Thursday afternoon about the election problems so the federal agency could determine whether to initiate an investigation. Commissioners President Jeff Good, R-Center, has removed himself from the process because he is on the ballot for a second term.

Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, confirmed he and county attorney Scott McClure met with the FBI for about two hours.

“I cannot and will not comment on anything we said or that was said to us,” Biggs said.

Clerk Karen Martin, the other Republican on the election board, declined comment during Thursday’s announcement. Martin, who is on the ballot for county auditor, is in her second and final term as county clerk per state statute.

In early March, the election board voted 2-1 along party lines to give election duties to the clerk’s office after Kathy Kozuszek, the Democratic director in the county’s voter registration office, sent a letter to some election board and party officials stating she would no longer handle elections because doing so ran afoul of state statute.

Two deputies from voter registration are counting the ballots, along with four people working for the election board who assisted with early voting, officials said. The ballot counters are split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

Also involved are Kenard Taylor, watching the process for the Republicans, and Nelson Pichardo, who is doing so for the Democrats.

“They know what they’re looking for,” Kozuszek said of the ballot counters. She is overseeing the process with her Republican counterpart, Sundae Schoon.

Kozuszek added that officials are handling the largest midterm election turnout she’s seen in the 18 years she’s been with the office. The county also has never had as large of a hand count, she added.

“Every absentee that we received will be counted. That’s why we’re here,” Schoon said.

Once all of those ballots are counted, officials said, they will know how many provisional ballots remain to be counted on Nov. 16, the day the election board will certify the results. State statute requires the results be certified 10 days after the election.

There are three sets of provisional ballots: one for voters who cast ballots the morning of Oct. 27 in Portage but whose ballots were not properly initialed by poll workers and could not come back in to vote anew; a second for any ballots set aside during normal polling place hours on Election Day; and the third for ballots cast at 12 precincts that remained open after regular voting hours ended at 6 p.m.

Officials can determine what went wrong during the election after all of the results are in, Stankiewicz said. Municipal elections take place in the county next year.

“There will be a hindsight look at how do we make it better,” he said.

About 15 people, including some candidates waiting on the election returns, stood in the hallway outside the office to hear the election board’s update.

Councilman Dan Whitten, D-At-large, was among the crowd that gathered for the update.

“This is the worst case of incompetence and perhaps voter suppression I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said, alleging Martin is either incompetent or committed election fraud. “Pick your poison. This is ridiculous.”

Porter County Election Woes Continue
CBS Chicago
YouTube
November 08, 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/video/category/spoken-word-wbbmtv/3974757-porter-county-election-woes-continue/

Portage mayor requests late arriving evidence be excluded from trial
NWI Times
November 08, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/portage-mayor-requests-late-arriving-evidence-to-excluded-from-trial/article_8bf63a34-c430-5ced-9215-c0cf1c0c6628.html

HAMMOND — Attorneys for Portage Mayor James Snyder have asked the court to exclude any discovery materials produced last month, saying prosecutors are introducing late and irrelevant materials.

According to a motion filed Thursday in U.S. federal court in Hammond, Snyder's attorney, Jackie M. Bennett Jr., of Indianapolis, writes that discovery produced on Oct. 16, 2018, comes 200 days after the court ordered prosecutors to complete its discovery, and 32 days after prosecutors had said the discovery process was completed.

"This newly produced material was not generated or acquired recently," reads the motion. It contends it includes the transcript of an undercover recording between Snyder and a confidential source from May 29, 2014, and "ridiculous hearsay allegations" from two anonymous city employees to the FBI in September 2013.

Snyder, who is facing bribery and tax evasion charges, was indicted two years ago. His trial is set for Jan. 14, 2019. It has been continued multiple times.

However, that trial date may be in jeopardy, Bennett writes, because he cannot prepare for trial when the "government's case keeps shifting every two or three months when it feels like doing another discovery dump."

Bennett said Snyder does not want yet another continuance but may need it to deal with the material, which he said is not incriminating but might "bolster his defense."

Porter County Asks FBI To Investigate Election Day Problems
CBS Chicago
November 08. 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/video/category/spoken-word-wbbmtv/3974336-porter-county-asks-fbi-to-investigate-election-day-problems/

Porter County, Indiana Wants FBI To Probe Election Woes
CBS Chicago
November 08, 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/11/08/porter-county-election/

CHICAGO (CBS)– Plagued by a long list of Election Day problems, commissioners in Porter County, Indiana have asked the FBI to investigate what’s been described as “scores of alleged violations in Indiana Election Law” following Tuesday’s elections.

Two days after the election, Porter County has released no election results. Officials started counting votes on Wednesday morning–more than 15 hours after the polls closed.

The delays were holding up final election results in three legislative races.

As of Thursday afternoon, there was no word about whether an official investigation would be launched.

Porter County voters on Thursday heard from two of the three members of the Election Board, but Porter County Clerk Karen Martin hadn’t appeared in public since the election until Thursday, when she finally showed up for an Election Board briefing at an administrative building.

Martin didn’t speak, however. Instead, she was photographed hiding from cameras behind an unnamed man.

Voters are demanding answers about what went awry, and are upset about the delay, including Gilles Charriere of Valparaiso.

“I’m (slightly) offended that I’m being told, ‘oh don’t worry–they’re being counted’–theres not much of an apology,” Charriere said.

Election results may not arrive until Friday, however.

“Locally, at home, it’s just we’ve never seen anything like this,” voter Jeff Gorgan of Hebron said.

Officials on Thursday said Martin was still unavailable for comment. There’s no explanation for why she appeared in public, but hid behind the unknown man.

“So far we have gotten no explanation,” said poll worker Drew Wenger of the Valparaiso Democratic Committee, which released a statement Thursday detailing what was described as “electoral injustices” that occurred.

The statement reads,” The incompetence seen in the months before the election manifested problems heretofore unseen in Porter County on the day of the election. Thirteen polling locations were not fully staffed and could not open until an hour after their mandated opening time, resulting in many voters becoming frustrated and forgoing voting altogether. As Election Day continued, it became clear that most polling locations were not going to receive their absentee ballots by the 6 p.m. closing time, leading to much confusion. The Porter County Clerk’s office was unreachable by phone, forcing many precinct inspectors to make the call to pack up before properly counting the early votes into the total precinct results.”

Coincidentally, Martin was also running for County Auditor during this election, but since the results are still unknown, it’s unclear whether she won.

“Maybe I would be hiding, too, if I were in her shoes and the way it’s been going,” Charriere said.

Porter County Officials Ask FBI To Investigate Election Day Problems, With Results Still Not In
CBS - Chicago
November 08, 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/11/08/porter-county-fbi-investigation-election-day-problems-uncounted-ballots-no-results/

CHICAGO (CBS) — Porter County officials have asked the FBI to investigate possible wrongdoing, after a series of problems on Election Day led to massive delays in ballot counting.

More than a day after polls closed in Porter County, there are still no election results. 

Election workers said polls were understaffed, and absentee ballots were not delivered to polling places on time. At least a dozen polling places did not open on time, and some remained closed for 2 ½ hours.

Numerous people who have worked on Porter County elections for the past few decades have said Tuesday’s election was the worst they have ever seen.

Voters and poll workers on both sides blamed the County Clerk’s office and Clerk Karen Martin, who recently gained authority of elections in the county.

“I don’t know how much of it comes down to malice versus incompetence versus just unpreparedness,” Vice Chair of the Valparaiso Democratic Committee, Shawn Barnes said.

CBS 2 tried to track Martin down on Wednesday, but she reportedly did not show up to work.

“To see that kind of breakdown at a local level is really disconcerting,” poll worker Kathy Sipple said. “I think [it] could have long-term consequences to just turn people off from voting, which I think would be the absolute worst thing that could happen from all of this.”

Results from Porter County likely won’t be available until Thursday at the earliest.

UPDATE: No Porter County election results until at least Friday, possibly longest delay in county's history; No comment concerning FBI meeting
NWI Times
November 08, 2018
UPDATED: November 10, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/update-voters-candidates-likely-to-wait-until-friday-for-results/article_91b8db58-8ab4-5cbf-b232-d78cffb812de.html

VALPARAISO — Porter County voters and candidates are now going to have to wait until at least Friday before learning the outcome of Tuesday's general election.

And Porter County officials offered no comment following a Thursday afternoon meeting with the FBI over alleged election law violations.

The delay in the vote count appears to be the longest in the county's history, according to election officials.

"We told them reliable rather than fast," said J.J. Stankiewicz, the lone Democrat on the three-member county election board.

The update on the vote count came as the election board members made a noon visit to the county voter registration office and then held a short news conference that attracted anxious candidates, voters and community activists.

Republican Election Board Member David Bengs said more than half of the vote has been counted.

But unlike regular elections nights, the results will not be released until all ballots are counted, he said.

The count will still not be final, however. Normal provisional ballots and those cast Tuesday at the dozen precincts that had their hours extended by a judge due to a late opening will be counted Nov. 16, as is typically the case.

The election workers have been instructed to keep counting until it is clear that fatigue is threatening the integrity of their work, at which time they are to call it quits and resume after getting some rest, Stankiewicz said.

The group did not want to comment on the possibility of the count continuing into the weekend.

Republican Election Board member and County Clerk Karen Martin, who has caught most of the blame for the election problems, having taken over the process earlier this year, declined comment.

Martin is among the candidates on the ballots being counted. She is seeking to unseat incumbent Democratic Porter County Auditor Vicki Urbanik.

The count is being conducted by six employees of the election board and/or voter registration office — three Republicans and three Democrats, Stankiewicz said.

The two party-appointed directors of the voter registration office, and one Republican and one Democrat poll watcher are the only other people allowed in during the count. A Porter County police officer is posted just outside the door of the voter registration office on the lower level of the county administration center and outside the clerk's office on the lower level of the nearby courthouse.

In addition to facing problems of late starts at 12 polling places and reports of some mishandled ballots, Bengs said a lot of votes were cast during the contentious midterm election.

"Turnout was huge," he said.

The Election Board plans to make an announcement when the vote count is complete, at which time the results will be posted online on the election page of the county's website.

Kathy Kozuszek, the Democrat director at the county voter registration office, said earlier Thursday that after working 24 hours on Election Day as a result of all the problems, she did not get out of work until 10:30 p.m. Wednesday and was back in the office at 7:30 a.m. Thursday.

Indiana Democratic Party Chairman John Zody waded into the local election problems during a news conference in Indianapolis Thursday by saying, "It seems to be a miscarriage of election administration in a number of ways by the Republican clerk.

"It is unacceptable we don't have any election results two days after the election, and they're still counting. There were a lot of mistakes made in the administration of that election."

FBI asked to investigate
Representatives from the county commissioners' office met with the FBI after receiving "scores of alleged violations of Indiana election law submitted by poll workers, voters and the public."

"It's a special task force that does nothing but handle issues that deal with elections," said Porter County Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North before the meeting.

Following the meeting, Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, declined comment on advice of county attorney Scott McClure. 

Tampering with elections is a federal offense, Biggs said, addressing questions about why the FBI was contacted as opposed to Indiana State Police.

"It's right up there with bank robbery," Biggs said. "People take this very seriously."

The target of those allegations was not made known, nor were any further details released.

The Porter County Voter Registration Office had long run local elections until earlier this year, when Martin and Bengs voted to transfer the authority to the county clerk's office headed up by Martin.

While Martin, in her role as county clerk, has been singled out by some as the cause of the late polling places and alleged mishandling of absentee and early ballots, Biggs said the problem is a little wider.

"Karen is not the single problem here," Biggs said. "This was not only her mistake. There is plenty of blame to be passed around here.

"We're trying to maintain any validity that may be left with the election process here in this county."

Biggs said he does not want to see the election process returned to the voter registration office, which is staffed by appointees of the local Republican and Democratic parties.

"You have a five-headed monster down there," he said.

He was referring to the county clerk, voter registration office, county election board and the local Republican and Democratic Party chairs.

The elections should remain under the control of an elected official, Biggs said, but with clear instructions on how to properly carry out the task.

It is the intent of the commissioners' office to get at the bottom of what went wrong with Tuesday's general election and set up a system to see that it does not happen again, he said.

Problems at polls Tuesday
The ballot count for Tuesday's election did not begin until Wednesday morning, or more than 15 hours after the first polling places closed. Twelve polling places failed to open on time Tuesday.

Martin said Tuesday of poll workers, "We had a lot of people quit on us at the last minute."

Additional problems stemmed from poll inspectors not picking up cases of supplies, and sites not being opened when poll workers arrived, she said.

Porter County Sheriff Dave Reynolds said absentee and early voting ballots were not ready early Tuesday for his officers to deliver to the appropriate polling places required by law.

Stankiewicz said he walked into the county courthouse about 1:05 a.m. Wednesday, and there were women sitting on the floor of the rotunda counting absentee and early voting ballots.

The absentee and early ballots should have been delivered to the Porter County Administration Center a couple of blocks away, he said.

The Election Day problems resulted in emergency court hearings and judges' orders to ensure access to voting and secure the handling of ballots.

The current vote count underway includes all votes cast between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesday, and all votes cast at early voting locations and absentee ballots by mail.

Still No Elections Results In Porter County, Indiana 
CBS Chicago
November 07, 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/.../no-elections-results-in-porter-county-indiana/

CHICAGO (CBS)– No election winners have been declared in Porter County, Ind., due to massive delays in the ballot counting.

At least a dozen different polling places did not open on time at 6 a.m. Tuesday and some remained closed for two and a half hours. Numerous people who have worked on Porter County elections for the past few decades have said Tuesday’s election was the worst they have ever seen.

A sheriffs deputy brought in the uncounted ballots to the elections office more than 12 hours after the polls closed.

Democratic County Board of Elections member J.J. Stankiewicz said a door in the Porter County Administration Center was taped shut last night.

As of this morning, he said the tape had been removed so the room containing the ballots is no longer secure.

“It’s a joke and this is all at the foot of the administrator Karen Martin, clerk of court,” he said.

Martin oversaw the election.

Stankiewicz said that is a “nightmare” and the County Clerk did not have the necessary experience needed to run the election.

Erin Labovitz, a candidate for Center Township board, still doesn’t know if she will be taking a seat on the panel. She said she cannot believe it.

Vicky Urbanick is running for reelection as county auditor, and as reflected on the county website, she had no way of knowing whether she’d won or lost.

“Personally I think everyone lost, I think all the voters lost,” Urbanick said.

Martin has not responded to multiple requests for comments and Republican officials in Porter County declined camera interviews this morning.

Still No Elections Results In Porter County, Indiana
CBS Chicago
November 07, 2018
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/.../no-elections-results-in-porter-county-indiana/

Porter County Election Results Delayed
CBS Chicago
YouTube
November 07, 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1dpA-AApIw

Vote County Protest
NWI Times
November 07, 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_MmsJhf8uI

VIDEO - Vote County Protest

No Election Results In Porter County
CBS Chicago
November 07, 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuoSnTdkqSE

UPDATE: FBI called on to investigate potential election law violations in Porter County's delayed vote count
NWI Times
November 07, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/update-fbi-called-on-to-investigate-potential-election-law-violations/article_a09fb0d9-bf03-55fb-a86d-4816efdfd562.html

VALPARAISO — The Porter County Board of Commissioners has asked the FBI to investigate potential violations of the law in the wake of problems that continue to delay the local results of Tuesday's general election.

The commissioners referred to "scores of alleged violations of Indiana Election Law submitted by poll workers, voters and the public to the Commissioners," according to a prepared statement.

The target of those allegations was not made known nor were any further details released.

The Porter County Voter Registration Office had long run local elections until earlier this year, when Republican Election Board members Karen Martin and David Bengs voted to transfer the authority to the county clerk's office headed up by Martin.

Lone Democratic Election Board member J.J. Stankiewicz opposed the move, saying it was improper because Martin, as a candidate on this year's ballot, is prohibited from administering the election.

Martin, who is running for county auditor against Democratic incumbent Vicki Urbanik, disagreed and argued further that her current staff was capable of handling the additional work of elections, along with the two positions in the voter registration office funded by the election board.

Martin, who could not be reached for comment Wednesday, said Tuesday of poll workers, "We had a lot of people quit on us at the last minute."

Additional problems stemmed from poll inspectors not picking up cases of supplies, and sites not being opened when poll workers arrived, she said.

The county commissioners said the ballot count, which did not get underway until Wednesday morning, or more than 15 hours after the first polling places closed, likely will not be completed and released Wednesday.

The commissioners earlier attempted to defend the integrity of the vote count in the wake of polling places opening late, absentee ballots not being delivered to polling sites as required by law and concerns about the ballot room being breached overnight Tuesday into Wednesday.

"As ordered by the Commissioners, all ballots were protected at all times since they were delivered last night in a room guarded by the Porter County Sheriff’s Department," the commissioners said in their statement.

"To assure the integrity of the vote count, the Commissioners have also ordered the Sheriff’s Department to secure all areas where votes are being counted. The election office in the courthouse has also been secured by Sheriff’s deputies."

'Very thorough' count underway
All votes cast between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesday — absentees and early votes — will be counted Wednesday, said Sundae Schoon, Republican director of the office, before any results will be released. Provisional ballots and those cast after 6 p.m. Tuesday at the dozen precincts that had their hours extended due to a late opening will be counted Nov. 16, as is typically the case.

Schoon said she and her Democratic counterpart, Kathy Kozuszek, have been appointed by the Porter County Election Board and political party chairmen and chairwomen as watchers of the vote tabulation.

Schoon could not give a time as to when the count might be finished.

"We are being very thorough," Kozuszek said.

Porter County Republican Chairman Michael Simpson said his biggest concern at this point is that the bipartisan effort to count the votes is underway and goes smoothly. Only after that work is done should the emphasis shift to what went wrong with the local elections — and how to fix it.

The questions of why several voting places failed to open on time Tuesday, and why absentee and early voting ballots were not delivered timely to most polling places as required by law is already being asked by many officials on and off the ballot, as well as voters, who are unhappy with the problems and delays.

While Stankiewicz raised concern Wednesday morning that security had been breached overnight at the room where ballots were kept, other officials said that was not the case.

Porter County Sheriff Dave Reynolds said one of his officers was posted at the ballot room all night and tape was not used. Reynolds said he does not believe there was any breach of security.

Porter County Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, said the sheriff has confirmed his officers stood watch over the room containing the ballots Tuesday night, and that it does not appear there was a security issue.

However, the matter is being reviewed, other county officials said.

"People need to keep cool heads through this process," Blaney said.

"They need to focus on the facts. There are enough real problems without inventing any. We're trying to work through this in the best way possible, and we need everyone to hold it together."

Stankiewicz also pointed to a problem with the counting of absentee and early voting ballots.

He said he walked into the county courthouse about 1:05 a.m. Wednesday, and there were women sitting on the floor of the rotunda counting absentee and early voting ballots.

The absentee and early ballots should have been delivered to the Porter County Administration Center a couple of blocks away, he said.

Stankiewicz repeatedly said he anticipated there would be attempts Wednesday to place blame on poll workers, but they had nothing to do with it, he said.

"It's a joke," he said. "This is all at the feet of the clerk of court, Karen Martin."

Bengs was present as Stankiewicz spoke with the media Wednesday morning, but he declined to comment.

Officials sound off
Reynolds said his concerns about the integrity of the election in Porter County began about 5 a.m. Tuesday, when his office was asked to send four officers to deliver absentee and early voting ballots to various polling locations.

When people vote early, their ballots are supposed to be delivered back to their precincts on Election Day to be counted.

In years past, the Sheriff’s Department has sent six to eight officers in the morning and six to eight officers in the afternoon to deliver these types of ballots, Reynolds said.

When the officers arrived Tuesday as requested, they learned the ballots were not yet ready to be delivered, Reynolds said. When officers began delivering them, it was just a small portion of them, he said.

In a late legal maneuver, the Porter County Democratic Party secured a judge’s order after some polls closed at 6 p.m., requiring absentee and early voting ballots to be counted as regular votes.

Reynolds said his officers were called on to lend a hand in processing ballots at the courthouse.

“I just feel terrible for anybody on the ballot,” said Reynolds, who was on the ballot himself but ran unopposed.

Porter County Auditor Vicki Urbanik was seeking re-election in a race against Martin, who is scheduled to complete her second term as clerk this year.

“I’m more concerned about the overall integrity of the election,” Urbanik said.

Urbanik said while serving as auditor, that she stressed integrity, transparency and ethics.

“The voters deserve better than this,” she said.

Stankiewicz defended poll workers, again saying any attempt to blame them for Tuesday’s problems would be false.

If poll workers are insulted, “we’re going to have a tough time each time we do this, because it’s not worth it,” he said.

Officials finished accepting ballots at the administration center about 1:05 a.m., which posed a problem for elderly poll workers and those who are diabetic, he said.

“We popped for carry-out Subway so they could eat while they waited,” he said. “You don’t do that to senior citizens.”

Problems at polls Tuesday
The delay in counting votes came after a day of problems at the polls and legal wrangling by the Porter County election board, Porter County Democratic Party and Indiana Republican Party Central Committee.

About a dozen polls in Porter County opened up to 2 1/2 hours late on Election Day, prompting a judge to order 12 polls to remain open later than their scheduled 6 p.m. closing time.

Porter Superior Court Judge Roger Bradford issued an order Tuesday morning extending hours at the 12 polls. However, Indiana Republicans pushed Tuesday afternoon for Bradford to reverse his order, arguing voters had plenty of time to cast their ballots through early voting and absentee ballots.

Bradford scheduled an emergency hearing where he upheld his earlier order, but refused Democrats’ request to extend hours at a 13th polling location — Portage Township 23 — that also had opened late.

Later Tuesday, Judge Pro Tem Julia Jent ordered Porter County election officials to count all absentee and early ballots Tuesday night as regular ballots, even if they were delivered to polling places late in the day or after the voting ended.

Jent issued the ruling in response to a petition sought by local Democrats, who claimed Martin did not get the absentee ballots to their respective polling places until late in the voting day, or after the polls were closed.

Tuesday's fiasco prompted two Porter County commissioners to say late Tuesday night the problems can never happen again.

Porter County Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, said everyone working on the vote count Tuesday night looked exhausted.

He attributed the problems to a variety of factors, including a "combination of a heavy voter turnout, the problems of several polling places not opening on time and other problems that will be discussed in the near future.

“Something drastic needs to be done to ensure this never happens again," Biggs said. "What we have here is a total breakdown in the process. Big changes are coming due to this."

Blaney said a combination of snafus in opening polling locations on time, polling places that had to be kept open later as a result, and absentee and early ballots that either weren’t sorted or counted in a timely fashion contributed to the backlog.

Several Porter County officials would be probing the problems in coming days to determine why they occurred, she said.

Echoing Biggs, Blaney also said, "Big changes are coming due to this."
















UPDATE: Still no results in Indiana House District 4 race
NWI Times
November 07, 2018
UPDATED: November 08, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/update-still-no-results-in-indiana-house-district-race/article_fa9c7cb8-cdb6-5d01-bbfc-cd110b3f6a9f.html

Editor's note: A previously published headline on this article declared a likely winner in the race. Ballots in this race had not yet been counted as of Wednesday morning.

INDIANAPOLIS — There were not enough votes counted in Porter County at press time to call a winner in the Indiana House District 4 race between State Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, and opponent Democrat Frank Szczepanski.

Soliday was seeking a seventh two-year term to represent central Porter County in the Indiana House.

It's not yet clear whether the veteran lawmaker faced any voter backlash for sponsoring last year's road funding legislation that hiked fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees to pay for state and local transportation infrastructure improvements.

Altogether, the money raised will put about $1 billion a year of new funding into road and bridge construction and maintenance throughout the state.

If Soliday wins, he would remain chairman of the House Roads and Transportation Committee, ensuring that Northwest Indiana's roads, bridges and rails aren't overlooked at the Statehouse.

Soliday also led the effort to dedicate state funding to double-tracking the existing South Shore commuter rail line and building the proposed West Lake extension.

He's expected to continue working with U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Gary, to secure the federal funds needed for construction to begin.

Temperatures rise as Porter County candidates and voters protest, anxiously await election results
NWI Times
November 07, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/temperatures-rise-as-porter-county-candidates-and-voters-protest-anxiously/article_2fd000f8-4a96-55cf-bb09-75f0673b6e3f.html

Porter County prosecutor candidate Gary Germann said he has been unable to sleep or eat as the local vote count drags on into at least Thursday in the wake of various problems involving polling sites and the handling of ballots.

"I invested my whole self into the election to be able to say I did everything I could to win," he said. "I’m sure the other candidates did the same thing."

"In a word it’s tortuous and an injustice," Germann said. "This should never be allowed to happen again. I’ve talked to poll workers who will never volunteer again along with people who will never vote again. I think we owe them an apology."

Germann, a Democrat, who is seeking to unseat Republican incumbent Prosecutor Brian Gensel, is among the candidates engaged in what many suspect are close or heated election battles and thus anxiously awaiting vote totals along with angry county voters.

Candidates aren't the only ones calling this year's election frustrating. Nearly two dozen voters came to the Porter County Administration Center Wednesday, carrying signs and shouting "count our votes."

"This is a huge debacle," said Drew Wenger, chairman of the Valparaiso Democratic Committee, who also worked the polls Tuesday. "Somebody needs to address what happened last night."

"It is certainly frustrating waiting for the results," Gensel said. "The most important thing is making sure the count is accurate, even if it takes longer than the candidates would like."

Troy Williams, who is in a heated race with Joan Machuca for the District 1 seat on the Portage Township School Board, said, "This avoidable delay erodes the trust of the voters in Porter County and especially in Portage Township."

"There must be a formal inquiry into how this happened," he said. "The candidates and voters deserve transparency and accountability to understand and process this colossal failure in Porter County government."

Machuca said of the delayed vote count, "I'm very frustrated by it."

It is difficult enough, she said, to run a campaign and engage others in support.

"I'm getting so many phone calls from people and they're wondering if their votes counted."

While a school board race may appear to some as not so important, it is a big deal to the Portage Township school community, she said.

Democrat Porter County Commissioner candidate Donna Perdue attended the protest and became emotional as she spoke of her frustration.

"I'm more than frustrated. I can't make sense of it," she said, adding candidates are getting no answers from those who ran the election. "This is completely unacceptable."

Joyce West said she looked for results Tuesday night and was stunned when they weren't available Wednesday morning.

"I was stunned, more than disappointed. You don't expect your county to have a failure like this," said West.

"I was an early voter and I want confirmation my vote counted," said Gail Galvan, of Valparaiso.

Wenger said he believes it may be more than incompetence that has caused the election mess in Porter County.

"I think this is planned chaos," he said, referring to recent pushes by the local Republican party for super voting centers. "They wanted this to happen because they wanted the shift."

Roger Smith, a Valparaiso Republican, told The Times Wednesday he's frustrated as well. He said he's upset that a lack of poll workers is being blamed for the problems. Smith said he wanted to work the polls and applied online in late July or early August.

When he never heard from the clerk's office, he figured he didn't get the job. That was until Monday when he was contacted by one of his "crew members" slated to work a Valparaiso polling place.

Smith said he was never contacted by the clerk, was never told of nor went through training. He was first contacted by County Clerk Karen Martin at noon on Monday through an email, telling him to pick up his suitcase of election materials. He did not work as an inspector Tuesday.

"I do not know Karen Martin and I wish her or her office workers no ill will but this is simply a shame and in my opinion just an attempt to cover up a lack of taking accountability for performing an inadequate job," said Smith.

Martin could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

VIDEO: Vote Count Protest
NWI Times
Updated Nov 7, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/digital/video/video-vote-count-protest/youtube_b2091a97-bb64-524f-b0ff-6d663e13bac3.html

Citizens protest the handling of ballots in Porter County.

The Latest: Indiana county seeks FBI probe of election woes
NWI Times
November 07, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/the-latest-indiana-county-seeks-fbi-probe-of-election-woes/article_02d9843b-2c51-52b0-a484-d793a5fe1622.html
VALPARAISO, Ind. (AP) — The Latest on delays in counting votes cast for Tuesday's election in some Indiana counties (all times local):

4:20 p.m.
Officials in a northwestern Indiana county plagued by vote counting delays are asking the FBI to investigate alleged violations of state election law.

Porter County's commissioners asked the FBI on Wednesday to investigate "scores of alleged violations of Indiana Election Law submitted by poll workers, voters and the public" that the commissioners had received.

The county hasn't reported any Election Day results due to an array of problems on Tuesday, including the need for 12 county polling sites to stay open late Tuesday after those sites failed to open on time.

Vote counting didn't get underway until Wednesday morning, more than 15 hours after the first polling places closed. It's unclear when that work would be completed.

The situation is delaying final election results in three state legislative races.

3:30 p.m.
Officials in a northwestern Indiana county plagued by vote counting delays say the release of General Election results may face yet another delay.

Vote counting began Wednesday morning in Porter County after a mix of problems, including the need for 12 county polling sites to stay open late Tuesday after those sites failed to open on time. Officials initially said vote counting was expected to be completed by early Wednesday evening.

But by Wednesday afternoon officials said information from the county commissioners indicates that "the release of election results may be unlikely today."

The county commissioners have ordered the county sheriff's department to secure all the areas where votes are being counted.

2:10 p.m.
Vote counting is underway in a northwestern Indiana county that hasn't reported any General Election results.

Porter County's commissioners and its voter registration office say counting began Wednesday morning of ballots cast Tuesday and during early voting and by mail.

The county's election board says results won't be released until votes are counted in all precincts.

But Porter County still has more vote counting ahead. County officials say ballots cast after 6 p.m. Tuesday at 12 county polling sites a judge ordered to stay open late won't be counted until Nov. 16, along with all provisional ballots cast.

County Commissioner Laura Blaney says the counting delay was caused by several problems, including the late voting and absentee and early ballots not being sorted in a timely fashion.

Jim Biggs on county election: 'Total absolute breakdown'
Chesterton Tribune
November 07, 2018
http://www.chestertontribune.com/Elections/jim_biggs_on_county_election_tot.htm
Porter County Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, was cautiously hopeful--at 8:45 a.m. today--that by mid- or late-morning ballot counters in the Voter Registration Office would begin posting election results.

Yet after an Election Day in which, seemingly, anything that could go wrong did, Biggs expressed a nagging concern over the unknown unknowns. “I suspect there are other issues no one has uncovered yet,” he told the Chesterton Tribune. “So much went wrong with the process last night, commonsense tells me we haven’t seen everything. And until we do, I don’t know how you can think of placing a stamp of approval on the results as official.”

What went wrong?
Begin with the failure of 12 polling places--four of them in Duneland: Liberty 3, and Westchester 9, 13, and 14--to open on time at 6 a.m. Porter Superior Court Judge Roger Bradford, the only sitting Superior or Circuit court judge in the county not to have a personal or familial connection to Tuesday’s election, subsequently ordered those 12 polling places to remain open past 6 p.m., four of them until 8:30 p.m.

But there were other issues, many of them, Biggs said. Polling places were inadequately staffed and poll workers either ill trained or poorly instructed. “Which is unbelievable to me.” In one case, a poll worker, tired of waiting for someone to collect the ballots late Tuesday night, put a To Whom It May Concern note on the door, saying that he’d gone home and taken the ballots with him. Sheriff’s deputies were later sent to the poll worker’s residence to secure the ballots, Biggs said, and “luckily the seals were unbroken.”

Also, according to Porter County Democrat Party Central Committee Chair Jeff Chidester: up to 15,000 absentee and early ballots which were supposed to have been delivered to their respective polling places before they closed were not. Judge Pro Tem Julia Jent subsequently issued an order of her own, that absentee and early ballots must be counted, following a motion filed by local Democrats concerned that those ballots would simply be tossed.

Biggs’ assessment: “What a mess.”
And at the epicenter of that mess, Biggs told the Tribune: Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, whose office assumed jurisdiction of the election process earlier this year after the Republican majority Porter County Election Board split-voted along party lines to relieve the Porter County Voter Registration Office of that responsibility. “A total, absolute breakdown of the process, and that process should have started in the Clerk’s Office,” Biggs said. “And that process failed miserably. Karen Martin appeared to me, from my conversation with her last night, to be overwhelmed.”

Martin, a term-limited Republican, is running this year for Porter County Auditor.

Administration of the election “should never have been turned over (a) to a person who’s running for election,” Biggs said, “(b) to a person who has never run an election, and (c) to someone who has personal problems with key management in Voter Registration. It was a recipe for a disaster. It should have been pretty academic that people knew what they were doing.”

“We cannot guarantee to any extent that this will change unless we enact change,” Biggs said.

“We can’t in clear conscience hand this over again to the people who stood and watched it fall apart last night. It has to change. I’ve always considered Porter County a shining star in Northwest Indiana. We didn’t shine so bright last night. And that’s inexcusable.”

This Morning
Presumably Election Board officials were counting ballots this morning, although the Chesterton Tribune was unable to reach anyone to confirm. Biggs said that it was his belief that counting began at 7 a.m.

Biggs added that, before he left last night around midnight, he personally asked two Sheriff’s deputies to remain at the Administration Building overnight to secure all ballots. Sheriff Dave Reynolds, for his part, told the Tribune that he’s assigned deputies to remain with the ballots until the counting has been completed.

Porter County Republican Central Committee Chair Michael Simpson said that the Election Board is being supervised by Sundae Schoon and Kathy Kozuszek, respectively the Republican and Democrat directors of Voter Registration, who are watching the count for accuracy. “All I’m interested in is a bipartisan ballot count. People need to know the results.”

Chidester, meanwhile, told the Tribune that voters can expect results late this afternoon or evening.

Going Forward
Biggs was adamant this morning that the Porter County Board of Commissioners will take action, and soon, to ensure that last night’s circus is never repeated. “Any honest person would say that the Board of Commissioners has to make a decision so that this never happens again,” he said. “We had no say whatsoever that the election was going to be turned over to someone who’s never run an election. But we do have the authority to hire competent staff to run it.”

“The Board of Commissioners has very, very short patience for incompetence,” Biggs added. “We will be talking about this over the next few days. We’re handcuffed right now because Commissioner Jeff Good, R-Center, is running for re-election. But once that poses no conflict, we’re going to move for something drastically different.”

“Somebody or somebodies are going to be held accountable for this,” Biggs vowed. “Residents deserve answers and deserve to move forward with the proper protocols and systems in place.”

Porter County Election update: Don't expect election results today
Chesterton Tribune
November 07, 2018
http://www.chestertontribune.com/Elections/porter_county_election_results_u.htm
EDITOR'S NOTE: This update arrived at the Chesterton Tribune as the press was printing today's newspaper. It replaces an update sent just before Noon that promised that Porter County votes would be counted and the results of Tuesday's election released today.

November 7, 2018
For Immediate Release
Update On Election Process as of Noon
Based on information provided to the Porter County Commissioners, it is becoming clear that the release of election results may be unlikely today. The Commissioners will continue to keep the media and public updated.

As ordered by the Commissioners, all ballots were protected at all times since they were delivered last night in a room guarded by the Porter County Sheriff’s Department. To assure the integrity of the vote count, the Commissioners have also ordered the Sheriff’s Department to secure all areas where votes are being counted. The Election office in the Courthouse has also been secured by Sheriff’s deputies.

The above replaces the following from the printed Tribune:
Upon request by the Porter County Board of Commissioners, the Voter Registration office provided the following update at 12:09 p.m. today:

As of this morning, the Porter County Election Board has ruled that election results will not be released until all precincts are counted. Counting has begun and is expected to be completed late this afternoon or early evening.

The count will include:
* All votes cast at polling locations between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.

* All votes cast at early voting locations

* All votes cast as absentee ballots by mail.

Normal provisional ballots and ballots cast after 6 p.m. at polling locations that were ordered to stay open will be counted on November 16. It is standard procedure to count provisional ballots ten days after the election.

Of the delay in the count, Porter County Clerk Karen Martin told the Chesterton Tribune, “My staff and I went above and beyond working diligently and devoting our time and resources to the election. I cannot express how immensely impressed I am by the number of voters that have shown they believe in the system by taking time out of their schedules to vote.”

Martin added, “I apologize if they feel I did not make every effort possible to process their right to vote.”

Porter County officials to meet with FBI about possible election violations
Chicago Tribune
November 07, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-county-voting-st-1108-story.html

The day after the handling of Tuesday’s general election in Porter County left candidates waiting on results and voters wondering if there ballots had been counted, officials announced the FBI is being called in to possibly investigate the election, preliminary results likely won’t be available until Thursday, and protesters gathered outside the administration building to share their election concerns.

The Porter County Board of Commissioners will meet with representatives from the FBI Thursday afternoon to go over what officials say are scores of alleged violations of election law and potentially start an investigation that could include County Clerk Karen Martin, who was responsible for overseeing the election.

Commissioners announced that they had reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to request an investigation Wednesday.

The move comes after an Election Day in Porter County rife with problems, including delayed election results that are now expected Thursday, 12 precincts that stayed open later than planned because they did not open on time, and absentee ballots not being distributed to precincts to be counted by the time the polls closed. Officials have said more than 15,000 early ballots were cast in the election.

The potential violations of election law, said Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, include the chain of custody for votes brought in from polling places, the possible deliberate tampering of signatures, and an instance where ballots were taken to a poll worker’s home.

A sheriff’s deputy recovered those, Biggs said, and they had not been tampered with.

Martin is also a potential focus for any investigation, Biggs said, adding the FBI will ultimately decide whether to initiate a probe.

“That’s all part of it,” Biggs said of Martin, who at the end of her second and final term as clerk, per state statute. “She ran the election. It’s important that everybody understands her side of that.”

Martin did not return multiple requests for comment Tuesday night or Wednesday left via text message because her voicemail was full.

In early March, the election board voted 2-1 along party lines to give election duties to the clerk’s office after Kathy Kozuszek, the Democratic director in the county’s voter registration office, sent a letter to some election board and party officials stating she would no longer handle elections because doing so ran afoul of state statute.

Biggs and Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, along with county attorney Scott McClure, made the decision to approach the FBI. Commissioners President Jeff Good, R-Center is on the ballot for a second term in office and was made aware of the move, Biggs said.

Commissioners felt the need for an outside agency to investigate, Biggs said, adding the FBI has a special taskforce to investigate election matters. It’s commissioners’ job to assure that if there was deliberate wrongdoing in the election, those responsible are held accountable, he added.

“The investigation will not impede in any way tallying the final results,” Biggs said, adding those are expected sometime Thursday. “We’re as surprised as anybody about the activity of (Tuesday) night, the news today that they’re still not going to be available.”

The election board is working to ensure a reliable count, said the board’s lone Democrat, J.J. Stankiewicz, adding the counting is taking place in a secure, sealed environment with witnesses.

Stankiewicz said he and David Bengs, a Republican and the board president, agreed the results had to be reliable. Martin makes up the third member of the board.

“The ballots are being counted and the key word is, we’re trying to be reliable and we hope that will end at least by (Thursday), but the process is under way,” he said. “We’ve got a system in place. There’s no sense to predict.”

Stankiewicz said that process “will end when it ends” and he and Bengs, both attorneys, will “see if we’re at a stage of reliability.”

Porter County Republican Party Chair Michael Simpson said his focus for now is getting the ballots counted, and added there is a bipartisan effort to make sure the ballots are preserved with security.

“There will be plenty of time to dissect what went wrong or who’s to blame,” he said.

Meanwhile, the board of commissioners also announced Wednesday that all ballots were protected at all times after they were delivered to the administration building Tuesday night in a room guarded by a Porter County Sheriff’s Department deputy.

To assure the integrity of the vote count, commissioners also ordered the sheriff’s department to secure all areas where votes are being counted, as well as the election office in the courthouse.

Sheriff David Reynolds said officials didn’t want anything moved in or out of the office without prior approval.

“They wanted to make sure the office is secured,” he said.

Reynolds called the handling of the election “incomprehensible,” and said he feels terrible for the voters and every person on the ballot.

From his perspective, there was an assortment of problems with the election. While usually six to eight deputies assist with an election, Reynolds said Martin only requested four.

“I thought that was a problem,” he said, adding deputies got voting equipment to the polls by 5 a.m.

In past elections, deputies deliver absentee ballots to the precincts by 8:30 a.m. so they can be counted later in the day but deputies couldn’t do that Tuesday because the ballots had not been separated, Reynolds said. Those ballots, once counted, are delivered to the administration building by poll inspectors after polling places close.

“We could’ve had 20 guys. It wouldn’t have made any difference if we didn’t have the ballots,” he said.

As the day progressed, Reynolds said, the absentee ballots still weren’t ready to be delivered to the precincts.

“There was a breakdown,” he said, adding there was no communication with the polling places that the absentee ballots weren’t ready. “They’re just waiting for us and we’re not coming.”

By around 10:30 p.m., Reynolds said he was telling poll workers to lock up their sites and come to the administration building because his deputies would not be there with the absentee ballots.

“It was just a combination of a lot of things and it got worse and worse,” he said.

Preliminary election totals will not include provisional ballots cast for the election. Those will be counted on Nov. 16 when the election board certifies the results, which, under state statute, must occur 10 days after the election.

“We have to get those sorted out as well. That’s part of the process,” Bengs said, adding he did not know how many provisional ballots there were.

Bengs previously said there are three sets of provisional ballots: one will be for voters who cast ballots the morning of Oct. 27 in Portage but whose ballots were not properly initialed by poll workers and could not come back in to vote anew; a second will be for any ballots set aside during normal polling place hours on Election Day; and the third will consist of ballots cast at those 12 precincts after regular voting hours ended at 6 p.m.

“If we get anything really close, we’ll determine if we’re in recount territory,” said Porter County Democratic Chair Jeffrey Chidester said, adding that will come after certification.

Outside the administration building Wednesday afternoon, more than 20 protestors waved signs that said, “Is this democracy?” and chanted, “Count our votes!” as passing drivers honked their horns.

The mix included a few Democrat candidates on the ballot, including Randy Wilkening, who’s running for coroner.

“It’s frustrating. I don’t know how else to put it into words,” he said “We’ve been doing elections for how long, and can’t get it done in a night. I just think it’s a shame.”

During a brief news conference that was part of the protest, Drew Wenger, chair of the Valparaiso Democratic Committee, said he was tired after working the election all day Tuesday and well into the night, and angry about rightful concerns about whether ballots would be counted.

“This whole debacle was on display for our entire state and entire nation,” he said. “Somebody needs to address what happened (Tuesday) night and is happening right now.”

Training to work the polls was rushed, he said, and many people who wanted to work the election were never contacted, adding he called 30 Republicans to be poll inspectors because of the need. Multiple people who requested absentee ballots also never received them.

He pointed to the clerk’s office as the source of the problems with the election.

“This is a joke. It is not a funny joke, and the responsibility falls solely on the county clerk,” he said. “Here’s my question. Where is Karen (Martin) right now? Where is she? Because we have questions for her.”

Porter County Indiana Waits For Election Results Nearly 24 Hours Later
CBS - Chicago
November 7, 2018 at 5:45 pm
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/11/07/porter-county-indiana-waits-for-election-results-nearly-24-hours-later/

CHICAGO (CBS)– Nearly 24 hours after the polls closed in Porter County, Indiana, voters still do not know the results.

The ballot count has been delayed due to polling place staffing issues and problems with absentee ballots.

Poll workers are describing the situation, at the Valparaiso administration building, as utter chaos and voters are feeling slighted.

Voters and poll workers on both sides are blaming the County Clerk’s office and Clerk Karen Martin, who recently gained authority of elections in the county.

“I don’t know how much of it comes down to malice versus incompetence versus just unpreparedness,” Vice Chair of the Valparaiso Democratic Committee, Shawn Barnes said.

Clerk Karen Martin was said to have never reported to the office and her deputy clerk had not been able to get messages to her.

The Board of Elections said they also had not seen Martin.

A small group braved the cold Wednesday afternoon to protest. One sign read, “Count My Vote.”

Kathy Sipple, a Valparaiso poll worker said she knew something was wrong when the absentee ballots did not arrive on time. Now she is worried her vote will not be counted.

“We didn’t have them at two, we didn’t have them at three, we didn’t have them at six,” she said.

John Vigilante, an election inspector from the Republican Party, diagnosed two major problems.

“They did not anticipate and staff correctly for distributing the ballots,” Vigilante said.

Meanwhile some precincts opened hours late and were understaffed. Vigilante said there were multiple volunteers who were never contacted.

“I think could have long term consequences to turn people off of voting which I think would be the absolute worst thing that could happen from all of this,” Sipple said.

It is unclear when voters can expect to see the results, but it will likely not be until Thursday.

UPDATE: Porter County election in disarray; vote totals not expected until Wednesday
NWI Times
November 06, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/porter/update-porter-county-election-in-disarray-vote-totals-not-expected/article_f0cca5e6-7d8d-58f2-86bc-f0445e5b4ca2.html

VALPARAISO — Porter County Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, predicted late Tuesday night that election officials will not know any vote totals for any races until Wednesday. He didn't say what time Wednesday a final count might be available.

No candidates in Porter County and its municipal and other races knew as of 11:20 Tuesday night which of them had won.

Biggs, who spoke after 11 p.m. to The Times from the Porter County administration building, where votes were to be counted, said, “There had been poll workers who were told to not even leave their polling sites until 8:30, which contributed to the delays."

Biggs was referring to a judge's order that 12 polling sites remain open until between 7 and 8:30 p.m., depending on how late they had opened Tuesday morning.

Biggs was unclear as to who told poll workers at all polling sites to stay, presumably an election official.

Porter County Commissioner Laura Blaney said as of 11:15 p.m. Tuesday, county officials were just beginning to see an end to a long bottleneck of campaign workers trying to turn in their results at the administration building in Valparaiso.

Blaney said a combination of snafus in opening polling locations on time, polling places that had be to kept open later as a result and absentee and early ballots that either weren’t sorted or counted in a timely fashion contributed to the backlog.

“This can’t happen again,” said Blaney, noting that she saw some poll workers, who had been on the job since 5 a.m., standing in long lines to turn in their results some 18 hours later.

“Everybody looks exhausted," Biggs said. "It's going to be a slow, monotonous process until it's finished," he said of the vote count.

Biggs attributed the problems to a variety of factors, including a "combination of a heavy voter turnout, the problems of several poling places not opening on time, and other problems that will be discussed in the near future.

“Something drastic needs to be done to ensure this never happens again," Biggs said. "What we have here is a total breakdown in the process. Big changes are coming due to this."

Blaney said several Porter County officials would be probing the problems in coming days to determine why they occurred.

"Big changes are coming due to this," she said.

Judge orders all ballots counted Tuesday
A judge ordered Porter County election officials to count all absentee and early ballots Tuesday night as regular ballots, even if they were delivered to polling places late in the day or after the voting ended, according to Porter County Democratic Central Committee Chairman Jeff Chidester.

The order was sought by local Democrats, who feared the late arrival of the ballots to the polling places would throw them into a provisional status of not being counted until later or not at all, Chidester said.

The legal action comes after a busy day of wrangling between Republicans and Democrats in a local court in the wake of 12 polling sites opening up to 2 1/2 hours late.

The order involving the absentee and early ballots was granted by Judge Pro Tem Julia Jent, who was sitting in for Porter Superior Court Judge David Chidester, brother of Jeff Chidester.

The petition filed Tuesday night by local Democrats claimed that Porter County Clerk Karen Martin did not get the absentee ballots to their respective polling places until late in the voting day or after the polls were closed, according to Monica Conrad, an attorney for the local Democratic Party.

State law requires "each county election board to have all absentee ballots delivered to precinct election boards at their respective polls on Election Day during the hours that the polls are open," according to the petition.

Conrad said the concern is that the ballots were delivered too late in the day to be counted among the regular ballots. She was unsure what it would mean if the ballots are not counted today as required by law.

Martin did not responded to a request for comment.

Jeff Chidester said he delivered the order to election officials Tuesday night.

Porter Superior Court Judge Roger Bradford earlier Tuesday ordered 12 polling places in the county to remain open past the typical 6 p.m. closing time to make up for late starts.

A later attempt by Indiana Republican Party Central Committee to convince the judge to reverse his ruling failed.

Chris Buckley, an attorney for the committee, said the court did not have legal authority to extend the hours, and by Bradford's doing so, was setting a precedent that could see other elections landing in the courtroom.

Buckley argued voters had plenty of time to cast their ballots through early voting and absentee ballots.

Conrad, an attorney for the local Democratic Party, and Ethan Lowe, an attorney for the Porter County Election Board, both argued Bradford was well within state and federal law by extending the polling place hours.

Conrad also attempted to add a 13th precinct, Portage Township 23, which voted at Real Life Community Church, 3134 Swanson Road, Portage, to the list. Conrad said the polling place did not open until 7:20 a.m.

Bradford said closing the polls, without leaving them open for a full 12 hours, would disenfranchise voters. He upheld his earlier ruling, but also ruled the hours would not be extended for Portage Township 23.

The affected polling places and extended closing times are:
Portage Township 19 and 31, South Haven Public Library 403 W. 700 N., Valparaiso, until 8:30 p.m.
Liberty Township 3, Faith Memorial Lutheran Church, 753 N. Calumet Ave., Valparaiso, until 7:45 p.m.
Portage Township 28, South Haven Nazarene Church, 621 N. 450 W., Valparaiso, until 7:40 p.m.
Portage Township 20, Ingram Manor Community Building, 3801 County Line Rd., Portage, until 7:30 p.m.
Westchester Township 13, Porter County Visitor Center 1215, Ind., Chesterton, until 7:30 p.m.
Portage Township 14, Kyle Elementary School, 2701 Hamstrom Road, Portage, until 7:30 p.m.
Westchester 14 and 9, Brummitt Elementary School, 2500 Indian Boundary Road, Chesterton, until 7 p.m.
Portage Township 15 and 33, South Haven Fire Department, 398 W. 700 N., Valparaiso, until 7 p.m.
Porter Township 6, Lakes of the Four Seasons Fire Department, 745 W. 275 S., Crown Point, until 7:15 p.m.
The delays were granted at the requests of the Porter County Election Board and Porter County Democratic Central Committee.

The election board had sought to keep all polling places open until 7 p.m., while Democrats targeted just those that opened late.

The election board, which was represented by Republican Chairman David Bengs and Lowe at the morning hearing, argued they knew of just six polling places that opened late as a result of a shortage of workers and access problems.

Lowe suggested keeping the locations open no later than 7 p.m. out of concern that poll workers, who start as early as 5 a.m., may just leave early.

Conrad provided the longer list of late openings and suggested keeping just those sites open until 8 p.m. to allow time to vote for those returning from work in Chicago.

Judge's decision based on legislative intent
Bradford, who is the only county judge not on the ballot or with a family member on the ballot, said he based his ruling on the legislative intent that polling places are to remain open 12 hours. The extended times are based on the reported delays for each affected site.

The judge, who along with Bengs wore a sticker proclaiming he had voted, took a swipe at the Porter County Board of Commissioners for limiting the pool of available poll workers by eliminating Election Day as a paid holiday for county government employees.

"They got rid of that holiday for whatever reason and are now whining about not having enough people," Bradford said from the bench.

County Commissioner Jim Biggs responded Tuesday afternoon, saying, "Although I wasn’t in the commissioners office at the time, I was on the County Council. It was obvious to everyone paying half-attention that only a very small percentage of employees were actually willing to work the polls."

Biggs said the commissioners dissolved that day off, as it had been created for employees to work the elections.

"The real problem here is not that the commissioners took away what had been a paid day off, it’s what the county is willing to pay poll workers, which is $100 for what in most cases turns into a 13- to 14-hour work day," Biggs said.

Biggs said it is the responsibility of the election board, the voter registration office and the county chairman of both political parties who hire individuals.

"What should be obvious to everyone after today is that there needs to be major changes made to the current process moving forward," Biggs said.

Emergency meeting held to delay hours
The election board's decision to seek the delay came following an emergency meeting late Tuesday morning. The three-member board's sole Democrat member, J.J. Stankiewicz, said he could not make the meeting.

Karen Martin, the Porter County Clerk and Election Board member who took over control of elections this year from the county voter registration office, said of poll workers, "We had a lot of people quit on us at the last minute."

Additional problems stemmed from poll inspectors not picking up cases of supplies and sites not being opened when poll workers arrived, she said.

Martin, a Republican, is on the ballot in her attempt to unseat Democratic Porter County Auditor Vicki Urbanik.

Porter County Democratic Party Chairman Jeff Chidester said earlier Tuesday the group was scrambling to figure out how many polling places opened significantly late.

"To just say there are six and call it a day is not right," he said. "There are more than that. It's almost a moving target."

At least one Democratic Party member called for polls to remain open until 8 p.m.

"Because of the mistakes made by the board and the clerk, voters in Portage, and elsewhere are being disenfranchised by no fault of their own," Portage City Councilman Collin Czilli, D-5th, said. "This is unacceptable."

Chidester said it appeared all the polling places in Porter County were open by midmorning. 

Problems at the polls
Voters told The Times the polling location inside Faith Memorial Lutheran Church at 753 N. Calumet Ave. in Liberty Township did not open until 7:30 a.m., an hour and a half after the scheduled time.

One voter reported the poll at South Haven Public Library, 403 W. 700 North in Portage Township, opened late.

Another voter reported a polling station at the Lakes of the Four Seasons fire station, 745 W. County Road 275 South, did not open on time.

Porter County commissioners issued a statement just before 9 a.m., saying they understand the ability to vote "is the keystone of our democracy."

"We know there have been some issues with polling locations opening late today. We understand the frustration of voters in these locations," the commissioners said in their joint statement.

"We are ready to help in any capacity within our means. We implore the election board to take legal action to keep the polls open beyond their regular schedules."

Chidester said the cause of the delays Tuesday morning has yet to be determined, but added had heard some poll workers were so stressed they walked off the job early in the day.

Portage City Councilman Czilli, D-5th, called on Martin to "do the right thing and extend voting hours for all of Porter County."

Czilli said several polling locations in Portage did not open on time.

"Those making this decision should do whatever they can to ensure that every voter has a chance to vote," he said. "They have a responsibility to run fair elections and this is the only solution."

Martin and Bengs, the two Republican members of the election board, voted earlier this year to take control of local elections from the county voter registration office.

Stankiewicz, the lone Democratic member of the three-person board, argued against shifting the control, because Martin, as a candidate on this year's ballot, was prohibited from administering the election. 

Martin told The Times last spring the law says only that her signature cannot be on the back of the ballot, which it is not.

Voters sound off
Stephanie Campana, of Liberty Township, said she arrived about 6 a.m. at Faith Memorial Lutheran Church and was the fourth person to cast her vote just after 7:30 a.m. 

Campana estimated about 20 people left, but added many more never showed up because voters already waiting in line called them to warn them of the delay.

Others estimated up to 100 people left the polling location without voting.

Campana said many of her neighbors work in Chicago. She was aware of one man who left without voting and will not be able to commute home in time tonight to cast his ballot.

Mary Ann Nowak said she waited until 6:20 a.m., but then left.

"There were a lot of people who work at the mill who probably won't be able to come back," she said.

Nowak has never before seen problems of this magnitude at the polling location, she said.

"We have voted there for years, so I'm not sure what happened," she said.

Campana said she was told the Republican who was to serve as inspector did not show up, so the poll could not open. Several voters said in addition to the lack of an inspector, the ballots were not delivered on time.

Charles Murphy said he also lined up at 6 a.m. at the poll. He estimated 100 people left without voting.

"I heard many people say they won't be able to vote now, or they hope they get out of work early tonight so they can vote," he said.

Murphy said he hoped election officials would keep the polls open longer, so those who left will be able to return tonight to cast ballots.

Portage Township School Board candidates concerned Tuesday will erode trust, turn away voters
NWI Times
November 06, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/portage-township-school-board-candidates-concerned-tuesday-will-erode-trust/article_fac94ba6-7242-587e-9cf9-2c784da028d7.html

PORTAGE — Candidates in the Portage Township School Board races called the problems in Tuesday's elections in Porter County a "travesty" and "very frustrating."

Both Troy Williams and Joan Machuca, opponents in the District 1 School Board seat, said the problems of delayed poll openings resulting in extended hours, issues over early voting in Portage and counting of ballots have a more significant impact.

"There are just a lot of questions whether or not things have been done properly," said Machuca, 71, of Ogden Dunes, and a longtime teacher, administrator and retired director of the West Lake Special Education Cooperative. "It's very frustrating."

"It is a complete travesty. How do you justify or explain this to voters. This is the type of thing that gets people frustrated with politics and government," said Williams, 47, Portage's police chief. "They fumbled the ball at the 1-yard line."

Machuca said she saw the frustration of voters, who stood in long lines and went through the early voting snafu Oct. 27 in Portage where poll workers didn't sign ballots, causing voters to recast their ballot or have the original ones put into the provisional category.

Both Williams and Machuca said they are concerned those turned away from the polls didn't return for the after-hours voting Tuesday.

Williams said he knew of at least one steelworker who tried to vote in the morning, but was turned away and told the poll workers he wouldn't be returning.

Machuca said she was concerned those turned away in the morning wouldn't know the polling hours had been extended and wouldn't return to cast their votes.

They are seeking the seat presently held by Cheryl Oprisko, who chose not to run for re-election.

Incumbent board member Rhonda Nelson is facing Scott Falk and Mary Clancy for the board's District 2 seat.

Incumbent Andy Maletta is unchallenged for the at-large seat in the election.

Both Machuca and Williams entered the race because they believe their experience can bring a boost to the schools.

Both said, despite Tuesday's issues, the experience has been positive.

"I think it went very well and I feel very confident," said Williams, adding he was touched by the number of people who spoke to him of their support.

"I feel privileged being part of the process," Machuca said. "It was an exciting race for me because I never ran in an election before."

Porter County Council 1st District candidates waiting for votes to be tabulated
NWI Times
November 06, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/porter-county-council-st-district-candidates-waiting-for-votes-to/article_ea816420-f587-548b-90a9-b866ecd01df6.html

VALPARAISO — Bob Poparad said he was going to watch a little television and go to bed at a decent time Tuesday night. If Porter County vote totals weren't available, he'd check them in the morning.

"It is sad, really sad how they are running this election. There are a lot of upset people," said Poparad, a Democrat who is running against Porter County Council President Andy Bozak, a Republican, for the council's District 1 seat.

Both Poparad and Bozak expressed frustration in the problems with voting in Porter County Tuesday with 12 precincts opening late and having their hours extended, delaying vote totals.

Bozak said he was trying to be patient and, because his name is on the ballot, trying to stay out of the fray which had Democrats and Republicans in and out of court Tuesday.

"I am feeling pretty confident. I spent 12 hours at the polls and I feel positive," Bozak said. 

"There was a heavy turnout. Americans came out and voted. We'll see what happens," Poparad said.

Porter County Commissioner candidates unavailable for comment
NWI Times
November 06, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/porter-county-commissioner-candidates-unavailable-for-comment/article_de8ace3c-a210-5886-8000-e4974caca584.html

VALPARAISO — As candidates awaited hearing vote totals, both candidates in the Porter County Commissioner Center District race, were unavailable for comment Tuesday night.

Neither incumbent Jeff Good, a Republican, nor his Democrat opponent Donna Perdue returned telephone messages Tuesday evening to comment on the election or to give their reaction to the delays in announcing vote totals, caused by issues in a dozen precincts throughout Porter County.

Godd ran on his record for Porter County commissioner, including a massive upgrade of public infrastructure without raising taxes.

Perdue, his opponent, said she doesn’t want Porter County to be overrun by urban problems.

Good, 57, founder and president of Valparaiso-based Good Hospitality Services, was born and raised in Morgan Township.

Perdue, 52, who moved to Valparaiso in 2015, said she was in town for the Popcorn Festival when she and her husband decided to live there.

Voting problems: Commissioners seek to extend voting hours for troubled precincts
Chesterton Tribune
November 06, 2018
http://www.chestertontribune.com/Elections/voting_problems_commissioners_se.htm

The Porter County Board of Commissioners was seeking this morning to extend voting hours at some eight polling places, after they failed to open on time at 6 a.m.

“The ability to vote is the keystone of our democracy,” the Board of Commissioners said in a statement released around 9 a.m. “The Porter County Commissioner’s office understands this. We know there have been some issues with polling locations opening late today. We understand the frustration of voters in these locations. We are ready to help in any capacity within our means. We implore the Election Board to take legal action to keep the polls open beyond their regular schedules.”

Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, told the Chesterton Tribune that, to his knowledge, eight polling places failed to open at 6 a.m., and that County Attorney Scott McClure and Election Board Attorney David Bengs were filing a motion before Porter Superior Judge Roger Bradford to “keep those locations open past 6 p.m. to make up for the time they weren’t open.”

“We’re going to have to,” Biggs said. “We have to ask a judge to order those polling locations to have extended hours, for at least the same amount of time they were closed. I don’t think anything else should be considered but an extension.”

Biggs added that the motion was being filed specifically before Bradford because he is the only Superior or Circuit court judge in the county without some kind of conflict in today’s election.

Meanwhile, Democrat Director of Porter County Voter Registration Kathy Kozuszek was able to identify seven of the polling places which opened late: Liberty 3, Westchester 13, and Portage 9, 19, 20, 25, and 31. Reasons for the tardiness varied from no inspector on site to no polling machines, no ballots, or “no one inside the place.”

And some polling places which did open at 6 a.m. were “running on skeleton crews,” Kuzuszek told the Tribune. “All Democrats or all Republicans or one of each.”

Kuzuszek’s best guess: in the neighborhood of “100 people were turned away this morning.”

Kuzuszek unhestitatingly placed the blame for this morning’s foul-ups on Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, whose office assumed jurisdiction of the election process earlier this year after the Porter County Election Board split-voted to relieve the Porter County Voter Registration Office of that responsibility. “This is Karen’s fault,” she said. “If the Clerk wanted this, she should have realized what she was taking on.”

Martin, a term-limited Republican, is running this year for Porter County Auditor.

Where is Liberty 3?
Over the last 24 hours at least three different readers have contacted the Tribune to say that the location of the Liberty 3 polling place--Liberty Township Middle School Auditorium, 50W 900N, as listed in Monday’s edition of the paper--was incorrect.

Those readers were right.

The actual location of Liberty 3 is Faith Memorial Luthern Church, 753 N. Calumet Ave.

The Tribune, however, listed the Liberty Township Middle School Auditorium in good faith, after finding it named on the obvious place to look: the Liberty 3 precinct map on the Porter County Voter Registration’s website, under the “Forms & Precinct Maps” link, where it remained uncorrected this morning.

Voters can find the correct location of Liberty 3--Faith Memorial Lutheran Church--but they have to look for it: first google “Porter County polling places”; then click on the top link, “Porter County, IN--Official Website--Polling Locations”; then click on “FIND YOUR POLL LOCATION. CLICK HERE.”

In other words, the Clerk’s Office has listed, in two different places, two different addresses for Liberty 3

Officials: Porter County results may not be known until Nov. 16
Chicago Tribune
November 06, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-vote-woes-st-1107-story.html

A day that started with late-opening polling places continued to roil in apparent chaos Tuesday night in Porter County, when absentee ballots and those from early voting were not delivered to precincts to be counted. Results in some races might not be known until Nov. 16, officials said.

“It is a mess. It’s just as big of a mess as the polls not opening,” said Jeffrey Chidester, chair of the county’s Democratic Party.

Chidister got an injunction from Senior Porter Superior Court Judge Julia Jent mandating those ballots be counted Tuesday night. Some poll workers where voting had concluded remained waiting for the ballots to be delivered, he said, while others closed, forcing their delivery to the county administration building.

More than 15,000 early ballots were cast this election. There was no immediate tally Tuesday night on how many of those ballots might have been counted.

“Absentee ballots are supposed to be delivered to the precincts in a timely fashion and be counted in the precinct by 6 p.m.,” he said. “That did not happen for many people. I don’t want them counted as provisional or tossed.”

Officials said the final tallies for Porter County’s midterm elections might not come until the election board wades through an untold number of provisional ballots, many cast after 12 precincts remained open after 6 p.m. because of late starts on Election Day morning, and certifies the election on Nov. 16.

Chidister got an injunction from Senior Porter Superior Court Judge Julia Jent mandating those ballots be counted Tuesday night. Some poll workers where voting had concluded remained waiting for the ballots to be delivered, he said, while others closed, forcing their delivery to the county administration building.

More than 15,000 early ballots were cast this election. There was no immediate tally Tuesday night on how many of those ballots might have been counted.

“Absentee ballots are supposed to be delivered to the precincts in a timely fashion and be counted in the precinct by 6 p.m.,” he said. “That did not happen for many people. I don’t want them counted as provisional or tossed.”

Officials said the final tallies for Porter County’s midterm elections might not come until the election board wades through an untold number of provisional ballots, many cast after 12 precincts remained open after 6 p.m. because of late starts on Election Day morning, and certifies the election on Nov. 16.

“Maybe the positive that comes out of this would be the impetus for change,” said Republican David Bengs, president of the election board, adding that change will be decided later and will likely be a ballot measure of sorts in its own right. “This is a referendum of how the process worked, and it did not work properly.”

The election board will be tasked with going through what is essentially three separate stacks of provisional ballots, Bengs said. One will be for voters who cast ballots the morning of Oct. 27 in Portage but whose ballots were not properly initialed by poll workers and could not come back in to vote anew; a second will be for any ballots set aside during normal polling place hours on Election Day; and the third will consist of ballots cast at those 12 precincts after regular voting hours ended at 6 p.m.

Seven of those precincts were in Portage Township; three were in Westchester; and Porter and Westchester had one each. Two precincts that vote at South Haven Public Library in Portage Township took voters until 8:30 p.m.; others closed at 7 p.m. or later.

The election board will have to go through each provisional ballot separately and determine whether it can be challenged, Bengs said, adding ballots can be set aside as provisional under normal circumstances for anything from not being filled out completely to being mangled so the voting machine couldn’t read them.

“It really comes down to, was the intent of the voter communicated properly on the ballot, and is the ballot proper?” he said.

Porter Superior Court Judge Roger Bradford issued an order early Tuesday afternoon to keep the polls open longer after an emergency election board meeting was held to address problems at the polls.

During a brief late afternoon court hearing, Bradford put a stop to a last-minute bid to stop the extended voting hours, filed by Portage attorneys Patrick McEuen and Christopher Buckley appearing for the Indiana Republican State Committee.

Buckley argued that the courts don’t have the jurisdiction to alter polling place times, and that setting such a precedent will have an impact on subsequent elections.

Voters had the chance to cast ballots at early voting locations throughout the county, by mail and on Election Day, he said.

“These voters have had plenty opportunity to vote,” Buckley said, adding it was a disenfranchisement of voters who had already cast ballots.

But Chesterton attorney Monica Conrad, appearing on behalf of the county’s Democratic Party, argued that polling hours could be extended “under unusual circumstances such as occurred (Tuesday).”

She argued it was unfair to voters to change course, as did Ethan Lowe, attorney for the election board.

“To reverse that at this point is going to cause a further threat to the validity of this election,” he said.

Closing those polls that opened late at 6 p.m. would disenfranchise the voters, Bradford said, though he denied a request to add a 13th precinct, at a Portage church, open until 7:20 p.m. because of the late notice.

Polls opened late for an assortment of reasons, said Clerk Karen Martin.

“Some of the inspectors didn’t pick up their suitcases and we had to have the sheriff’s department pick them up and deliver them. We had people quit at the last minute, and we had a location where we couldn’t get into it right away,” she said.

The election board held an emergency meeting to address the matter, Martin said, adding she and Bengs, the two Republican members of the board, were present, but J.J. Stankiewicz, the board’s lone Democrat, couldn’t be there.

Chidester said he knew there was the possibility polling places would not open.

The number of impacted voters, he said, “had to be hundreds, and I’m probably being conservative.”

In early March, the election board voted 2-1 along party lines to give election duties to the clerk’s office after Kathy Kozuszek, the Democratic director in the county’s voter registration office, sent a letter to some election board and party officials stating she would no longer handle elections because doing so ran afoul of state statute.

State officials said at the time Porter County was the only county in Indiana where elections were handled by the voter registration office, and in the most of the state, those duties are undertaken by the clerk’s office.

While there have been problems during previous elections, Martin said, it hasn’t been anything of this magnitude.

“But rarely do people expect the midterms to be this,” she said, referring to an unprecedented high voter turnout. Regardless of voter turnout, she added, “you still have the same amount of workers, whether it’s heavy or slow. It’s still 615.”

The Porter County Board of Commissioners issued a statement shortly after 8:30 a.m. Tuesday in response to problems at the polling places, asking the election board to take legal action to keep the polls open beyond their regular schedules.

“The ability to vote is the keystone of our democracy. The Porter County Board of Commissioners’ office understands this,” the statement said, noting problems with polling locations opening late. “We understand the frustration of voters in these locations. We are ready to help in any capacity within our means.”

Councilman Dan Whitten, D-At large, said members of the council “share the disgust” with commissioners over the handling of the election and would provide whatever resources were required.

The council has repeatedly offered additional resources to the clerk’s office to handle the election, he said.

“Like we’ve been saying since the beginning of this show, ‘What do you need?,’” he said, adding Martin said during recent budget hearings that her office was prepared for the election.

During the municipal general elections three years ago, problems with electronic poll books and a lack of key to get into a library being used as a polling place in Portage forced polls there to remain open an extra hour.

12 Northwest Indiana Polling Places To Stay Open Late
CBS - Chicago
November 6, 2018 at 1:53 pm
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/11/06/porter-county-northwest-indiana-polling-places-open-late-election-day/
CHICAGO (CBS) — A dozen polling places in Porter County, Indiana, will stay open later than normal, after problems that forced them to open late.

A Porter County judge signed an order keeping all 12 polling places open a full 12 hours. County election officials said the polling places opened late because some poll workers did not show up. Some precincts had only two poll workers at the start of the day.

According to the Times of Northwest Indiana, the following polling places will be open later than the normal 6 p.m. closing time:

•Portage Township 19 and 31, South Haven Public Library 403 W. 700 N., Valparaiso, will be open until 8:30 p.m.

•Liberty Township 3, Faith Memorial Lutheran Church, 753 N. Calumet Ave., Valparaiso, will be open until 7:45 p.m.

•Portage Township 28, South Haven Nazarene Church, 621 N. 450 W., Valparaiso, will be open until 7:40 p.m.

•Portage Township 20, Ingram Manor Community Building, 3801 County Line Rd., Portage, will be open until 7:30 p.m.

•Westchester Township 13, Porter County Visitor Center 1215, Ind., Chesterton, will be open until 7:30 p.m.

•Portage Township 14, Kyle Elementary School, 2701 Hamstrom Road, Portage, will be open until 7:30 p.m.

•Portage Township 6, Best Western Hotel 6200 Melton Rd., Portage, will be open until 7:15 p.m.

•Westchester 14 and 9, Brummitt Elementary School, 2500 Indian Boundary Road, Chesterton, will be open until 7 p.m.

•Portage Township 15 and 33, South Haven Fire Department, 398 W. 700 N., Valparaiso, will be open until 7 p.m.

Northwest Indiana campaign donations top $1.5M; incumbents get the lion's share
NWI Times
November 05, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/northwest-indiana-campaign-donations-top-m-incumbents-get-the-lion/article_f10c31a9-61a8-585a-91ea-7d503817026d.html

Candidates for state legislative and local government races across Northwest Indiana have raked in more than $1.5 million in campaign contributions over last summer and early fall.

More than 50 Democrats and Republicans in contested races have spent more than $884,000 and were keeping more than $580,000 in reserve before the Nov. 6 general election, according to campaign finance reports.

The Times examined dozens of reports available online at the Indiana Secretary of State and Porter County clerk's websites and paper documents filed in the Lake and LaPorte County clerks' offices.

Incumbent officeholders have received and spent the bulk of this campaign money.

Incumbent legislators and county officials involved in 18 contested races across the Region account for 75 percent of the donations, 81 percent of the campaign expenses and hold 71 percent of the remaining funds.

The largest war chests are held by two Republican legislators, state Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, who has represented the 4th House District in the General Assembly since 2006, and state Rep. Julie Othoff, R-Crown Point, who in 2014 captured the 19th House seat, a swing district in south Lake County.

Soliday held more than $47,000 in cash in May, received more than $105,000 in donations between then and Oct. 12, and in late October raked in more than $8,000 from the House Republican Campaign Committee and $5,000 donations each from NiSource and the Boilermaker's Local 374 Union in Hammond.

Soliday is being challenged by Democrat Frank Szczepanski, co-founder and CEO of Valparaiso's IV Diagnostics. Szczepanski has received a little more than $20,000 in contributions.

Olthoff reported nearly $132,000 in contributions and several large contributions in the latter part of October; $5,000 from the National Federal of Independent Businesses and $50,000 from the Indiana House Republican Campaign Committee.

She is facing off against Democrat Lisa Beck, an attorney living near Lakes of the Four Seasons. Beck has received $98,000 in the last five months and last-minute donations of about $15,000 from a teacher's group, a lawyer's group and a union.

Democratic Party incumbent state Sen. Karen R. Tallian, D-Ogden Dunes, has served in the General Assembly since 2005. She has received nearly $135,000 over the past five months and in the last days more than $5,000 from the Indiana Senate Democrats, and $4,000 from two Midwestern unions.

She faces Republican Cole Stultz, who lists a Michigan City address. He hasn't reported receiving his most recent campaign finances.

In Lake County, Sheriff Oscar Martinez is overwhelming his Republican opponent financially. Martinez has received $125,000 in contributions. Republican Dan Bursac, a retired county police officer, reported less than $9,000.

Lake County Democrats have placed much hope, but little money, behind Lowell Democrat Phillip Kuiper to upset Republican nominee Christian Jorgensen for the 7th District seat on the Lake County Council.

Kuiper has received about $5,200 and spent less than $4,200 since a caucus of Democratic precinct committee members put him on the ballot last summer.

Jorgensen, who defeated incumbent Republican Councilman Eldon Strong by two votes in the spring, has received more than $32,000 and still had about half that amount in reserve in mid-October.

In Porter County, Prosecutor Brian Gensel has cash and donations of more than $31,000 and has spent more than $13,000 in the last five months and reported having more than $18,000 in reserve.

His Democratic challenger, Gary Germann, has taken in $42,000 in contributions and spent $17,700. He has more than $24,000 in campaign funds left.

Porter Superior Judge Jeffrey W. Clymer has received $51,000, spent more than $19,000 and has $31,500 in campaign reserves. Democratic challenger Clay M. Patton has received almost $45,000, spent almost $18,000 and holds $27,000 in reserve.

In LaPorte County, Republican Christina M. Espar has received more than $23,000 and spent nearly half that in her campaign for prosecutor. Her Democratic opponent, John Lake, has received almost $13,000, spent nearly $9,700 and holds $3,400 in reserve.

LaPorte County Commissioner Connie Gramarossa has received $33,000, spent almost $20,000 and holds nearly $13,000 in reserve.

Her Democratic opponent, Sheila Brillson has received almost $30,000, spent almost $20,000 and her campaign holds more than $10,000 in cash.

Democrat says signature on 2018 voter registration budget wasn't hers
Chesterton Tribune
November 02, 2018
http://www.chestertontribune.com/Elections/democrat_says_signature_on_2018.htm

Democrat Director of Porter County Voter Registration Kathy Kozuszek told the Chesterton Tribune today that she has filed a report with the Valparaiso Police Department alleging that a signature on the Voter Registration office’s 2018 budget, purportedly hers, was in fact placed on the document by her Republican co-director, Sundae Schoon.

Kozuszek said she discovered the false signature in April, as she was hoping to hire part-time workers to help answer calls from voters during the 2018 primary and general elections, and was told that the line item from which she wanted to pull funds was empty.

The Chesterton Tribune obtained an email exchange suggesting that four County officials were notified in April of Kozuszek’s claim that the signature wasn’t hers.

Kozuszek told the Chesterton Tribune that a line item in the budget was zeroed-out without her knowledge after she and Schoon had discussed and supposedly finalized the budget together in August 2017. The version of the budget without that funding was presented to the County Council at a Sept. 26, 2017 budget hearing by Schoon, who appeared alone, as can be seen in a public video of the meeting on the Porter County Government YouTube account.

Kozuszek said the move ended up being a blow to her resources in the midst of the most hectic midterm election she’s seen in her 18 years as an employee at Voter Registration and is symptomatic of an election process tainted by party politics.

“When I started here, it was Democrats only talk to Democrats and Republicans only talk to Republicans,” Kozuszek said of Voter Registration. “I always told myself if I ever came into a position of authority, that would end because we were paid for by all taxpayers of this county.”

Kozuszek went on to say that she makes this allegation in spite of fearing for her job. “I am a loyal, 18-year employee of this county,” she said. “I punched a clock long before it was fashionable because nobody would ever accuse me or my girls of cheating the County a dime.”

Kozuszek said that in addition to Schoon, County Council President Andy Bozak, R-1st, has curtailed her resources by way of refusing to consider a request for an additional appropriation from the general fund to fund the part-time workers. “Here’s a man that wants to sit on the County Council and make decisions, good decisions, on behalf of the voters, and he shortchanged them by refusing to hear my request for money to service them on election day,” she said.

In an April email exchange between Kozuszek and Bozak, Bozak wrote that he would not entertain a request for funds if Schoon and Kozuszek didn’t agree on the need for funds and make the request jointly. In an April 9 email, Kozuszek informed Bozak that he had already entertained a request from Schoon without Kozuszek’s input because the signature on Voter Registration’s 2018 budget that appeared to be hers was not in fact hers.

Kozuszek was clear in the email that she suspected Schoon of signing her name, and said it wouldn’t be the first time Schoon had altered a document.

County Council Vice-President Jeremy Rivas, D-2nd, County Council Attorney Harold Harper, and Commissioner Jeff Good, R-Center, were CCed on that email.

Kozuszek said none of them responded to her claim that her signature had been forged.

“I’m definitely denying it,” Schoon told the Chesterton Tribune this morning. “There’s really not much else to say.”

Schoon said Kozuszek’s reference to her past stems from an incident where she notarized a form she shouldn’t have notarized shortly after starting her job in Voter Registration. Schoon said it was a simple mistake when she was new to the job, and though the snafu prompted an election board hearing with Judge Mary Harper, “I was not brought up on charges. I was not sanctioned or anything like that.”

Kozuszek attributes the lack of response and lack of action to Republican leadership protecting their own. “You got a Republican party in control, then you’ve got a Republican employee. They wouldn’t tolerate that from anyone else,” she said.

Kozuszek especially charged Bozak with playing by party lines for not acknowledging her allegation against Schoon in April.

Bozak countered in a phone call this morning that Kozuszek didn’t request that the Council respond to or investigate her claims in the April 9 email, and that if she had, he would have referred that matter to the Prosecutor. “We’re the fiscal body. We take the budget at face value. We’re not checking signatures,” he said.

Bozak said his impression of the allegation at the time was that Kozuszek was “Trying to throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks,” and it was part of a lot of allegations that were flying around in a department where “There’s just a lot of drama.” He now questions why she didn’t go to the Prosecutor right away.

Bozak offered, “It was never my intent to ignore something she brought to me.”

Kozuszek said that she debated making a public allegation for some time and felt that now was her last chance to be taken seriously. “I want to come forward with everything now, all the collusion, because after the election, they’ll say it’s just sour grapes, but it’s not sour grapes. It’s well documented.” She said the reason she didn’t take this matter to the Prosecutor, Republican Brian Gensel, was because she feared he would look out for his own party.

As for what’s documented, Republican County Clerk Karen Martin was handed elections duties earlier this year in a 2-1 decision of the Republican majority Election Board, where lone Democrat member J.J. Stankiewicz objected. Stankiewicz objected to Martin running the election due to her being on the ballot for County Auditor this election cycle.

Stankiewicz, after the primary election, called for the Election Board to hold a public forum to hear and address complaints from voters and poll workers so any issues that occurred in May could be resolved before the general election. The Board at that time agreed to hold a public forum but never followed through.

Both Kozuszek and Stankiewicz have maintained since the switch that party politics are playing a major role in how the election duties are being handled on Martin’s watch.

Saturday, between 118 and 122 votes were mishandled due to poll worker error at the Portage early voting siteÑerrors that Kozuszek claims could have been avoided with better poll worker training. Kozuszek has collected dozens of complaints from early voters and poll workers so far, and Democratic candidate for Secretary of State Jim Harper held a press conference at the Porter County Administration Center on Oct. 25 where he said he’s heard from many voters who haven’t received absentee ballots in a timely manner.

Kozuszek said that the complaints she’s received are divided almost equally by party, and she doesn’t think voters from either party are being singled-out.

The issue on Saturday was that two poll workers didn’t initial the back of the ballots, as required by law for the vote to count.

Kozuszek said voters must refuse to be turned away at the polls. At least four volunteers will be on hand on election day helping her answer calls from voters and poll workers. Anyone with questions can call the following four numbers to speak with someone in Voter Registration: (219)465-3484, (219)465-3488, (219)465-3594, and (219)465-3486. Kozuszek urged voters to come to her office on election day if they have an urgent issue and can’t get through on the phone.

After early voter snafu in Portage, voters asked to return, recast ballots
NWI Times
November 01, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/after-early-voter-snafu-in-portage-voters-asked-to-return/article_5692611e-460c-5946-97a9-aa7f298c1626.html

VALPARAISO — Either 118 or 122 voters cast their ballots early this past Saturday morning in Portage.

Because of a mistake by poll workers, those voters are being asked to vote again. If they don't, the original ballots will be considered provisional and counted only after Election Day results are in.

The issue caused a raucous meeting of the Porter County Election Board Wednesday afternoon, as Democrats and Republicans argued, sometimes shouted, over what should be done to make sure those votes count. The two sides even disagreed about how many votes were in question.

Democratic board member J.J. Stankiewicz proposed the requirement that the ballots be initialed by both poll workers be waived and allow the votes to count, saying the mistake was the county's. His proposal hit a brick wall.

Instead, the board decided to follow the procedure adopted Monday during an emergency meeting, asking those voters, who have been identified and contacted, to return and cast new ballots. If they don't, the original ballots will be considered provisional.

Board attorney Ethan Lowe said the procedure to have voters return would be the "safest way to make sure their ballot counts."

Portage Township Trustee Brendan Clancy, a Democrat running unopposed, suggested the county initiate a traveling board to go to the "front doors" of each voter affected. His idea wasn't well received.

"This is a disenfranchisement of the voters of Portage Township," Clancy said.

Election Board splits over motion to correct error at early vote center
Chesterton Tribune
November 01, 2018
http://www.chestertontribune.com/Elections/election_board_splits_over_motio.htm

The Porter County Election Board is asking residents who cast their votes at the Portage early voting site between 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. on Saturday Oct. 27 to recast their votes due to poll worker error where two poll workers did not initial each ballot, as required by state law.

Two poll workers at the North County Complex, 3560 Willowcreek Road, handled between 118 and 122 ballots improperly, according to County Clerk Karen Martin and Democrat Director of Voter Registration Kathy Kozuszek. Both the Voter Registration and Clerk’s office have been trying to contact the affected voters since Monday, when the Election Board held an emergency meeting to form a solution.

On Monday, the Board was leaning toward asking the voters to recast their votes, and considering any of the affected votes that aren’t recast as provisional ballots to be considered for validity after the election.

Kozuszek blamed the error on a lack of training for both the involved poll workers, who were fill-ins, and didn’t receive the same training as others. Martin responded that they both still got one-on-one training. “I spoke to both of them the night before, and they said they were prepared,” she said.

Democrat Board Member J.J. Stankiewicz proposed a resolution to allow the votes to be counted as provisional ballots automatically so voters wouldn’t have to return to the polls. Kozuszek and Victoria Gresham, a Republican representative of the Clerk’s office, said they haven’t been able to contact all the affected voters. Kozuszek said five people she reached have said they’re willing to come back in, but many are disillusioned with the way the County has already handled their votes and some voted early specifically because of limited mobility.

There was no support for the resolution from Martin, who is an Election Board member in addition to being the Clerk, and Republican board president David Bengs. Shouting from the packed audience didn’t dissuade them.

Board Attorney Ethan Lowe urged against Stankiewicz’s resolution, saying the Board must be persistent in telling people to revote because counting the votes as provisional is no guarantee they will be part of the final tally. Lowe said the Board is doing a disservice to the voters if they don’t make that clear, and that voters may opt not to revote because they feel safe with their ballots counted as provisional.

In fact, Lowe said poll worker error is not a reason under state statute that requires approval of a provisional ballot. The ballots are approved at the discretion of the Election Board ten days after the election.

Stankiewicz responded, “That to me is a threat. That is a threat, which is after the fault of the county. It is the government that screwed up, not the voter. How can that make a vote invalid, if the county by negligence has made the vote invalid?”

Bengs adjourned the meeting abruptly, citing the fact that the Board’s decision hasn’t changed since Monday. Despite an audience of dozens, that included elected officials, he offered no public comment period.

Kozuszek stood up and urged two poll workers with complaints to air their grievances. Despite being adjourned, the Board remained seated to hear it.

Elizabeth Engel said she called in August wanting to work the polls and was ready to give up after her emails and calls went unanswered until yesterday, when she and up to a dozen other people went to the Clerk’s office to complain about the lack of communication. Engel said she was disturbed that Martin yelled at her yesterday. Martin yelled in response to say she hadn’t done that.

Kozuszek said she wanted to know the Board’s contingency plan if there aren’t enough poll workers on election day.

Martin defended her efforts, saying she offered online training and gave assignments to interested people between Sept. 21 and Oct. 9. Martin claimed either her or another employee in her office has contacted every poll worker who worked the primary. Martin deflected blame for any shortage, saying party committee chairmen are supposed to forward her the names of enough interested workers.

Martin repeatedly said that Democratic Committee Chair Jeff Chidester had not provided enough names. Lowe, Martin and Kozuszek argued and Chidester chimed in from the back row that he has made every effort to provide information and hasn’t gotten enough people.

Republican Chairman Michael Simpson has also not provided enough names, though Lowe and Martin focused on Chidester.

Bengs had enough and pounded his gavel to remind everyone that the meeting had been adjourned.

He asked that further discussion be taken elsewhere.

Kozuszek renewed her question of what the Board will do if there are not enough poll workers to staff all 84 polling locations.

Bengs first told her the meeting has been adjourned and didn’t answer. When Kozuszek asked again, he offered a frustrated shrug, and said, “I guess we’ll deal with it when we get to it.”

Dozens of Porter County voters asked to recast ballots after poll worker oversight
Chicago Tribune
October 31, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-unsigned-ballots-st-1101-story.html

The 122 voters who cast ballots between 8:30 and 11:30 a.m. Saturday at the North County Government Complex in Portage are being asked to do so again during early voting after their ballots didn’t receive the necessary initials from two poll workers at the early voting site.

During an explosive Porter County Election Board meeting Wednesday, J.J. Stankiewicz, the board’s lone Democrat, offered a resolution that would have given those voters the opportunity to skip coming back in and have their ballots count as provisional, to be counted when results are certified 10 days after Election Day.

“They’ve already been approved once. This is as redundant as all get-out,” Stankiewicz said.

The motion died for a lack of a second.

Kathy Kozuszek, the Democratic director in the county’s voter registration office, said she was made aware of the problem, caused by two poll workers working as fill-ins, Saturday morning. She told the workers to separate those ballots and quarantine them and consulted with an attorney with the election division of the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office.

The election board held an emergency meeting Monday morning to determine how to move forward and decided to reach out to as many of the voters as possible to come back and vote again.

About 30 people attended the meeting, which devolved into shouting at times, including several elected officials and candidates on the ballot. Many of them displayed open displeasure with the board’s decision and offered comments or questions.

“This is a terrible disenfranchisement of voters,” said Portage Township Trustee Brendan Clancy.

Kozuszek and Victoria Gresham, vice chair of the county’s Republican Party and the Republican representative in the clerk’s office, contacted as many of the voters as they could but could not reach several of them because they lacked the proper contact information.

Kozuszek said she reached five voters who were willing to come back in.

“They’re very disillusioned about it,” she said.

Clerk Karen Martin, a Republican member of the board along with board president David Bengs, asked whether there was a problem previously with ballots not being initialed. Her office is handling the election for the first time this year after it was removed from the control of the Voter Registration Office in early March.

“I’ve never seen a ballot that didn’t have both initials on it,” Kozuszek said.

Board attorney Lowe said he thought a disservice was being done to voters if they weren’t called back in, and using a provisional ballot increased the ability under state law to determine the ballot was invalid.

“The easiest correction is to have them come back in during early voting and cast their other ballot aside,” he said, noting state statute requires initials from a poll worker from each party.

“That is a threat. It’s the government that screwed up, not the voter,” Stankiewicz responded.

Early voting continues place from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. through Friday in Suite 102A of the Porter County Administration Building, 155 Indiana Ave., Valparaiso; the meeting room of Chesterton Town Hall, 726 Broadway; the rotunda of the North County Government Complex, 3560 Willowcreek Road, Portage; Union Township Volunteer Fire Station 2, 267 N. County Road 600 West, Valparaiso; and the Hebron Community Center, 611 N. Main St.

Early voting also takes place at the same times and places on Saturday. Early voting concludes at all locations at noon Monday.

VIDEO - 10312018  Porter County Election Board meeting   
NWI Times
October 31, 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFjllg9gd4Q#action=share

See for yourself the vitriol and finger pointing at a recent Porter County Election Board meeting that Times Editor Marc Chase referenced in his Sunday column. The meeting came just days before what would become a disorganized collapse in processes of the Nov. 6 general election. The Times has obtained a copy of the meeting, which can be found at this link.

Candidate Harper says Porter County election isn't running smoothly
NWI Times
October 25, 2018
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/candidate-harper-says-porter-county-election-isn-t-running-smoothly/article_86b3fe6b-dd61-52c5-81a6-6b44fdf3970d.html

VALPARAISO — Porter County hasn’t been handling the election well this fall, said Secretary of State candidate Jim Harper, a Democrat from Valparaiso.

Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, a Republican, denied the allegations. The county clerk is the top local election official.

The secretary of state is Indiana’s top election official, Harper noted. Martin is running for county auditor after serving the maximum eight consecutive years as county clerk.

Harper said his campaign and others have talked to “numerous voters across the county” who haven’t received absentee ballots on a timely basis.

“When you receive an application for an absentee ballot, state law requires that the ballot be sent out the day that it is received,” Harper said Wednesday during a news conference on the steps of the Porter County Administration Center.

“We have talked to voters who waited 10, 15, 20 days,” he said.

Martin said the county is up to date in sending them; she was sending ballots received the previous day when contacted for comment.

It takes seven or more days to receive mail when it’s routed through south suburban Illinois for processing, she said.

Harper said he is urging Hoosiers to vote early if they are concerned about not getting absentee ballots in time.

Monday is the deadline for the county clerk’s office to receive applications for absentee ballots.

Until the primary election, Kathy Kozuszek, Democratic director of the Porter County voter registration office, had been involved in running election as well as registering voters for the past 18 years. The clerk’s office, which now runs elections in the county, is "severely understaffed,” she said.

Council President Andy Bozak, R-1st, said the council is prepared to ensure the election goes smoothly.

“The council is all hands on deck for everything we have to do,” he said.

Portage City Councilwoman Sue Lynch, D-At-Large, asked about how to help shut-ins vote. Lynch said she tried calling the county to arrange for the traveling board to visit her friend in the hospital, but she got transferred in a circle before giving up.

Kozuszek suggested she go to the courthouse right away to find someone who would talk to her and set up a visit.

County Councilwoman Sylvia Graham, D-At-Large, said her granddaughter at Indiana University wanted to vote absentee but didn’t get a returned phone call. Graham said she likely would pick up her granddaughter and bring her back to Porter County to vote early.

Kozuszek said she has heard from numerous people who say they want to vote absentee but haven’t had phone calls returned.

“I’ve begged with them, pleaded with them, to get out and vote early,” she said.

“If we lose one vote, it’s one vote too many,” Kozuszek said.

Storing ballots
“We have also heard reports of ballots just being stored haphazardly,” Harper said.

Ballots already cast must be secured by two locks with two keys, for the Republican and Democratic appointees to the Election Board.

That’s being done, Martin said, but Election Board members have to sign each time they pick up and return the key.

Poll workers
Harper also said many poll workers still haven’t received assignments for Election Day.

Barbara DeLeon, of Chesterton, said Tuesday she has been an election judge for six years and is fully trained, but still hasn’t been assigned.

“Why are they not calling me since I’ve been a judge for years and I know the whole procedure?” she asked.

Martin said the Republicans and Democratic chairmen are supposed to recommend poll workers. A total of 246 are needed from each party, she said.

The Democratic Party chairman, however, provided only 49 recommendations, Martin said.

Each precinct requires five poll workers. Reducing that number would require the unanimous consent of the county Election Board.

Complaints about Porter County absentee ballots are focus of secretary of state candidate's press conference
Chicago Tribune
October 24, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-jim-harper-st-1025-story.html

Twila Sier said her husband went to the Porter County Clerk’s Office about two weeks ago to get forms to request absentee ballots for the both of them since she will be undergoing surgery in Chicago on Election Day.

As instructed, he turned the forms in the next day so they could get their absentee ballots.

“We still have nothing and it’s been almost two weeks,” said Sier, of Valparaiso, adding she and her husband opted to vote at the Porter County Administration Building, an early voting site, on Tuesday rather than wait for their ballots to come in the mail.

On Wednesday, Sier stood with Democrat Jim Harper, who’s running for Indiana Secretary of State, outside the Porter County Administration Building as he outlined concerns brought to his attention about early voting and the electoral process in Porter County.

Those include allegations that voters are not receiving absentee ballots in a timely fashion; absentee ballots have not been stored properly with two locks; and some poll workers still waiting on their Election Day assignments less than two weeks before the Nov. 6 election.

“I’m hearing numerous credible reports about issues of election administration here in Porter County,” said Harper, of Valparaiso, adding the secretary of state is the chief election officer of the state. “There’s no greater responsibility than casting a ballot and every election being fair.”

Harper, who said he has received about 10 calls about how elections in the county are being handled, said the sum total of the concerns calls into question the ability of the Porter County Clerk’s Office to handle the election, and the secretary of state’s office is not stepping in to help out or solve the problems.

“It’s clear that the office needs more resources and the office of the secretary of state should be providing some oversight because it’s clear that state law is not being followed,” he said.

Kathy Kozuszek, the Democratic director in the county’s Voter Registration Office and the current Democratic proxy for the county election board, said that office handled the elections until earlier this year. In early March, the election board voted 2-1 along party lines to give election duties to Clerk Karen Martin after Kozuszek sent a letter to some election board and party officials stating she would no longer handle elections because doing so ran afoul of state statute.

State officials said at the time Porter County was the only county in Indiana where elections were handled by the voter registration office, and in the most of the state, those duties are undertaken by the clerk’s office.

Kozuszek said ballots should be sent out to voters the day the clerk’s office receives their applications, and that both Democrats and Republicans should have keyed access to absentee ballots.

“Everybody makes mistakes but not when it’s for voters,” she said. “If we lose one vote, we’ve lost too many.”

Martin, reached later by phone, said absentee ballot requests are being processed in a timely fashion and ballots are going out within a day of when requests are received.

Martin, a Republican who also is on the election board, also said that Democratic and Republican representatives in her office have access to the keys for where the ballots are kept. Members of the election board can request the keys, she said, which are for the door to the room where the ballots are stored and for a container in which they are kept.

The matter came up during the primary, she said, and the method qualifies under state statute.

As far as poll worker assignments, Martin said it is up to party chairs to make those assignments and the situation is fluid as more people sign up to work.

“There are some who have not been placed,” she said, adding online training is available for judges and clerks, who are not required under state statute to attend classes, though inspectors are. Still, she added, classes are available for all three classifications of poll workers.

No formal complaints about the election process have been filed to the election board, said Republican David Bengs, the board’s president.

As election nears, Porter County poll workers attend training session
Chicago Tribune
October 29, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-county-polls-st-1030-story.html

For Blake Fletcher, 16, working the polls is a family tradition.

Blake, 16, a junior at Chesterton High School, said his grandmother had been helping out for quite some time, usually for early voting, and will be assisting on Election Day itself for the first time.

Following in her footsteps, Blake signed up as a poll worker, too, and attended a Saturday informal poll worker training and voter information session held at the Iron Workers Local 395 union hall in Portage.

“I just wanted to see what it is, what I should expect because I’ve never done it before,” he said.

About 30 people attended the session, which Porter County Democratic Chair Jeffrey Chidester said was held with the hopes of a smooth election for voters, particularly after reportedly receiving numerous complaints that early voting so far, as well as the work assignments for poll workers, have not been going well. Porter County Clerk Karen Martin, whose office is overseeing the election, has denied both claims.

“The last thing we want to have here in Porter County is someone makes the effort to vote, and somebody didn’t know what to do with that voter,” Chidester said.

Trained poll workers are critical, said J.J. Stankiewicz, the lone Democrat on the county’s election board, because mistakes can mean a voter’s ballot can’t be counted.

He received word Saturday morning that 100 or more early votes cast that day hadn’t been signed by the poll workers, jeopardizing those ballots and forcing those voters to come back and cast ballots another time.

“You know what a lot of people will do – not show up,” he said.

Kathy Kozuszek, the Democratic director in the county’s voter registration office, said she was offering the training not in that capacity, but as a citizen who also has 18 years of experience handling county elections.

“I can speak with knowledge,” she said, adding Porter County is on track to record its highest midterm election turnout in history.

Alvarez Houlemard of Valparaiso said he’s been a poll worker in four elections. He retired from BP and said he was inspired by former President Barack Obama’s last state of the union address to get involved.

Since the rules governing elections can change, Houlemard said he wanted to assure he was up to date.

“I want to make sure I don’t make mistakes,” he said.

Porter County tests voting equipment ahead of early voting

Chicago Tribune

October 08, 2018

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-election-test-st-1009-story.html

All systems are go for early voting to start Wednesday in Porter County in the ramp-up to the Nov. 6 general election.

Representatives of the election board met Monday to test voting equipment to assure it’s in working order before voters begin casting their ballots. In all, they tested 12 machines, one for each township.

Voter registration ends Tuesday, said Sundae Schoon, Republican director in the county’s voter registration office, who also served as a proxy for election board member David Bengs during the equipment test.

“They have until the close of business to come into the office or until 11:59 p.m. to do it online,” she said.

The voter registration office, open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., is located in Suite 105 of the county administration building, 155 Indiana Ave. The online portal to register is indianavoters.in.gov.

Early voting, Schoon said, takes place from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday in Suite 102A of the administration building; the meeting room of Chesterton Town Hall, 726 Broadway; the rotunda of the North County Government Complex, 3560 Willowcreek Road, Portage; Union Township Volunteer Fire Station 2, 267 N. County Road 600 West, Valparaiso; and the Hebron Community Center, 611 N. Main St.

Early voting also takes place at the same times and places on the last two Saturdays before the election, Oct. 27 and Nov. 3. Early voting concludes at all locations on noon Nov. 5.

The last day the voter registration office can accept absentee ballot applications for voting by mail is Oct. 29, Schoon said.

The election board is hoping to have new equipment for municipal elections next year, and will appear later this month before the county council with a $500,000 capital funding request toward that goal.

The current equipment, Schoon said, is from 2005.

Election officials had hoped to get new $1.8 million in equipment, in tandem with a plan to reduce the number of polling places from 86 to 46, this year, but council members and commissioners were concerned there wouldn’t be enough time to notify voters of polling changes with the switch.

Commissioners and the council already set aside $450,000 toward new equipment. Election board attorney Ethan Lowe, who also attended the equipment test, could not say whether the request for new equipment would again accompany a plan to reduce the number of polling places.

“I think everything is being discussed right now but I’m not entirely clear how that will play out,” he said.

The new equipment under consideration is similar to what voters use now, said Dennis Rzepka, a field services representative with Election Systems and Software, the county’s vendor.

“To the voters, there’s not a lot (of difference), especially to in-person voters. The machines are very similar in operation. It still has a paper ballot for tracking anything and checking,” he said, adding the new voting equipment that’s compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act is smaller, lighter, and “less scary for the voter.”

Candidate wonders if politics is to blame for paperwork snafu downstate

NWI Times

July 04, 2018

https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/candidate-wonders-if-politics-is-to-blame-for-paperwork-snafu/article_0a3d685d-699c-5326-81b0-950a03a41c6a.html

Portage attorney Patrick McEuen was unanimously selected Saturday by the local Republican Party caucus to run against incumbent 10th District state representative Charles "Chuck" Moseley, a Democrat, but McEuen won't be on the ballot in November.

The Indiana Republican Party is blaming a paperwork snafu, but McEuen said Tuesday he wonders if there was a political motive instead.

“It all started June 19, when (Porter County Republican Chairman) Michael Simpson sent me an email,” McEuen said. Copied on that email were Matt Huckleby, the state GOP's executive director of political strategy and operations, and Huckleby's assistant, Danielle Zagone.

Zagone sent a declaration of candidacy and a statement of financial interest and said McEuen had until June 27 to file the paperwork with the House of Representatives clerk, McEuen said.

McEuen showed up at the state party headquarters on June 26, the day before the deadline, and Zagone walked him over to the House clerk to file the appropriate paperwork. A Saturday caucus in Porter County would be held to fill the slate. Noon Saturday was the state's deadline for the Republicans and Democrats to choose candidates for spots not filled during the primary.

On Friday — after the filing deadline, McEuen noted — he got a call that the necessary paperwork wasn’t filed with secretary of state’s election division.

“I followed all the instructions I was given by my state party,” McEuen said.

He's now consulting his campaign advisers to see what legal recourse he might have, including an injunction to get his name on the ballot.

"Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding of filing requirements for filling a ballot vacancy for this sort," Indiana Republican Party press secretary Holly Gillham said. "Not all of the documents were filed in a timely manner, which is a regrettable error."

Simpson said Tuesday he was surprised, too.

"I've pretty much yelled at everyone down there. Loudly," Simpson said.

McEuen said Simpson told him Friday that he had another position in mind for him. “I said no, I wanted to go forward on the ballot and be nominated for state representative District 10,” he said.

“I think the voters in D10 deserve a choice for the position of state representative in District 10,” McEuen said.

McEuen said Tuesday he was put on the Porter County tourism board in January 2017 when Indiana Republican Party treasurer Chuck Williams was removed, part of the fallout from Williams' involvement in the controversial Indiana Dunes State Park pavilion restoration project. 

McEuen also said he represented Chet Barone as a witness in the Valpolies.com defamation lawsuit Williams filed on December 2015. 

"Chuck Williams didn't even know that that filing was happening," Simpson said.

"I had no idea," Williams said.

County election complaints prompt call for public meeting

Chesterton Tribune

May 21, 2018

https://www.chestertontribune.com/Porter%20County/county_election_complaints_promp.htm

The Porter County Election Board will hold a public meeting to address complaints from voters and poll workers related to the 2018 primary election.

The Board met on Friday to certify the election results and decide the fate of 39 provisional ballots. But at the beginning of the meeting, Member J.J. Stankiewicz handed out a written motion to set a future meeting of the Board where members of the public can freely deliver written complaints and live testimony regarding their concerns about the election process.

The 2018 primary was the first election run by Porter County Clerk Karen Martin. In previous years, the legwork has been done by Porter County Voter Registration and the Election Board.

State officials notified the Board in March that Porter County is the only county in Indiana where Voter Registration directors administer elections.

Falling in line, the Board opted to change Porter County’s operations to fit Indiana code. The change was partly in response to a letter sent to board members and other officials by the Democratic Director of Voter Registration, Kathy Kozuszek, stating that she refused to handle elections going forward because Porter County’s methods violate state statutes.

Now that the primary is over, Stankiewicz said he’s gotten numerous complaints about how the election was run, including some from elected officials and their relatives. Stankiewicz cited poll worker error as a major factor, saying “I don’t know how deep it goes.”

Kozuszek added that there were also some complaints about ADA compliance at polling locations.

Kozuszek, who is also the Vice-Chairperson for the Porter County Democratic Central Committee, reported that people have complained to the Voter Registration office, sometimes five in a day. Chairman for the Porter County Democratic Central Committee Jeffery Chidester presented a press release supporting Stankiewicz’s request for a public meeting and listing five complaints.

Chidester alleged in the press release:

*  That Congressman Pete Visclosky’s Chief of Staff’s sister-in-law was unable to vote at the North County Government Complex due to poll worker error in which she was given the wrong ballot.

*  That a voter was purged from the voter rolls in 2017 by mistake because he had the same name as someone else who was to be purged.

*  That an absentee ballot was printed for every resident in a nursing home in Porter County and traveling election officials were responsible for determining competency this year. This is not common practice in Porter County, and it resulted in one relative of a nursing home resident calling and saying that the resident should not have voted due to Alzheimer’s compromising her understanding of voting.

*  That a voter who requested an absentee ballot several times never got one. When she tried to vote in person, her license was expired, and she had to vote using a provisional ballot.

*  And, finally, that the election was partisan and dominated by Republican officials who controlled the poll worker education classes and kept Democrat appointees out of the loop.

Election Board President David Bengs was receptive to the suggestion of a public meeting. The Board voted unanimously to commit to holding such a meeting. A date and time for the meeting has not yet been scheduled because Bengs suggested that people who have already reached out with written complaints be contacted about what days they would be available to appear. “If we have individuals who are concerned about the election process, we want to hear from them,” he said.

Of the 39 provisional ballots, 20 were counted and 19 were discarded. Martin, Kozuszek, Stankiewicz, Bengs, and Republican Director of Voter Registration Sundae Schoon decided together which ballots would be counted based on the circumstances of the vote and Indiana code. The voter cited in Chidester’s complaints who did not receive an absentee ballot had her provisional vote counted following her delivery of valid identification to the voter registration office. The election results were certified by Martin, Bengs, and Stankiewicz following the decisions on the provisional ballots.

In all, 17,023 votes were cast in the primary in Porter County for a voter turnout of 14.05 percent. 50.77 percent of votes were cast by Republicans and 49.23 percent by Democrats. Indiana requires primary voters to choose either a Democrat or Republican party ballot. Porter County has 121,134 registered voters.

Porter County Dems want review of primary problems, complaints

Chicago Tribune

May 21, 2018

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-election-complaints-st-0522-story.html

Porter County Democrats are asking the county’s election board for a public meeting to go over what they claim are a wide array of problems from the May 8 primary, from poll workers without enough training to voters who were given ballots for the wrong party.

County party chair Jeffrey Chidester and J.J. Stankiewicz, the lone Democrat on the election board, want the meeting, but Clerk Karen Martin, who oversaw the election for the first time and who is one of the Republicans on the election board, said the concerns aren’t any different from past elections.

“Most of the concerns, I feel, have happened at previous elections. Considering the time and the changes, we did very well overall,” she said, adding that results from the county’s 123 precincts were tallied in around two hours and 20 minutes.

Board president David Bengs, also a Republican, said the brunt of the concerns were routine and procedural in nature, and didn’t involve the election results. He expects the meeting to be held the second week in June and hopes voters who had problems will voice their concerns directly to the board.

“We’ve never done this before and some of the concerns that were brought forward were brought forward in the past. I didn’t hear anything alarming,” he said.

The election board voted 2-1 in March to give election duties to Martin after Kathy Kozuszek, the Democratic director in the county’s Voter Registration Office, sent a letter to the county’s party chairs and some members of the election board that she would not continue to handle election duties because having that office conduct the election was outside of state statute.

Officials with the Indiana Election Division of the Secretary of State’s Office have said Porter County was the only county in the state where election duties are handled through voter registration, and in the majority of counties in the state, the clerk handles elections.

“The Republican Party is not going to admit they screwed anything up,” said Chidester, who drafted a letter to the election board outlining his concerns Friday, adding the county didn’t have any close races that would be overturned because of problems. “It’s kind of a victimless crime.”

Among the errors, Chidester said in his letter, were a voter given the wrong ballot in Portage; confusion over a voter purged from the rolls when someone with the same name went to vote; a nursing home resident with advanced Alzheimer’s disease who was allowed to vote; questions over whether a provisional ballot was counted after a voter brought a renewed drivers license into voter registration; and a lack of Democratic involvement in the election.

Stankiewicz, who said he refused to certify election results Friday until the Republican majority on the election board agreed to a public meeting, said he received calls May 8 from both Democrats and Republicans that polling places, particularly at Valparaiso schools under construction and the county’s Emergency Management Agency building on Indiana 2, were not fully accessible to handicapped voters.

He also received an email from a Republican poll inspector who said poll workers were not sufficiently trained and there was confusion over where to bring suitcases with ballots and a tally of votes when polls closed and some people showed up at the administration building as they have in the past instead of the courthouse a couple of blocks away.

“The best shot to continue what they’re doing or legalize what they were doing in the past would be if it was reasonable and efficient,” Stankiewicz, who voted against giving election duties to the clerk, said, said, adding the handling of the primary met neither of those parameters.

Martin countered that poll workers were sufficiently trained and while state statute dictates training inspectors, the county also opts to train judges and clerks, which isn’t mandated.

All of the polling places have been used in previous elections, she said, including the EMA building, and she had people review Valparaiso High School and Memorial and Northview elementary schools, all of which are in the midst of renovation projects, to make sure they were still accessible as polling places.

“I actually sent people out there,” she said.

Chidester proposed two solutions for the problems he outlined in his letter. That includes more training for poll workers and including voter registration officials from both parties in the handling of the election, since that office has all of the voting records.

“What did we really solve? Show me. They’re using the voter registration office but only the people they want to use,” he said, claiming Democrats were shut out of assisting with the election on an administrative level.

His biggest worry is that people were denied to right to vote during the primary, a problem that will only increase in November with more competitive races on the ballot and greater voter turnout.

“November turnout is going to be higher than 14 percent, and that’s what concerns me,” he said.

Porter County elections are in new hands

NWI Times

March 13, 2018

https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/porter/porter-county-elections-are-in-new-hands/article_d65b9f65-46ba-5305-b3d1-c8aa78793425.html

VALPARAISO — Porter County Clerk Karen Martin said she has already completed the transition of people and equipment needed to take control of local elections.

One of two election workers has been moved the couple of blocks from the county voter registration office to the clerk's office at the downtown courthouse, she said.

Martin and fellow Republican Porter County Election Board member David Bengs voted Thursday to take the elections away from its long-time home in the county voter registration office.

The pair, who make up a Republican majority on the election board, said the move brings the county in line with state law and all but a few of the state's 92 counties.

Voters will not see any differences as a result of the change, Martin said.

Lone opposition was voiced last week by Democratic Election Board member J.J. Stankiewicz, who argued the move was improper because Martin, as a candidate on this year's ballot, is prohibited from administering the election.

Martin, who is running for county auditor against Democratic incumbent Vicki Urbanik, disagreed, saying the law only says her signature cannot be on the back of the ballot, which it is not.

Stankiewicz further argued the move runs contrary to state code calling for efficiency in election administration. The clerk's office is three blocks away from the voter registration office, its staff and equipment, he said.

Martin said her current staff is capable of handling the additional work of elections, along with the two positions in the voter registration office funded by the election board. Those posts currently are filled by a Republican and a Democrat. Martin said she will be interviewing each to determine if they will be retained or replaced.

Board taps Clerk and candida-te Karen Martin to run primary election

Chesterton Tribune

March 09, 2018

https://www.chestertontribune.com/Elections/board_taps_clerk_and_candidate_k.htm

The Porter County Election Board split-voted 2-1 at its meting Thursday to delegate election duties to County Clerk Karen Martin after state officials notified the board that Porter County is the only one in Indiana where voter registration directors administer elections.

The change is in response to a letter sent by the Democratic director of voter registration, Kathy Kozuszek, to some of the board members and other officials in which she refused to handle elections going forward because Porter County’s methods violate state statutes. The letter made its way to some County Council members who at their last meeting put pressure on the Election Board to clarify how the 2018 election will be run.

At that meeting, the Council asked Clerk Karen Martin if her office was prepared to handle an election and Martin said it was. At Thursday’s meeting of the Election Board, she added that full-time staff at her office will be supplemented with two part-time employees on loan from Voter Registration.

Board member J.J. Stankiewicz was opposed to the measure and listed six reasons for his disagreement. One of them: Martin is herself on the ballot in the 2018 election, and Stankiewicz said that state statute forbids her from administering the election. Martin, in response, said that she will not sign off on the results of the election, in accordance with state law, and that the signature stamp on the ballots will be the Circuit Court’s, not hers.

Stankiewicz noted that Porter County has run its elections this way for 50 years and described the letters from state officials as “outrageous,” proposing that they came from people who have never tried cases. He also expressed anger at the Council’s demands for answers and maintained that “This is being done in retaliation because an individual, Kathy Kozuszek, chose to demand overtime pay.”

Kozuszek has threatened legal action over nearly $22,400 in overtime pay for work done on the 2016 presidential election. It was determined in the fall of 2016 that Kozuszek and Republican director of voter registration Sundae Schoon shouldn’t receive overtime because they are salaried employees, and as a compromise the County Council approved a $5,000 per year raise for them.

Board President David Bengs responded to Stankiewicz by saying that the Election Board is not involved in any legal disputes. “If anything, this is bringing Porter County to be in compliance with the state statute,” he said and added, “I think the only thing we can rely on is the Indiana code. I think it’s wholly proper for the county to do so, and it probably should have been done 50 years ago.”

Other Business

The Board also approved five early voting locations: Porter County Administration Building, Room 102A, 155 Indiana Avenue in Valparaiso; Porter County Government North County Complex, 3560 Willowcreek Road in Portage; Chesterton Town Hall, meeting room, 726 Broadway; Union Township Volunteer Fire Station, 267N 600W; and the Hebron Community Center, 611 N. Main St.

Early voting begins April 10. The last day to register to vote is April 9.

Clerk to take over Porter County election duties

Chicago Tribune

March 08, 2018

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-porter-county-election-st-0309-20180308-story.html

With a 2-1 vote Thursday, the Porter County Election Board returned election duties to the county clerk from the Voter Registration Office for the first time in what one official estimated was 50 years.

The move comes after Kathy Kozuszek, the Democratic director in voter registration, sent a letter to some election board and party officials stating that she would no longer handle elections because doing so ran afoul of state statute. Members of the county council raised concerns about the fate of the responsibilities last month because of the letter.

"I don't believe it's necessary to take a vote today but it's the board's duty to make it abundantly clear who's holding the election," said election board attorney Ethan Lowe.

Officials with the Indiana Election Division of the Secretary of State's Office have said Porter County is the only county in the state where election duties are handled through voter registration, and in the majority of counties in the state, the clerk handles elections.

Kozuszek, through an attorney, also has threatened legal action against the county if she isn't paid almost $22,400 in overtime and penalties for hours she worked during the 2016 presidential general election.

In the fall of 2016, the county council and the human resources director at the time determined that Kozuszek and her Republican counterpart, Sundae Schoon, improperly had been receiving overtime during elections when they were salaried employees. To rectify the matter, the council increased their salaries by $5,000, to around $49,000, starting last year.

J.J. Stankiewicz, the lone Democrat on the board, voted against the change, prefacing his decision with a list of six reasons why elections should be left as they are, and noted that voter registration has been handling elections in the county for 50 years.

One of those reasons, he said, was a reaction to the threatened lawsuit.

"It's retaliation because an individual, Kathy Kozuszek, called to demand overtime pay, and this is a big mistake," he said.

Board president David Bengs disagreed.

"The election board is not involved in any type of suits or anything like that. If anything, this is bringing Porter County into compliance" with state statue, he said.

Stankiewicz also said Karen Martin, the county clerk, can't sign off on the elections under state statute because she's on the ballot; Martin is running as a Republican for auditor.

Martin said the signature stamp on ballots is for the circuit court and isn't in her name, so the county won't be violating state statute.

The change comes weeks before early voting starts on April 10.

After the meeting, Martin said two part-time employees in voter registration who are funded through the election board budget would shift to her office in the courthouse, pending permission from commissioners to move the employees and their computers and other office equipment.

She already has full-time staff in her office who can assist with election duties as well, she said, and has room to accommodate additional employees.

The fate of the director positions in the voter registration office, which are appointed by party chairs, remains unclear with the switch.

"We'll have to wait and see what commissioners do with voter registration," said Councilman Dan Whitten, D-At large, one of the council members who questioned who would handle election duties.

Questions remain in Porter County over election duties

Chicago Tribune

March 05, 2018

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-ptb-porter-election-question-st-0306-20180305-story.html

How Porter County handles its elections from here on out will be up for debate during a meeting of the county election board Thursday, just weeks before early voting begins for the May primary.

Officials with the election division of the office of the Indiana secretary of state said Porter County is the only county in the state where the Democratic and Republican directors of voter registration handle the brunt of election duties.

With some exceptions, including Lake County, where a five-member election board was established with special legislation, duties for elections fall to county clerks, the officials said.

"I'm not aware of any county in the state except Porter County where the voter registration office has explicit permission to do election duties," said Angie Nussmeyer, Democratic co-director of the state election division.

The matter came to a head at a County Council meeting Tuesday after members of the council and other elected officials received a December letter from Kathy Kozuszek, the Democratic director of voter registration, stating that the county's elections were being conducted outside of the parameters of state statute and she would no longer handle those duties.

With the county election board in front of them for an additional appropriation, some council members demanded to know who would handle the elections if the directors of voter registration, who are appointed to their posts by county party chairs, wouldn't be doing it anymore.

Though the council doesn't have a say in elections, it does provide funding, which is why council members wanted to know the plan.

"We need to know what's going to happen with this election," council member Dan Whitten, D-at large, said during the meeting. "Just give us some assurance on what we're doing."

Complicating matters is that last month, Kozuszek, through an attorney, threatened legal action if she wasn't paid almost $22,400 in overtime and penalties for time worked during the 2016 presidential election.

The demand came after the council and the human resources director at the time determined in the fall of 2016 that Kozuszek and her Republican counterpart, Sundae Schoon, had been receiving overtime during elections when they are salaried employees. County Auditor Vicki Urbanik has said the two sign their own time cards.

State law does not allow local elections to be administered the way Porter County is doing them, said Brad King, Republican co-director of the state election division.

"State statute provides the elected circuit court clerk is the chief election officer of the county," with assistance from the election board, made up of an appointment from each party, he said. "That's the basic rule in state law."

Nine counties have separate voter registration boards, one of the options allowed under the statute, he said, but its duties are limited to voter registration.

The dispute in Porter County over election duties, King said, has been going on for years, periodically bubbling to the surface as it has in recent weeks.

No one seems quite sure when voter registration took over election duties, or how.

"Nobody remembers," said David Bengs, president of the county election board. "Both parties accepted it that way."

Meeting at 3 p.m. Thursday in the commissioners' chambers of the county administration building, the county election board is expected to sort out the details. Bengs said state law isn't clear on how counties should organize their elections, and statewide "it's all over the map."

Some counties use deputy election commissioners, selected by each party and ratified by the election board, but King called that an "unusual approach" and said the commissioners typically work in a part-time capacity to assist the election board with its duties.

In some counties, most of that help falls on election day, when commissioners may be called to polling places for disputes and other matters, though the law doesn't limit them to that, King said.

Legally, Porter County's election board doesn't need to vote to return election duties to the clerk's office, and Clerk Karen Martin said during the council meeting that her office could assume those responsibilities.

"I don't see the need for everybody to vote to say, 'We're going to conduct elections per state law,'" King said.

As a practical matter, though, voting on how elections will be handled might alleviate confusion for voters and candidates on the ballot, he added.

"There might be some benefit for the election board to say at a public meeting, 'Here's how things are going to be handled, and here's what's changed,'" King said.

State election report blames humans, not computers for Porter County snafus

Chesterton Tribune

September 22, 2015

http://chestertontribune.com/Elections/state_election_report_blames_hum.htm

The Indiana Secretary of State’s Office on Friday said Porter County’s new electronic poll books are not to blame for the technical problems reported in this past May’s municipal primary elections.

Instead, a report conducted by the Voting System Technical Oversight Program (VSTOP) attributes the snafus to poll workers, poor internet connection at polling locations, ballot counting machine failures, router failures, “confusing” voter tally sheets and “inadequate” poll worker training.

A summary of the report was released Friday along with a statement issued from Secretary of State Connie Lawson. VSTOP is tasked with documenting issues with equipment sold to counties by vendors and making recommendations relevant for the functioning of that equipment.

“After reviewing VSTOP’s conclusions, I’m confident there was not a problem with the e-PollBooks,” Lawson said in her statement. “There were several other factors that lead to the discrepancy between ballots counted and the total number of voters voting. There was human error in recording the number of people who voted before turning off the machines, there was equipment error with the machines that scan the cast ballots and a router failed at one location. These difficulties were compounded when the poll workers went to reconcile vote totals. There was trouble recording and calculating vote totals and confusion with tally sheets.”

Election Board President and Republican representative David Bengs told the Chesterton Tribune on Monday that “it’s no shock” what the report said after he and fellow Election Board member and County Clerk Karen Martin, also a Republican, had stated before that “human error” was what caused the problems.

“I think (the report) shows clearly that this is our first time using the e-poll books,” Bengs said. “We’re going to up the training for our poll workers and the vendor is going to be here to help with that.”

Martin said she has made arrangements with Electronic Systems and Software (ES&S) to provide more training this fall which will “alleviate many of the issues” and “the equipment will be thoroughly checked prior to being put in the field.”

Martin accused critics of stating misinformation and making false statements of poor performance by the e-PollBooks and purports that “partisan politics with the sole purpose to stop Porter County from making any progress in the election process.”

VSTOP began its investigation following a complaint filed by Democratic Director of the Voters Registration office and County Democratic Party Vice-Chair Kathy Kozuszek and an inquiry by Indiana State Rep. Chuck Moseley, D-Portage, who had informed Democratic Co-Chair of the Indiana Election Division Trent Deckard on Election Day -- Tuesday, May 5 -- of “several electronic poll book failures.”

Tensions rose between the Republican-dominated County Election Board and a few key Democrats when it came time for the voting results to be certified 10 days after the election. Kozuszek said the vote count from the central point server on Election Night was 334 votes different than the count from the voting tapes and argued the vote could not be certified.

Kozuszek’s complaint filed on May 14 alleged that Bengs authorized vendor Electronic Systems and Software to “break the seals on the electronic poll books to determine what when wrong” in an attempt to reconcile the number of poll book check-ins with that of voted ballots.

Program Manager of the Indiana State Voter Registration System (SVRS) Christian Hoberland had received word from Martin that there were some issues because poll workers had forgotten to turn on their routers at a few locations, according to the VSTOP report. Martin further reported that there were problems with the M100 voting scanners and that some workers shut down the e-Poll Books without copying the number of voters processed.

On June 9, VSTOP interviewed Martin, Kozuzsek, Bengs, Democratic County Election Board member James J. Stankiewicz, Republican Voters Registration Director Sundae Schoon and two representatives from vendor Electronic Systems and Software.

VSTOP said the data collected from ES&S and the SVRS showed that with the addition of absentee ballots, the discrepancy between voter check-ins and ballots counted was reduced to 35.

The report said that Martin, Kozuszek and poll workers all indicated there were problems with the M100 voting scanners in reading some of the ballots.

VSTOP recommends that Porter County adopt the method of providing record tally sheets for each hour the polls are open, as well as “good and continuous internet connectivity” by providing “redundant methods of electronic communication.”

The County Council still hasn’t approved the purchase of the poll books that were acquired this year, and have vetoed the Election Board’s request at least twice. Bengs said the matter will be addressed again in the next few weeks when the board has its second reading on its 2016 proposed budget by the Council.

Bengs believes the report’s results will help in the case for funding and has shared the reports with the Council and County Commissioners.

Dems speak out

Kozuszek told the Tribune Monday that her actions are not motivated by partisan politics because for her it’s about how the equipment was purchased and implemented. The poll books did not arrive until a week before election, giving the poll workers not much time to learn the new equipment.

“It was all rushed through,” Kozuszek said.

She and Democratic Party Chair Jeff Chidester said it is upsetting that the report points the finger at poll workers, many of them older and used to the traditional methods of using paper ballots.

“To blame the poll worker, I think is wrong,” Kozuszek said.

Kozuszek also said she filed her complaint not because of politics but so that the state could investigate the performance of the e-poll books.

She said that training workers on the e-poll books would nearly double the length of the classes to two to three hours and it’s supposed to be the Election Board, not Voters Registration that does the training.

Chidester said he finds it “a bad thing” that the election board is “experimenting with elections” and worries that voter turnout will be lower than it is now with all the problems report.

“The system doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do,” Chidester said.

Chidester also mentioned that VSTOP is the organization that had certified the poll books for use in the state, expressing doubts that the report would have found fault with the devices.

Election board not impressed with anonymous complaint

Chesterton Tribune

July 15, 2014

http://chestertontribune.com/Porter%20County/election_board_not_impressed_wit.htm

A complaint lodged to the Indiana Public Access Counselor by a “Publius Valerius Publicola” against Porter County Voter Registration may not hold up because of anonymity, said County Election Board attorney Ethan Lowe.

At the board’s meeting Friday, Lowe said the complaint was made during the last week of June asking why the Voters Registration office has not posted Porter County Superior Court Judge William Alexa’s campaign finance reports on the County’s website as it has done with other candidates.

However, it is not required by law for county election boards to make reports available online, he said. The board by choice began making reports available this past years on the County’s new website.

Adding to that, Lowe said he found the complaint “difficult to read” and to make out what the anonymous individual was griping about.

Lowe said the public access counselor expects to issue an opinion on the complaint by July 30.

Kozuszek said she did not post Alexa’s report online because he had closed out his campaign.

Lowe said the complaint surfaced days after a written request was submitted to Voters Registration asking about campaign finance reports for Alexa, who ran as a Democrat in 2012.

Lowe said the request was forwarded to him by Voter Registration Democratic Director Kathy Kozuszek who initially received the request. Kozuszek said she passed the request on to Lowe because the person who submitted it is affiliated with the Northwest Indiana Political Action Committee whose chairperson she has a restraining order against. That case is in front of Judge Alexa, she said.

Lowe said he was able to get Alexa’s reports to the requester.

Kozuszek said it is the election board which is in charge of candidate reports, not Voters Registration. The reports are however kept secure in the Voters Registration office.

The board, comprised of Chairman and Republican member David Bengs, Democratic member J.J. Stankiewicz and County Clerk Karen Martin, voted to keep its current protocol of having complaints or inquiries about candidate reports addressed to them and their attorney rather than employees of the Voters Registration office.

Lowe said he will evaluate the complaints on a case-by-case basis. Martin said if Voters Registration workers do receive requests or complaints, they need to report them immediately to the board.

Republican Voters Registration Director Sundae Schoon said it is rare for anyone other than candidates or the media to request the finance reports. Those who wish to view the reports in the Voters Registration office must first sign their name.

Sign complaints under advisement

In another matter, the board took up further discussion on a complaint they heard from Porter County Republican Party Executive Director Kenard Taylor in April, asserting a few Democrat candidates were in violation of state law by not having the words “elect” or “for” on their campaign signs, giving the false impression they are the incumbent elected official.

One of the candidates in question, David Reynolds, appeared with his attorney Mitch Peters before the board saying they believe Reynolds’ sign is in compliance with the law since it has “in fine print” at the bottom “Paid by the Committee to Re-Elect David M. Reynolds Sheriff of Porter County.” The sign otherwise has in large letters “Reynolds Sheriff” with a line in the middle separating the two words.

"I suggest the sign does not falsely represent anything,” Peters said, he asserted election year politics are to blame. “I would suggest that what is going on here is someone raising issues where there are none.”

Former office holders like Reynolds, who served as Porter County Sheriff for two previous terms before David Lain, often go by that title even after their time holding that position has expired, and that can be said of Reynolds, according to Peters.

Stankiewicz said he could not find anywhere in the law that required the words “for” or “elect” on signs and felt the board should not move forward on a decision since Taylor was not present Friday to answer questions the board may have.

Bengs, however, said he finds “some merit” in the complaint. “The idea is to make it as clear as possible to what you are seeking.”

Martin said she feels whether there was a violation depends on the intent of the candidate. She recalled a time when members of the Democratic party made complaints about the Republican signs.

“You can’t point the finger and not expect it to be pointed back at you,” Martin said.

Bengs said the meeting Friday was just for further discussion, not to make any formal decisions. That would require a hearing where witnesses would be called, he said.

Under Bengs suggestion, all members voted to place the matter under advisement.

Other Democrat signs Taylor had questioned included Kozuszek’s who is running for County Clerk, Scott Williams who is running for County Recorder, and Alta Neri who is running for Portage Township Assessor.

State law says that in order to declare a candidate in violation, it will need a unanimous vote from the election board. The board may assess a civil penalty fee of up to $500, according to the law.

Kozuszek accuses Martin of politics after locks changed at voters office

Chesterton Tribune

March 13, 2014

http://chestertontribune.com/Porter%20County/kozuszek_accuses_martin_of_polit.htm

Porter County Clerk Karen Martin confirmed to the Chesterton Tribune that she had the locks changed on the entry doors of the Voters Registration office on Monday morning “for the security of the office,” due to a suspected case of theft there.

The Democrat Director in Voters Registration, Kathy Kozuszek, maintains for her part that the action is purely a political stunt on Martin’s part.

Kozuszek and Martin are set to square off in the County Clerk race in the November general election.

Kozuszek said that, after several personal items on her desk went missing, she set up a web camera to monitor her office space. The camera, she said, is turned on nights and weekends when the office is closed and is separate from the one in the side room of the office which provides surveillance when the ballots are counted.

The Republican Martin--after hearing about the potential thefts from County Commissioner President John Evans, R-North, and County Attorney Betty Knight--said that she asked Kozuszek in a memo to report to her and the other two members of the Election Board by the end of the day last Thursday on what items were taken.

When Kozuszek did not respond by the deadline, Martin said that she felt the need to step in because county clerks, she said, are responsible for elections.

“There were a couple of red flags I thought needed to be taken care of,” Martin said. “I’m hoping this resolves the issues.”

Only the entry door locks were changed, Martin said. Three keys will go to Republican workers and three keys to Democrat workers. Martin has been letting workers into the office in the morning. Deadbolts were installed Wednesday on the door and one must be opened with a Republican key and the other by a Democrat key.

The only others who have keys to get into the office are the Commissioners and the maintenance staff.

Martin said that she also has a key to the room where the election equipment is stored because that is property of the County Clerk.

Kozuszek, who was not in the office at the time the locks were changed, said that Martin’s actions were “one hundred percent political,” questioning why she is taking such charge this year when she has been “disengaged” in past elections. Kozuszek said that Martin has never taught a poll worker class, even though it’s her responsibility as Clerk, and has been absent on more than one occasion when the Election Board has certified a vote.

Kozuszek also asked what Martin would need to secure because the ballots for the primary election have not yet been delivered.

One question the two disagree on is whether Voters Registration is an office of the County Clerk.

“My office is not (Martin’s) office,” Kozuszek said. “It’s the Voters Registration Office. She added that the directors are appointed by the party chairpersons, not the Clerk.

On the contrary, Martin said, under state law the circuit court clerk is the officer for a county’s voter registration, and that all the forms associated with the election indicate they are to be filed with the clerk of the circuit court.

As for the camera, Kozuszek claims that, under the Porter County Employee Handbook, employees may do what they can to protect their property. She said she did not respond to Martin’s letter because she only needs to report to her party chair. “I followed what was the letter of the law and in the County handbook,” Kozuszek said.

County Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, said that Martin should not have changed the locks because she did not consult the Commissioners ahead of time. She said that goes for any department head or employee who wants to make a physical change in the County Administration Center. “I don’t think it’s okay to change locks without first notifying the Commissioners,” Blaney said. “It’s the public’s building but it’s our responsibility.”

Martin said she got permission from the Commissioners to change locks at a previous time when she had a theft in the Clerk’s office and was told it was the procedure to follow so she did the same for the Voters Registration office.

Martin said her actions were not political because for the primary elections both she and Kozuszek are running unopposed. She said she wants to clear up problems now so they do not become issues in November’s race.

Evans said that he felt the new locks are appropriate because they require a Democrat and Republican to open them.

Evans said he wants to prevent the appearance of electioneering--when a candidate or supporter tries to influence a voter--while early voting is going on in the Voters Registration Office. Indiana law bans electioneering within 50 feet of a voting area, he said.

The Election Board reviewed the concern last week and will meet on Friday to continue the discussion on where it will place early voting locations.

Exworkers formally sue Porter County Clerk Karen Martin for discrimination

Chesterton Tribune

April 09, 2012

http://chestertontribune.com/PorterCounty/exworkers_formally_sue_porter_co.htm

Three former employees of the Porter County Clerk’s office have officially filed a lawsuit against County Clerk Karen Martin and the Porter County Commissioners claiming they lost their jobs without cause due to age discrimination and political retaliation.

On April 4, Merrillville attorney Richard A. Miller filed lawsuits in the U.S. District Court Hammond Division on behalf of Kathleen Tabor, 58, of Valparaiso, who left the Clerk’s office on July 12 after 11 years of employment; Margaret Hammond, 54, of Portage, who left the office on June 24 after two years of employment; and Diana Kesel, 60, of Hebron, who left on July 29 after 20 years of employment.

In the suits, the women assert that Martin continually harassed them by “making false accusations” and “slanderous comments” about them to other employees in the office and encouraged other office employees to make false accusations about the women’s work performance.

The suits go on to allege that Martin denied the women any promotion and made “multiple unsubstantiated write-ups and reprimands.”

Miller states in the lawsuits that Martin’s discriminatory actions are in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Hammond’s case alleges she was further discriminated against claiming Martin would not accommodate her medical condition.

County Commissioners John Evans, Nancy Adams, and Carole Knoblock are named as defendants due to the women’s contentions that “Martin’s actions and conduct were known or should have been known” to the commissioners and accused them of failing to make “immediate and appropriate response to or correct (Martin’s) conduct.”

In addition to losing their employment, the women said in the suit they had suffered “loss of reputation in the community, as well as mental and emotional pain and stress.”

The plaintiffs’ demand in the suits “reasonable and just compensation” from Martin and the county for the costs of the suit, attorney fees and any relief the federal court may grant.

All three women originally filed a discrimination complaint with the accusations last September.

Former workers file discrimination complaint against County Clerk Martin

Chesterton Tribune

September 27, 2011

http://chestertontribune.com/PorterCounty/927113%20former_workers_file_discriminati.htm

Three former employees in Porter County Clerk Karen Martin’s office have filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

On Sept. 21 attorney Mitch Peters filed the complaint on behalf of Margaret Hammond, 54, of Portage, who left the Clerk’s Office after 2 years of employment there; Kathleen Tabor, 58, of Valparaiso, who left on July 12, after 11 years of employment; and Diana Kesel, 60, of Hebron, who left after 20 years of employment.

In all three cases, the complaint alleges, County Clerk Martin either terminated Peters’ clients or forced them to leave “based upon ongoing harassment and/or false accusations concerning the claimant’s job performance”; and that each was terminated from employment “based upon her age and/or wrongfully terminated and/or constructively terminated based upon political considerations, all of which is prohibited by federal law.”

Generally speaking, under a “constructive termination” an employee quits the job because working conditions have been made intolerable.

In addition, Hammond’s complaint alleges that she “was further discriminated against because of her medical condition.”

Such conduct, according to the complaint, “constitutes intentional and/or negligent infliction of emotional distress,” “interference with contract,” and a violation of the threes’ Constitutional rights.

“(A)t all times relevant herein, Karen M. Martin, as the Porter County Clerk, was acting with the tacit approval of Porter County, Ind., and its governing body of Commissioners,” the complaint concludes.

The EEOC has specific jurisdiction over age- and disability-based job discrimination, though not over political firings.

Peters told the Chesterton Tribune today that the Sept. 21 complaint is analogous to a tort claim and is the “pre-requisite” for actually filing a federal lawsuit.