Expanded Safeguards For Indiana Elections May Require New Funding Sources

By Erica Irish
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS — A series of bills to expand protections for Indiana’s voting sites garnered support from multiple parties at a Senate Elections Committee hearing Monday morning, but concerns remain as to how counties will finance security improvements.

Jay Phelps, Bartholomew County clerk, and Nicole Browne, Monroe County clerk, testified at the hearing on behalf of the Indiana Clerks Association. While each largely expressed support for the presented bills, the duo said the many rules introduced by Senate Bill 570, in particular, are not possible without additional funding.

SB 570, authored by Senate Elections Committee Chair Greg Walker, R-Columbus, expands the use of technology in ensuring fair elections. A central provision would require county election boards to use Ball State University’s voting system technical oversight program (VSTOP) to conduct risk-limiting audits on existing voting equipment after Dec. 31, 2021.

Unlike traditional post-election audits, risk-limiting audits are designed to provide strong statistical evidence as to why an election outcome is correct or incorrect. Current law requires Indiana to conduct standard audits if the number of votes cast on an electronic voting system substantially differ from the number of voters in the poll book, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

A separate provision in SB 570 requires counties starting in 2022 to remove equipment that does not have a verifiable paper audit trail from polling sites. This would involve implementing equipment that simultaneously records votes on a paper form as voters place their votes on an electronic device.

In his testimony, Phelps said a study of 30 counties showed an estimated $4.4 million would be needed to create paper trails on existing equipment. Naturally, how much counties contribute to this equation varies depending on their respective size. Phelps said small counties would need to locate around $8,000; medium-sized counties would require $200,000; and the largest counties, like Allen County, would need more than $1 million.

All of that immediately follows thousands of dollars in expenses that counties faced in 2017 and 2018 after Indiana law again changed to implement new rules for election security.

“This is a big amount to have to process in a short amount of time,” Phelps said. “We think we can move this back five years, to roughly 2024, to give us more time to come up with revenue.”

Brad King, the Republican co-chair of the Indiana Election Division stood alongside Phelps and Brown when questioned by the committee. While Sen. Erin Houchin, R-Salem, asked if new funds collected from SB 570 provisions to increase certain application fees could help counties afford tightened security, King said the proposed revenue stream still wouldn’t offer enough.

“Although certainly, the fees we’ve discussed with reference to voting systems could help the process, they are pennies on the dollar compared to what is going to be needed to implement this in a comprehensive, practical way,” King said. “We will have to find other sources.”

Erica Irish is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.