GREENFIELD — The Hancock County Board of Elections held an emergency meeting Monday, Nov. 16, after the discovery of 255 ballots that were not counted on Election Day.
The ballots, which appear to have been unintentionally left aside by a “slicer” opening early-vote ballots on Election Day, were tabulated on Monday. The stack was found on top of a filing cabinet in the basement of the Hancock County Annex and consisted of some of the ballots cast during in-person early voting at the Hancock County Public Library in Greenfield on Oct. 22.
The total number of ballots was too small to alter the outcome of any election.
The Hancock County Election Office was contacted about the uncounted ballots by Hancock County Sheriff’s Deputy Gary Harris. The ballots were pointed out to Harris by a county employee while he was visiting the annex on unrelated business.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
Election office employee Becky Robinson verified that they were indeed county ballots and that the number found matched the number of ballots on the printed authentication sheet from the vote center, which tracks how many votes were cast during a given day. County Clerk Lisa Lofgreen then sealed the ballots inside a suitcase at the annex, which was placed inside the locked “election cage” in the basement.
Lofgreen quickly called an emergency meeting of the election board, which met Monday afternoon on short notice to examine and count the ballots. When the ballots were removed from the suitcase, election board member Bob Bogigian said, they were in the same position in which they had been stacked when being counted by “slice teams” on Election Day, with some being placed sideways to make them easier to separate. Board members concluded the ballots had likely been accidentally set aside and forgotten about by a slicer at a nearby table.
The board agreed that the ballots were valid and should be counted.
“It seems to me like that is a legitimate stack, that was not counted,” Bogigian said; if they had been counted, they would have been placed in a sealed case within the election cage with the other ballots, he pointed out.
The stack was quickly tabulated. In response to the error, the election board will need to re-submit its results to the Indiana secretary of state’s office so that the state totals can be updated.
Slice teams, which opened envelopes containing in-person early votes on Election Day, consisted of one Republican and one Democrat who were recruited by the local parties to work for a stipend. Some had previous experience with the task, but thanks to the high number of early votes this year — more than 35,000 people voted early — many were doing the job for the first time. More than 20 of the two-person teams processed ballots that day.
Lofgreen said it is likely the slicer counting these ballots placed them to the side while doing some other task and that they were missed while the election staff was clearing the room after the count because they were placed above eye level.
There is no evidence that the ballots were intentionally not counted or tampered with, the board concluded. As a precaution, 24/7 security footage from the basement of the annex will be pulled and surveyed for any potential signs of tampering.
Lofgreen said she was sorry the error had occurred, but was relieved that the board was able to handle it quickly once members were alerted to it.
“We want to make sure that every vote is counted,” Lofgreen said.