GREENFIELD — At the Hancock County Public Library on Election Day, recently retired Judge Terry Snow was serving as a poll worker for the first time in 20 years.
“We didn’t have any electronics the last time I did it,” Snow said. “You had paper ballots people were signing and putting them, literally, in a ballot box. At the end of the day, we had to count each one of one them (by hand). We don’t do that anymore.”
Another difference was evident Tuesday: Lines to vote were much shorter on Election Day at the county’s 10 vote centers, even though turnout topped 70%. The vast majority of voters cast their ballots before Nov. 3.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
Early voting appears to have been a resounding success.
“Our turnout for early voting was almost as much as the total turnout in the last election,” Hancock County Clerk Lisa Lofgreen said.
Hancock County residents cast 35,269 votes before Election Day. In the 2016 local general election, 36,903 people voted in total.
The total number of votes in the county Tuesday came to 42,977. That’s 73.5% of registered voters, and it’s the highest turnout here in decades.
The small trickle of voters leaving polling places at closing time on Tuesday was a very different scene than the one on the night of the primary in June: Despite a much smaller number of voters and the option of voting by mail for everyone in Indiana, polling places had such long lines that they remained open at 8 p.m., two hours after they were set to close.
Although the election this week set a record, the trend toward early voting was in progress before the COVID-19 pandemic provided an additional motive. In the 2016 general election, approximately 24,000 people voted early. That was triple the number who voted early in 2012 or 2008.
Now that voters have seen how large-scale early voting functioned this year, Lofgreen said, she would not be surprised to see the trend continue in future elections, even after the pandemic is no longer a factor. Hancock County will next vote again in 2022, when a number of prominent local offices, including prosecutor and sheriff, will be on the ballot.
More people voted early in person this year than did so via the mail. Indiana was one of only a few states that did not allow no-excuse absentee voting; those asking for a mail ballot had to provide a specific reason they could not vote in person, and the COVID-19 pandemic was not one of them. Some Republican officials also said mail-in voting could lead to increased voter fraud, although there is no evidence of that. Across the country, more Democrats than Republicans voted by mail.
During a press conference the day after the election, Gov. Eric Holcomb said the turnout and smooth process of Indiana’s election had proved that it was safe to vote in person. In Hancock County, each polling place employed people to work as “sanitizers” to cleanse pens, polling pens and surfaces in voting booths in between each use. In line, there was not always a strict 6 feet of distance between each voter, but almost all wore masks, based on frequent observations by staffers for the Daily Reporter.
Some voters in line on Election Day said it was simply the most convenient option for their work schedule, but others said voting in person on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November is an important part of the process for them.
“I will always vote on Election Day, unless I’m in the hospital. I will always vote on Election Day. I don’t follow early, I don’t mail in my ballot, I don’t believe in that,” said Robert Kelsey, who voted at the Hancock County Public Library on Tuesday.
Still, voters who waited until Nov. 3 to cast their ballots were in a distinct minority. Lofgreen said the work of the county election board and local media to get the word out about early and mail-in voting helped contribute to the high early turnout.
Another factor, she said, was the variety of options county residents had for casting an early vote. Four early voting places were available, and some locations remained open later in the evenings, on weekends, and on the Monday before Election Day.
“I think offering voters those opportunities helped,” Lofgreen said.
On Election Day, 23 bipartisan “slice teams,” consisting of one Republican and one Democrat, along with the county’s deputy clerks, began counting early ballots shortly after polls opened in the morning. Ballots were removed from their envelopes and then tabulated by machine.
The slice teams, which counted the in-person early votes, completed their work around 1 p.m. Counting the mail-in ballots, which had to be unfolded first, took longer. However, the last votes were counted before 8 p.m., and final results were quickly available.
“I was shocked that we were able to complete that in the amount of time that we did,” Lofgreen said. “I think that says a lot for the board (of elections).”
Hancock County also did not have any problems working with the U.S. Postal Service, Lofgreen said; mail-in ballots were delivered in a timely manner every day.
Leaders of both major political parties in Hancock County said they were impressed with the vote-counting process, despite the high number of early votes that needed to be processed.
“I think it all went really smoothly for Hancock County,” local Republican Party chair Janice Silvey said.
“I was very impressed,” local Democratic Party chair Randy Johnson said. “Things went better than I expected, honestly.”
Johnson said he would not be surprised if the trend of early voting continues past the COVID-19 pandemic, now that more voters have had a chance to try it.
Lofgreen thanked the county’s election inspectors, election judges, sanitizers and other poll workers for the successful election, as well as voters themselves.
“Everyone has been courteous to other voters. We have a really great community here in Hancock County,” she said.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Inside” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
How you voted: A complete list of unofficial results in all races in Hancock County. Page A6
[sc:pullout-text-end]