Democratic County Chair satisfied with local voting procedures

On Nov. 5, Hamilton County Democratic Party Chair Jocelyn Vare submitted a letter to the County Election Board requesting a full inquiry into the Election Day voting machine glitch and the voter impact.

This week, Vare attended an Election Board meeting and told The Reporter she was satisfied with the answers she received.

A representative from MicroVote, the county’s vendor, was at the Election Board meeting. According to Vare, he provided the following information:

• The glitch was caused by a human error at MicroVote and it impacted all voting locations in the county.
• The error really couldn’t have been discovered before polls opened.
• Once polls opened and the problem was discovered, the Elections Office notified every polling location and MicroVote fixed the error.
• Poll workers had to “reboot” in order to get the correction activated before voting could begin.
• The time needed to reboot successfully was dependent on the speed of the location’s WiFi.

Kathy Williams, Hamilton County Clerk and Election Board member, said that she reviewed each polling location’s timestamp of when their first voter successfully cast their ballot on Election Day. Some locations’ poll workers knew how to bypass the error and were successfully processing voters’ ballots a few minutes after 6 a.m. Others took between five and 10 minutes to complete the reboot.

One location required the longest time to reboot. That one location’s first voter was timestamped at 6:20 a.m. Therefore, the Election Board said it was confident in saying that all county polling locations were up and running by 6:20 a.m. on Election Day.

Vare asked if any voter was turned away by a poll worker during the glitch, and Richardson said no voter was told they could not vote on Election Day or that they had to leave.

It is possible some voters left on their own accord. Some voters do leave if the line is longer than they expected or don’t have time to wait.

Vare told The Reporter she asked for MicroVote to document the information that they had said in this meeting so there was a paper trail about this glitch. They said they would do so.

The Indiana State Democratic Party issued a press release at approximately 5 p.m. on Election Day about the glitch. Vare told The Reporter she was unaware of that press release until after it was distributed and she did not choose to send out a press release about the glitch on behalf of the county party.

You can review the letter that Vare submitted to the Hamilton County election board as the attachment from the Nov. 5, 2024, meeting minutes.

In addition, Vare told The Reporter this news story accurately reflects her perspective.