Election Board Meeting to Finalize Voting – November 15, 2024
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Election Board Meeting to Finalize Voting – November 15, 2024
The Marion County Election Board met on November 15, 2024, at 2:06 PM to finalize voting from the previous week. Chair proxy Paul Babcock called the meeting to order with Vice Chair General Keene and Secretary Kate Squinny Bell present. Staff presented recommendations on absentee ballot issues and provisional ballots, and the board voted unanimously on all agenda items.
Public Comments & Testimony
- There were no public comments submitted online. One attendee approached staff during a pause to inquire about their ballot; the issue was addressed confidentially.
Discussion Items
- Absentee Ballot Review: Director Becker presented several categories:
- 300 blank ExpressVote ballot cards (voters exited without completing voting). Staff recommended counting these as the voters had checked in.
- 5 in-person early voting ballots with missing labels later reprinted.
- 9 military/overseas ballots received after Election Day but before the noon November 15 deadline.
- 1 traveling board application processed incorrectly as a mail ballot; the voter returned the ballot with a disability marking. Staff recommended accepting all these.
- Provisional Ballots: Over 2,000 provisional ballots were reviewed with bipartisan staff recommendations. The board considered them in groups:
- Ballots 1–151: Absentee mail signature issues where curing documents were returned (missing signature or mismatched). Counted.
- Ballots 152–167: Missing signatures with no curing document returned. Not counted.
- Ballots 168–206: Mismatched signatures, no curing document, but a third bipartisan review deemed 39 of 47 should count. Counted; ballots 207–214 remained mismatched and were not counted.
- Ballots 215–242: Challenge based on ID requirements. Board authorized counting if proper ID or affidavit is provided by the noon November 15 deadline.
- Ballots 243–276: Voters not on poll book but later found eligible for fail-safe voting. Counted.
- Ballots 277–300: Voters on poll book but not initially entitled to fail-safe; staff found eligibility. Counted.
- Ballots 301–302: Inactive voters flagged to affirm residency; poll workers mistakenly used provisional process. Counted.
- Ballots 303–480: Various categories including address changes, certificates of error, and poll worker errors. Counted.
- Ballots 481–2056: Staff recommended not counting, but the board reserved the right to revisit if voters provide additional information before the deadline.
- Write-In Canvas: Staff reported that one vote center required pulling ballots to examine write-in images; the canvas will continue.
Key Outcomes
- All votes on staff recommendations passed unanimously.
- The board approved counting 300 blank ExpressVote cards, 5 reprinted ballots, 9 military/overseas ballots, and one misclassified mail ballot.
- 151 signature-cured absentee ballots were counted; 16 were not counted (no curing document).
- 39 mismatched-signature ballots without curing documents were counted after a third review; 8 were not.
- ID-challenged ballots (215–242) may be counted if cured by noon November 15.
- Provisional ballots 243–480 were counted; ballots 481–2056 were not counted pending possible voter contact.
- The provisional ballot log included three empty envelopes and one blank ballot; the total tabulated will not exactly match the vote counts.
- The meeting was recessed until Monday, November 18, 2024, at 11:30 AM to allow for any additional adjudications and completion of the write-in canvas.
Meeting Transcript
Everyone. My name's Paul Babcock. I'm the proxy for the chair of the election board. It is 2 06 in the afternoon on November 14th, 2024. We are here to finalize the voting from last week. So I want to thank everyone for coming. I want to thank staff for all the hard work for doing it and thank everyone for voting. With that, I'll call the meeting to order. Introductions. Am I right? Vice Chair General Keene. And to my left. Secretary Kate Squinny Bell. Thank you very much. And we will begin with the absentee ballot review. Council or actors. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So before the board today, this absentee ballot review, it really consists of materials from the central count of the absentee ballots that happened election day and Wednesday and Thursday afterward. As part of the canvassing process where we're going through all the ballots that have been tabulated, have been rejected. We discovered a few things that we wanted to bring to the board's attention and ask the board to address. Pardon me when I get my notes out. So the first thing is we had 300 blank express vote ballot cards, which essentially is a behavior where the voter did not complete the voting on the express vote card and exited this exited the screen before they were finished voting. So what prints out is essentially a blank card. So they're now cards that have no votes on them that can be tabulated. And the thought was these are folks that checked into the poll book and their ballots should count regardless of whether or not they intentionally voted for anybody or not. So we have 300 of those. And again, the board, if they'd like to take these, you know, piecemeal one at a time, we can deal with those one at a time. There's a few other things. So we've got we had five in-person ballots where there were missing labels on the envelopes, and staff should have been able to go in and reprint those labels. So we did that after the election. They were misfiled on election day as rejected ballots, but they should have been remade ballots. We would like to remake those. By law, they have until noon tomorrow, October 15th, to have their mail ballot received by us. And we received nine of those since election day. And then finally, uh, to round out sort of the the update from Central Count, there was one absentee mail ballot that was processed incorrectly in SVRS, which is a statewide voter registration system. It was a traveling board application that was processed as a traveling board application, but somehow generated a mail ballot. And that mail ballot was sent to the voter. The voter voted that mail ballot, returned it to us, and when staff received that ballot, they had a hard time matching it up with the mail application until we discovered it actually was a traveling board application. So one of these unique ballots before you will be a mail ballot with a traveling board application that does have a signature. You'll see the voter has marked that they are a voter with disabilities. So staff would like again the board to review that and vote to count that of uh vote to allow us to count those. Um and I don't know, council may need to weigh in on how we deal with these. I've got them kind of compartmentalized if we want to do that, and I'm happy to answer any questions at the board or council might have. Questions for staff from the board. Uh yes, there were six remakes, five absentee mail, nine military mail, the one travel board processed as a mail ballot. And what was the I missed a category? Um they were in-person early voting ballots where the label did not print out, um, but the voter um signed the poll book, signed the envelope, both bipartisan members signed the envelope. So uh staff should have been able to prior to election day go in and and reprint those labels and and have the boards on election day review those and count those ballots. Um because we we believe that you know we can reprint the label, all that was missing was the information that the voter uh the voters information.
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