Indiana’s primary election is coming up on June 2, and the state continues working to safely hold an election during a global pandemic. During state officials’ COVID-19 press conference Friday, Secretary of State Connie Lawson said her office has used federal CARES Act money to get personal protective equipment for poll workers and election staff in all 92 counties.
“Five thousand gallons of hand sanitizer in 10,000 refillable dispenser bottles, over 4,000 gallons of disinfectant cleaner for voting machine and electronic poll book tablets with 10,000 refillable spray bottles, 85,000 12-by-12 microfiber cloths for disinfecting voting machines and electronic poll book touch screens, over 300,000 pairs of disposable gloves, 200,000 ear loop face masks, 25,000 face shields, and over 3,500 acrylic sneeze guards,” Lawson said.
But that’s just enough for the workers. Lawson said voters will have to bring their own. “So for those of you planning to vote early in-person or in-person on Primary Election Day, please just follow the directions that you’ve heard all along,” she said. “Wear a mask. If you’ve got gloves that are clean, you can wear those to the polling place, as well. We want to protect all of you.”
But she said the smartest way to vote is by mail. The mail-in option is open to all Indiana voters for the primary. The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is next Thursday.
Lawson said almost 331,000 Hoosiers have already decided to vote by mail, more than six times the number from the 2016 primary. She said with all of those mail-in ballots, it’s going to take a while to count them. “Absolutely, we are not expecting to have results at seven or eight o’clock on election night,” Lawson said. “It’s going to be nearly impossible. The counties are recruiting as many central count teams as they can, and again, that’s a crucial part of the election process. So if you don’t have the entire day to work on Election Day, you might think about working the entire night processing absentee ballots, if not longer. I think it’s going to take two or three days, honestly, before we get the final results.”
But she expects smaller counties with fewer voters to be done sooner.
