A lack of trust in the electoral process is drawing frustration from local election officials. Pulaski County Clerk JoLynn Behny told the rest of the county election board last week that the outside attitude about politics isn’t good.
“It’s frustrating,” she said. “I hear people say, ‘Well, I’m never voting again because, obviously, my vote doesn’t count.’ Well, I take that personally. I’m an election administrator. I take that personally. We bent over backwards to make sure everything was done.”
“We even went to homes that had COVID,” added Election Board Chair Patty Sullivan.
Board Member Jessye Gilley felt that those who don’t trust election boards should learn more about what they actually do. “I don’t think a lot of people realize that we didn’t run for these positions,” Gilley said. “We were asked to do this. We’re happy to do it. We really have no stake in rigging any of this nonsense. Not only that, but we don’t even have access to a lot of it, and we’re very closely monitored.”
Making the current situation even stranger, Behny said clerk’s offices around the state are being inundated with similar public records requests that often sound more like phishing scams. “They use generic names, and they’re all different, like Mike Daniels or Jim Jameson, just generic names,” Behny explained. “And, ‘I’m a Biden or Trump supporter. I’m contacting your office to figure out how I can become a poll worker because I want to make sure that the other party does not get favorable blah, blah, blah, and how do we allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work at the polls?”
Behny said the requests are so widespread that both the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office and the county’s voting equipment vendor have issued guidance. While all requests have to be acknowledged in seven days, the Indiana Access to Public Records Act does not require clerk’s offices to put together documents that don’t already exist or give out information that jeopardizes a voting system, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
Behny said her office also recently got an emailed request for an absentee ballot for the 2020 election.
