Voting equipment sits turned on during the public test of election equipment Wednesday at the Johnson County Courthouse in Franklin.
Noah Crenshaw | Daily Journal
Voting machines will be delivered by a Johnson County moving company for May’s primary elections.
The three-member Johnson County Election Board unanimously voted 3-0 Wednesday to approve an approximately $8,400 contract to have Greenwood Moving and Storage, which has locations in Franklin and Greenwood, deliver voting equipment to vote centers on Primary Election Day, May 7, and pick them up. Maintenance workers employed by Johnson County will continue to deliver the machines needed for early voting sites, as they have in years past, officials previously said.
Officials need to hire an outside company due to the number of machines needed this election, as election officials are planning to use nearly all of the machines the county owns. Typically, county maintenance workers are tasked with delivery, but they do not have the ability to do so this election, County Clerk Trena McLaughlin said last month.
This is also a result of the county’s switch to larger voting machine cases, she said. The county switched to larger cases for last November’s election in a bid to make it easier for election workers to set them up.
The contract had initially been brought before the election board by McLaughlin in February, after it received approval from the board of commissioners, pending legal approval. A decision was not made by the election board at that time, however, because they had concerns about who would sign off on state forms for the delivery of the machines.
Typically, a bipartisan team of Democratic and Republican election board members follow the delivery truck and sign off on the delivery after verifying everything is in working order. They also get signatures from the facility housing the machines, which are kept in a locked room and monitored with cameras by officials.
Johnson County maintenance workers have agreed to be present when the voting machines are loaded onto delivery trucks by the movers. However, one outstanding question is whether the bipartisan team made of the Democratic and Republican election board members will follow the delivery trucks. Usually, there’s only one truck, but due to the number of machines and vote center locations, there will be three, McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin’s preferred solution was to get two additional bipartisan teams to follow the other trucks. However, the bipartisan teams may not be necessary because it’s a commercial entity delivering the machines.
The county election board, a bipartisan team of at least two individuals or a commercial delivery entity contracted by the election board can deliver the machines, according to Indiana law.
Ultimately, the election board opted to use the bipartisan teams, McLaughlin confirmed Wednesday. Three teams will follow each truck and sign off on the paperwork, including a team made up of the Democratic and Republican election board members.
On the forms used to verify delivery, officials have to certify that the machines remained in the control of those delivering them to the vote centers, that no one unauthorized had access to any voting system in their custody and that an individual signed off it, McLaughlin said, citing a copy of the form they used last election. There are lines for the bipartisan team or the election board to sign off, along with the vote center saying they received the delivery, McLaughlin previously said.
The bipartisan teams would have a copy of the same form the election board uses to verify machine delivery. They’d follow the trucks to each stop and have the delivery teams and the facilities sign off, she said.
