The decision to move Monroe County from individually assigned polling places to multiple vote centers open to any registered voter may fall into the hands of the state.
The proposal to move to a vote center model failed in May, when county election board member Danny Shields, a Republican, voted against it. A unanimous vote was needed to adopt vote centers.
Shields said the vote center study committee was biased in favor of vote centers and did not provide enough data to prove moving the county to that model would benefit voters.
Democrat David Henry, a county councilmember, is the former president of the county election board. He initiated the vote center study process two years ago.
He said it's unlikely the county will greenlight another vote center study committee again because that would require unanimous support from the election board.
Henry said previous attempts at a vote center study committee did lean heavily to one side, which he speculates caused feelings of mistrust among some county Republicans. He maintains the most recent committee was balanced and fair in its approach.
“It had equal representation of Republicans and Democrats,” he said. “It had equal representation of Republican and Democratic college students. It had independent voices on it.”
Sixty-five of Indiana’s 92 counties use the vote center model.
House Bill 1633, signed into law by Gov. Mike Braun, requires Secretary of State Diego Morales to begin holding public meetings and produce a report on how to transition the rest of the state to the vote center model.
When asked about any improvements to the committee’s proposal that could have been made, Henry said he doesn’t see how there could have been a more comprehensive, balanced analysis.
He hopes the committee’s study can be presented to the state.
“I'm hopeful that the good work we've done here, probably the most comprehensive vote center report ever written, you know, over 60 pages of good information, maybe can inform that process,” he said.
