EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Nobody is making any voter wear a mask or use hand sanitizer for Indiana's June 2 primary election or the week of early voting that precedes it.
"They can come in with a 105-degree fever and cough, and we can’t turn them away," said Vanderburgh County Clerk Carla Hayden. "We can't do anything."
That's one way of putting it. Another way is the way the Indiana Election Division did in a May 15 email to elections officials in the 92 counties.
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"State law sets forth the requirements for an individual to be considered a qualified voter of the precinct to vote in an election," the message states. "These reasons do not include wearing a mask or cloth face covering, respecting social distancing guidelines, using gloves or other hand coverings, washing hands or using hand sanitizer at any point in the voting process, or having a temperature in the 'normal' range."
Holding an election in the middle of a pandemic has meant a whole new universe of rules, allowances and limitations, a lot more work by everyone involved and strong encouragements by authorities.
Voters are "strongly encouraged" to use CDC-endorsed safety practices, the Election Division stated, but making that a pre-condition for casting a ballot "would infringe on the federal and state constitutional rights afforded to a voter."
Poll workers and other paid election workers? They're a different story.
Temporary though it may be, the small army of people needed to stage Vanderburgh County's election is not regulated by the state. That is left to the county — and it says both major parties' workers have to wear masks, as do all others under the county's employ.
But when? Every second of primary election day? The polls will be open from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m.
"If, say, you’re working as a clerk, and you don’t have any voters in front of you, you’re not interacting with anyone and you’re six feet away from your nearest other poll worker, then you don’t have to have your mask on," Hayden said. "But they have to wear it if they’re within six feet of a voter or a fellow poll worker."
Questions about masks have stirred considerable angst among some in the combined force of nearly 250 election workers and other party volunteers whose work is supplemented by election support staff.
And even a mini-rebellion of sorts.
"They wanted to know if (masks were) required at this point, and there were a couple that said, ‘If that is the case, I’ll forego working at the polls this election,'" said Kevin Harrison, poll worker coordinator for the Vanderburgh County Republican Party.
Hayden said she will clarify the issue in the next poll worker training session at 9 a.m. Tuesday in Old National Events Plaza.
'You have to open your polls'
Fear of acquiring coronavirus and local political considerations have combined to alter the face of Vanderburgh County's election force.
Both parties and Hayden have acknowledged that the pool of people who are reliably available to work as poll workers is predominantly older. But that means they are more vulnerable than most too. It's a bad combination.
"I had probably 35 people cancel out due to concerns about (coronavirus)," the GOP's Harrison said. "These would be folks that are technically in the 70-plus range for the most part."
Local Democrats say their ranks also have been ravaged by the sheer mass of people seeking to become delegates to the Indiana Democratic Party's June 13 Virtual State Convention.
"We’re losing people because people are afraid of coming into contact with other people during the elections process — but we’re losing even more people because you can’t work the polls if you are either on the ballot or closely related to somebody who’s on the ballot, and we have 78 people seeking elected delegate positions to the state convention," said Democratic Chair Edie Hardcastle.
The ballot issue alone has cost the Democrats 15 veteran poll workers, Hardcastle said. The party is down another 11 workers because of coronavirus fears.
Harrison estimates Republicans lost another 15 poll veteran election workers because it is electing precinct committee members and state convention delegates on June 2.
Required by law to fill 115 poll worker positions, Democrats estimate they have lost nearly a quarter of their total force of veteran workers. Harrison pegged the GOP's losses at almost half the 122 positions the party must fill.
Both parties have scrambled to fill in the gaps, leaving their ranks painfully thin. There's not much room for the normal losses — people who flake out at the last minute, forcing party organizers to call up their subs.
"Historically, we operate with at least a dozen subs," Hardcastle said. "We generally go through all our subs on election day. We don't have any cushion at the moment for last-minute cancelations."
County Clerk Hayden said the parties have helped fill in their ranks with younger poll workers who aren't typically available to work springtime intraparty elections. But they're available this time because the election was postponed a month. College students aren't at college right now.
And there's this: Bethel United Church of Christ, usually a polling place, won't be available this time. Hayden will deploy that contingent of workers in the other 21 vote centers.
But cutting it this close creates a hazard. What happens if too many more poll workers are lost on or before primary election day?
"We do the best we can," Hayden said. "That’s basically what the law says. You have to open your polls.”
Coronavirus caveats
They're called "travel boards" — bipartisan absentee ballot collection committees. The board workers deliver ballots to voters with physical disabilities or who live in nursing homes. They later collect the completed ballots. The work is required by law in any election.
Not this year. No travel board could get into a nursing home right now, for obvious reasons.
"Vote by mail has been the preferred option," Hayden said. "But if (the voters) just can’t, like they can't see or can't mark own ballot, then (nursing home employees) help them complete their ballots.
"For the most part, they've been able to do it by mail."
It's far from the only change coronavirus has wrought. Take, for example, "the chute," which the state defines as an area extending 50 feet outward from the entrance of a room where voting is taking place.
State law prohibits campaigning in the chute and includes myriad restrictions on who may enter polling places. Voters are asked not to leave political literature in voting booths, smoke in polling places or wear articles of clothing advocating election of any candidate.
But this year, the prohibitions against electioneering come with a coronavirus caveat for the creative partisan who may think he has found a loophole.
"There’s no electioneering, and that extends to face masks," Hayden said. "You can't have a political message on your mask."
Those people who always greet you outside the polling place, passing out literature and glad-handing voters? That's probably going to be curtailed, if for no other reason than simple common sense. Voters won't want to get close.
"They may say, 'Back off,'" Hayden said. " I’m not sure that handing somebody something, that kind of contact, is what we should be doing right now, but there’s nothing I can do about it."
Once voters navigate the campaign workers who may still be on hand wearing t-shirts and greeting them from a distance, they will find bottles of hand sanitizer and cleaning products inside the polling place itself. Lots of them.
Hayden said the Indiana Secretary of State's Office procured for Vanderburgh and every other county large caches of masks, gloves, hand sanitizer and cleaning products for polling places. Poll workers will be expected — and voters encouraged — to use them.
There's just one problem for Hayden and her staff: The hand sanitizer came in gallon bottles that they have spent hours pouring into hundreds of smaller bottles also provided by the state. The smaller bottles will be more accessible on election day, but the work has been laborious.
"That’s what (chief deputy clerk) Theresa Bassemier and I were doing until 8 o’clock last night, and then I was doing it earlier this morning," Hayden said Friday with a chuckle — well, sort of a chuckle.
The work continued on Friday night as well. The face shields the state sent came unassembled, Hayden said. There are so very many things to do.
So Hayden and her staff — they've had to work a lot harder this year?
"I think that's an accurate statement," she said.
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