EVANSVILLE — Nearly 550 mail-in absentee ballots in Vanderburgh County were never returned, leading elections officials to believe the completed ballots were lost by the U.S. Postal Service.
County Clerk Marsha Abell Barnhart made the stunning disclosure at Friday's meeting of the Vanderburgh County Election Board. Barnhart made it clear she didn't believe voters received the absentee ballots but then opted not to complete and return them. Voters who request ballots by mail are keenly motivated to vote, said Barnhart, who also served as clerk from 1997 until 2005.
"You’re not going to go to all that much trouble and then ignore it," she said. "You will have a few. We always have some. But that’s hundreds!"
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Pointing to a large stack of absentee ballot applications the Vanderburgh County Election Office had received, Barnhart estimated during the meeting that the number of unreturned absentee ballots could reach as high as 400.
But after the meeting, the Election Office retrieved data at the request of the Courier & Press indicating the number is closer to 550.
The Election Office received 6,428 requests for mailed absentee ballots. Of those, 5,886 were returned. That number includes 41 that the Election Board rejected Friday because they arrived after the deadline of 6 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 5.
It means 542 mail-in absentee ballots never were returned.
After Friday's Election Board meeting, Barnhart didn't hesitate when asked what she thinks happened to the ballots.
"I think they're on a loading dock in Louisville somewhere," she said.
Was postal issue actually 'remedied?'
The Courier & Press reported in October that some 300 mail-in absentee ballots for Vanderburgh County voters had somehow gotten marooned in the U.S. Postal Service's Louisville (Kentucky) Processing and Distribution Center. They were finally found and sent to Evansville's main post office for local processing and delivery.
The U.S. Postal Service sent the Courier & Press a lengthy written statement at the time, saying the situation in Vanderburgh County had been "remedied."
More: Vanderburgh election officials unsure why 300 absentee ballots were marooned in Louisville
Since early May, the Postal Service has been sending Evansville's outgoing letters and flats — magazines, catalogs and such — to Louisville for processing.
That includes outgoing mail that is destined for addresses within Evansville — such as the roughly 300 pre-postage paid absentee ballots sent to Vanderburgh County residents by the Vanderburgh County Election Office on Sept. 30.
It's all part of the Postal Service's 10-year Delivering for America Plan, which the agency calls an "operational upgrade."
When the Postal Service said the problem had been "remedied" in October, Barnhart said that meant USPS had promised not to route through Louisville any more absentee ballots from Vanderburgh County to voters in Vanderburgh County.
But at Friday's Election Board meeting, Barnhart and her staff said they continued throughout October to receive absentee ballots bearing Louisville postmarks. And not all of them were Vanderburgh County ballots.
Marc Toone, chief deputy clerk, noted that the Postal Service had promised its remedy on Oct. 11.
"(Barnhart) and Kenneth (Grant, first deputy in the Vanderburgh County elections division) and I all found ballots that were stamped the 16th (of October), so that was clearly not happening," Toone said.
Barnhart said after the meeting that at least one ballot arrived from Louisville with an Oct. 23 postmark.
Grant told the Election Board the problems didn't end there.
"We have received phone calls from folks understandably upset that they requested a mail-in (ballot) and never saw it or didn’t even receive it until close to or after the deadline," he said.
Barnhart produced absentee ballots that had been intended for Dubois and Spencer counties but which had inexplicably arrived at the Vanderburgh County Election Office. The Dubois ballot had gone to Indianapolis before arriving in her office, she said later. The Spencer County ballot had first gone to Muncie to be postmarked before arriving in Vanderburgh County.
"I would have a hard time convincing people to vote by mail based on the mess that we’ve gotten this year," Barnhart told the Election Board.
The clerk said she had consulted the Indiana Secretary of State's Office to no avail.
"They told me I should put a notice on social media," she said. "Well, one of the reasons you vote by mail is because you’re over 65 years old. And I can guarantee you very few 65-year-olds get on Facebook and read a notice that their ballot hadn’t gotten returned."
'A lot of those people probably think they voted'
It's too late to fix this, this year, Barnhart said. The election was over nearly two weeks ago.
"I just think that as a group, the clerks or the election boards across the state need to address this," she said. "It’s a big problem. A lot of those people probably think they voted."
Dottie Thomas will take over as Vanderburgh County's clerk and chief elections officer on Jan. 1. Barnhart, who agreed to serve the remaining months of departed Clerk Carla Hayden's term in August, will swear in Thomas and other officeholders. Then she's headed back to retirement.
But she advised the Election Board that it might want to join in the lobbying effort that will ensue to seek corrective legislative action.
A similar effort is underway among legislators, election vendors, lobbyists, and county clerks to push for a change in Indiana code to allow for real time tabulation of early in-person votes. The goal is to effect the change before 2026 party primary elections.
More: Big changes sought to speed up vote counting in Vanderburgh County
The objective is to eliminate the delays that prevented final but unofficial election results from being known until nearly 24 hours after polls closed.
Thomas, Barnhart and other clerks around the state have complained that state elections officials will not allow their local counterparts to place optical ballot scanners atop ballot boxes for early in-person voting as is done with Election Day voting.
Making that single change, they say, would mean voters could insert the early vote ballots into scanners in real time and those could be tabulated quickly on Election Night.
Barnhart briefly discussed the issue, but the Election Board did not comment on it.
"Our problem that is being addressed now is at the state level," Barnhart said.