Local officials ramp up security, training ahead of Election Day

Local election officials and law enforcement say they are preparing to ramp up security as voters head out to the polls on Election Day amid heightened tensions across much of the country.

Bartholomew County Clerk Shari Lentz said her office has been working with the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department and the Columbus Police Department, among other agencies, to ensure local residents feel safe voting and to prepare for any incidents that could occur.

“Also, we’ve worked with the emergency management group here in Bartholomew County, along with the Department of Homeland Security,” Lentz said. “We’ve had meetings that have been orchestrated through the (Indiana) Secretary of State’s Office. So, we are trying to be prepared for any kind of incident, and we’re just very hopeful that we won’t see anything like that happening in Bartholomew County.”

Lentz and her office last week trained 88 poll workers for Election Day. Officials plan to have nine voting centers each with seven poll workers, with the other five voting centers having five poll workers each.

Bartholomew County Sheriff Chris Lane said his department will be doing extra patrols near polling sites outside of the Columbus city limits and will have additional security at the Bartholomew County Courthouse, where election officials will be counting the votes Tuesday evening.

However, the sheriff’s department does not plan to station deputies at polling places.

“We’re going to have extra patrols, and also, because the courthouse is the center of everything you might say, we’re going to have extra security on that day, and they’ll be there until everything is counted and everything is done,” Lane said.

The Columbus Police Department also plans to have additional officers working Election Day and is coordinating with the sheriff’s department.

“We’re working with the sheriff’s department, and we’ll have additional officers working through the day, but we don’t plan to actually staff those officers and post them at specific polling locations,” said Skylar Berry, Columbus Police Department spokesman.

Neither law enforcement agency in Bartholomew County has received any threats made against polling places, officials said.

“As of right now, we haven’t gotten any threats to the polling centers … but if anybody hears of anything, by all means, please give us a call,” Berry said.

The Bartholomew County Democratic Party and Bartholomew County Republican Party also plan to have poll watchers at voting locations to observe the voting process, promote transparency and can alert campaigns and parties of perceived irregularities. The Democrats plan to have 12 poll watchers, while the Republicans plan to have eight.

‘Deep unease’

The update from local officials comes as American voters are approaching the presidential with deep unease about what could follow, including the potential for political violence, attempts to overturn the election results and its broader implications for democracy, The Associated Press reported.

Findings from a recent survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research speak to persistent concerns about the fragility of the world’s oldest democracy, nearly four years after former President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results inspired a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a violent attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power, according to wire reports. Three Bartholomew County residents were part of the mob.

About 4 in 10 registered voters say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about violent attempts to overturn the results after the November election, according to the AP. A similar share is worried about legal efforts to do so. And about 1 in 3 voters say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about attempts by local or state election officials to stop the results from being finalized.

Earlier this week, the FBI was investigating after fires destroyed hundreds of ballots inside drop boxes in Portland, Oregon, and in nearby Vancouver, Washington.

Last week, a man with 120 guns and more than 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his home was arrested in the shooting of a Democratic National Committee office in suburban Phoenix. Law enforcement believe he may have been planning a mass casualty event.

In July, an ATV driver in northern Michigan ran over an 80-year-old man who was putting up Trump signs in his front yard in what police believe was a politically motivated act.

Additionally, there have been two failed assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee. One of those attempts resulted in the death of an audience member at a Trump rally, and critically injured two other people.

Local election officials have noted that some voters have felt anxious to cast their ballots. The day before early voting started around a dozen people stopped by Donner Center while county election officials were training poll workers before early in-person voting started Tuesday — a number that local election officials said was unprecedented.

No local cases of noncitizen voting

Data indicates that voting by noncitizens is rare — and local election officials said they have no record of it ever occurring in Bartholomew County.

Only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in this fall’s election for president and other top offices, The Associated Press reported. While that’s nothing new, the potential for noncitizens to register or vote has been receiving a lot of attention lately.

Citing an influx of immigrants in recent years at the U.S.-Mexico border, Republicans have raised concerns about the possibility that noncitizens will be voting — something that has rarely occurred in the past, according to wire reports.

In various states, GOP officials have launched reviews of voter rolls, issued executive orders and placed constitutional amendments on state ballots as part of an emphasis on thwarting noncitizen voting.

Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales has claimed that he sent a list of 585,774 registered voters to federal immigration officials to verify their citizenship status. That would come out to roughly 12% of the more than 4.8 million registered voters in Indiana, according to figures current as of early October. He later backed away from that number, saying he did not believe all the 585,774 were not citizens.

The conservative think tank Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database includes 85 instances in which a noncitizen was found to have illegally voted in an election in records dating back 42 years — with none having occurred in Indiana. However, the organization says its database “is not an exhaustive or comprehensive list.”

By comparison, nearly 1.17 billion votes have been cast in presidential elections from 1984 to 2020. That figure does not include midterm elections.

Lentz said her office has not received any questions about any registered voter’s immigration status or any suspicious voter registrations or applications.

At the same time, the Bartholomew County Clerk’s Office recently received signs in Spanish and English from the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office stating that “only U.S. citizens can vote in Indiana,” as well as 19 whistles with instructions on what to do if certain situations arise at polling places.

The Indiana Secretary of State’s Office did not respond to questions about what the purpose of the whistles is and who is supposed to use them and under what circumstances.

Lentz said she believes the whistles are “an attention-getter” that seeks to help poll workers. Nobody will be physically blowing the whistles inside polling places, she said. The signs will be placed outside polling places, she said.

In the meantime, with just days to go before Election Day, local officials said safety is a top priority.

“Safety for the police department, for the city, of everybody in Columbus is a top priority, but also, especially, protecting our polling places, making sure that not only people are safe, but they (also) feel safe to go vote, the fundamentals of democracy,” Berry said.