Independent Secretary of State candidate Greg Ballard on Wednesday proposed a state-run training program for Indiana’s county clerks, saying the state currently teaches clerks what the law requires but not how to run an election.
Ballard said he has been meeting with sitting county clerks who told him they learn the job from one another rather than from the state. Some travel to other counties for instruction, and in one case, Ballard’s campaign said, a clerk paid another county’s employees out of pocket to be shown how to administer a first election.
“There is no standard hands-on training for county clerks in Indiana on how to actually do this job,” Ballard said in a statement. “Ninety-two counties, 92 different ways of doing business.”
The Indiana Election Division holds training sessions for clerks, a point the campaign acknowledges. Ballard’s argument is that those sessions cover statutory changes made since the last legislative session rather than election administration itself.
“The state tells you what changed. It doesn’t teach you how to do the job in the first place,” Ballard said.l0
The plan has three parts. The first is what the campaign calls a clerk training boot camp — hands-on state instruction conducted in a practice version of the statewide voter registration system, built and taught by current and former clerks. The campaign says it would supplement, not replace, the Election Division’s legal-update sessions.
The second is funding a 2005 law that authorized standardized training for poll workers and county election officials. The campaign says the law has never been funded in the two decades since it passed. Under the proposal, the Secretary of State’s office would develop a standard curriculum, run train-the-trainer sessions for clerks, and station regional field staff to work with counties directly.
The third is a uniform standard across all 92 counties, which the campaign describes as ensuring ballots are handled the same way regardless of where they are cast.
“I was a Marine for 23 years. I know what standardized training looks like, and this isn’t it,” Ballard said. “This is the core job of the Secretary of State — not an afterthought.”
The campaign pointed to the Senate District 23 Republican primary recount as evidence of the cost of inconsistent practice, saying procedural errors by county officials there led to disqualified ballots and a changed outcome.
That case, an appeal by incumbent Sen. Spencer Deery from the Indiana Recount Commission’s certification of challenger Paula Copenhaver as the winner by three votes, is set for oral argument before the Indiana Supreme Court at 11:15 a.m. Thursday. At issue are six absentee ballots that county boards counted and the Commission rejected because they lacked a circuit court clerk’s endorsement.
Deery argues a state savings statute allows ballots to be counted in a recount when the defect resulted from an election officer’s error. Copenhaver’s brief argues Deery has not proven the missing endorsement was solely the fault of an election officer, and the Recount Commission has argued in its own brief that the voter bears responsibility for ensuring a ballot is official. The Court has not ruled.
Ballard, a retired Marine, served two terms as mayor of Indianapolis as a Republican from 2008 to 2016 after an upset win in 2007. He is running as an independent under the banner of the Lincoln Party, which the campaign says will be formally established in Indiana in November.
