Indianapolis Star: Nearly 1,800 absentee ballots left uncounted in Marion County primary election

Gary Nail did not end up voting in this month’s primary election.

He wanted to — he sent in an application for an absentee ballot in May. He just never received one.

Like countless other voters in Marion County, he has no idea what happened. The state’s online voter portal shows that his ballot was mailed out the next day.

“That’s the gray area. Did they actually mail it out?” he said. “If they did mail it out, then that’s a big problem that they mailed it out and it just disappeared.”

It’s part of the fallout of a primary election that strained election board resources as an unprecedented number of residents voted by mail during the coronavirus pandemic. …

Marion County voters encountered a variety of obstacles when voting by mail in the weeks leading up to the primary.

Just days before the election, Marion County Clerk Myla Eldridge and Secretary of State Connie Lawson exchanged jabs in public letters that shifted the blame for the messy election process.

Eldridge, a Democrat, argued that the state should extend the deadline for receiving absentee ballots, which was by noon on Election Day. She faulted the state for not making changes that would better accommodate voting in a pandemic.

Lawson, a Republican, countered that Marion County failed to adequately prepare for the election.

But to Julia Vaughn of Common Cause Indiana, there is plenty of blame to go around at both the state and local level.

She noted a lack of leadership at the state level.

“It seemed to me they kind of told counties, ‘OK, you figure this out. We’re going to allow everybody to vote by mail, and you guys just figure it out,’ ” Vaughn said. ” ‘We’re going to buy some (personal protective equipment) for your poll workers, but you know you’re going to be in charge of figuring out how to process this mountain of mail that’s going to come at you — twice.’ “

But on the other hand, Marion County waited too late to sound the alarm over problems, Vaughn said. The county also should have made a broader effort to recruit poll workers.

Either way, she said, changes need to be made now in order to properly prepare for the general election.

“We know that November is shaping up to be one of the biggest turnout elections ever, so take the problems we had (June 2) and multiply them by some big number,” she said. “So we’ve got to get our act together.”