Republican lawsuit moves to St. Joseph County as Election Board defends actions

SOUTH BEND — As St. Joseph County Republicans rally around a lawsuit alleging the county’s Election Board is abusing its authority, Democrats are defending a recently passed resolution as standard operating procedure, saying the clerk's office has processed ballots for the last three decades.

The case is now moving to St. Joseph County after Marshall Circuit Court Judge Curtis Palmer last week denied Republicans' request to block St. Joseph County Clerk Rita Glenn from processing early voting ballots. Whether a judge will rule on the merits of the case in time to impact the upcoming general election is uncertain.

At the same as Palmer issued his rulings, the Election Board’s Democratic members pushed back against the notion that their actions are untoward, arguing in court filings and during a public meeting that the clerk’s office has handled ballot processing in a similar way for the past three decades.

“When you get right down to it, nothing has changed. Nobody’s taken any authority away from the Election Board,” said board president Chuck Leone. “Nobody’s given the clerk any authority of the Election Board. All it’s doing is verifying a procedure that’s been going on for 30 years in this county.”

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Partisan rhetoric surrounding the election process continues to ramp up, with the St. Joseph County Republican Party running an attack ad during last weekend’s Notre Dame football game accusing county clerk Rita Glenn of having “unchecked power” and “unilateral authority” over the voting process.

The tone of the commercial ran counter to that of attorney Andrew Jones, who is representing the Republican Party and said comparisons between the lawsuit and efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential Election are "unfortunate."

“It’s really unfortunate that this case is getting compared to Jan. 6 and Trump election challenges. That could not possibly be further from the truth," Jones said.

Lawsuit

Through framed as either an attack on election integrity or an appeal against partisan usurpation, the lawsuit itself deals with a specific statute in Indiana code regarding the relationship between a county’s clerk’s office and election board.

According to state law, a county clerk's office can perform certain functions normally assigned to an election board, if the election board approves it. On Oct. 7, the St. Joseph County Election Board voted to give Glenn’s office authority to handle processing and storage of absentee ballots in a 2-1 vote with Republican Thomas Dixon voting against the measure.

On Oct. 11, Dixon, along with the St. Joseph County and Indiana Republican parties filed a lawsuit in Marshall County, seeking to have a judge overturn the resolution. Dixon is an attorney in the area and previously represented a Republican appointee on the county’s judicial nominating commission who claimed the body was biased against Republican judicial candidates.

Andrew Jones, a South Bend attorney representing Dixon and the Republic Party in the suit, explained he believes state law differentiates between collective powers of an election board and powers held by individual members of a board. While the law gives elections boards the option to delegate certain tasks, other powers — like access to the room where ballots are stored and the ability to evaluate voter signatures on absentee ballots — cannot be delegated except by unanimous vote, Jones said.

Republicans have also pointed to a line in the resolution saying the approval given to the clerk "shall be applied retroactively and proactively to the 2022 election cycle," as a cause for concern given that the clerk's office is under investigation by the Indiana State Police for potentially election violations.

Attorneys representing Glenn and Leone have stated in court filings that the statute is clear and makes no mention of unanimous votes or any duties that are improper to give to the clerk.

Even then, Leone and Glenn argue, the clerk’s office is not overseeing the approval of voter signatures nor has it taken control of the ballot storage room.

In an affidavit filed in court Friday, Glenn detailed the process by which absentee ballots are received, processed and sorted. Clerk's office employees only "organize voted absentee ballots by precinct and put the voted absentee ballots into the carrier envelopes organized by precinct," the affidavit said and the practice has been longstanding because the Election Board does not have enough employees to handle that task.

"The clerk has never performed the function of the county Election Board to check signatures on absentee ballot applications and mail-in ballot envelopes,” Glenn wrote in the affidavit.

Whether or not Glenn is actively handling signature verification or blocking access to the ballot storage room is irrelevant to the lawsuit, Jones responded, because the resolution as written gives the clerk's office those powers.

"I think it's abundantly clear that the resolution that was passed is not legal," he said.

Jones added he's "cautiously optimistic" the case will be adjudicated quickly, though any court order would need to be issued in the next few weeks to have any practical effect on the upcoming election. As of Monday afternoon, the case has not been assigned to a judge in St. Joseph County.

Once assigned, however, the judge could issue a temporarily restraining order to stop the clerk's office from processing absentee ballots while the case is decided. The judge could also call for a hearing in which both sides can present their cases, though given the case is fully briefed, Jones is confident that hearing could take place sooner rather than later.

Early voting in St. Joseph County began on Oct. 12 and Election Day is Nov. 8

'Nothing has changed'

Echoing Glenn’s filing, Leone and James Masters, a lawyer representing the board in the ongoing litigation, said the clerk’s office has sorted ballots by precinct for the past 30 years.

The Election Board also clarified on Friday that there are two Republican and two Democratic keys that have access to the ballot storage room. Leone has designated his Democratic key to Glenn with Amanda Govaert Konrath holding the backup key. For Republicans, Dixon has the main key and Trisha Carrico holds the backup. Both Govaert Konrath and Carrico are employees in the voter registration office and are members of the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively.

In Masters' mind, the fact that there’s been no animosity regarding the longstanding procedure until recently speaks to ulterior motives on behalf of Republicans.

“All the misinformation that’s being spread, it’s a concerted effort to keep people from voting,” said Masters. “It starts at the top down on that Republican Party. ... That’s what they want to do. Because it doesn’t do them any good to have a lot of people vote, because they aren’t going to vote for them.”

Earlier this year, Masters represented Mike Castellon, the Republican candidate running for county assessor, in a residency dispute.

However, Masters’ concerns appeared to play out during Friday’s meeting. During time allotted for public comment, four people stood up and said voters were right not to trust the process, with one woman from Walkerton saying she knows homebound friends and neighbors who are scared to send in their absentee ballot.

“They’ve filled them out, and they’re scared to turn them in. They’re not convinced of the integrity that their ballots are safe," she said.

Tribune reporter Jordan Smith contributed to this story.

Email Marek Mazurek at mmazurek@sbtinfo.com. Follow him on Twitter: @marek_mazurek

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Republican election board lawsuit stalls, Democrats say it's normal