01
October
This story was originally published by Based in Lafayette.
By Dave Bangert
Based in Lafayette
September 27, 2024
Purdue will get six hours of early voting at the Co-Rec on Oct. 24, after the university and Tippecanoe County election officials pieced together a plan approved Friday by the Election Board to deal with an initial absence of polling places on campus.
But the campus will not have one of the county’s vote centers on Election Day, after the Election Board was reluctant to add a 16th site this close to the Nov. 5 election.
The board also rejected a proposal by Kent Moore, the Democratic appointee to the three-member Election Board, to move an Election Day polling place from West Lafayette City Hall to the Purdue Co-Rec to address concerns about access and accusations of voter suppression aimed at Purdue students, faculty and staff.
The moves Friday, made in front of a packed room in the County Office Building, were greeted by frustration and condemnation about how the county and university wound up in this position after a history of having campus polling places in presidential election years dating to the start of vote center use in 2007.
“The blame for this travesty should be shared by the Election Board,” Susan Schechter, a Democratic member of the Fairfield Township Board, said. “Their, ‘Oh, well,’ response to Purdue’s lack of concern about providing appropriate voting for a contentious national election is deeply disturbing. … Voter suppression, clear and simple.”
Minutes after the Election Board vote Friday, Purdue issued a statement thanking the county for adding an early voting site on campus. That will be from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Oct. 24 at the Co-Rec.
In its statement, Purdue also revealed this: “The university has also submitted an official application to the Election Board for their further consideration to add the Co-Rec as a voting center, in addition to the already announced West Lafayette City Hall location, on Nov. 5.”
That offer wasn’t mentioned during the Election Board, either by board members and staff or by Purdue representatives at Friday’s meeting. Purdue officials did not elaborate on the application or when the offer was made – whether Friday morning or weeks ago.
“The statement confirms that Purdue has applied,” Erin Murphy, a Purdue spokesperson, said Friday. “At this time, there’s nothing else to share.”
Election Board members and staff said after Friday’s meeting that they didn’t know about Purdue’s application for an Election Day site.
Mike Smith, a staff member with the Election Board who coordinates voting sites, said an application from a form on the county’s website – a tab marked “Become a Vote Center” – was filled out by the university at 4:21 p.m. Wednesday. That form was forwarded to his inbox from the county’s IT department at 4:22 p.m. Thursday. Smith said he didn’t find it in his inbox until he’d heard about Purdue’s application after Friday’s meeting. He said he didn’t get a heads up from university officials that the form was coming.
Either way, Election Board members said afterward that they weren’t sure knowing about Purdue’s Election Day offer would have swayed actions Friday.
“I likely would have mentioned any invitation by Purdue having a vote center on Election Day as part of the dialogue, if I was aware of some form of ‘official request’ had been received,” Randy Vonderheide, Election Board president and a Republican appointee to the board, said. “As part of what I felt obliged to do, I did verify that Purdue would welcome and facilitate an Election Day vote center. Staff apparently did also. So I would have to agree that Purdue’s willingness to facilitate an Election Day vote center on campus was not a factor for me.”
Kent Moore, a Democratic appointee to the Election Board, said his suggestion to move a vote center from West Lafayette City Hall to Purdue’s Co-Rec on Election Day already had been shot down. He wasn’t sure, given how the county’s 275 voting machines already had been allotted to early sites and already approved Election Day sites, whether it was reasonable to add a 16th vote center on Nov. 5.
“It becomes impractical at some point,” Moore said.
Purdue and county officials had been hustling over the past two weeks after news reports and voter advocate petitions pointed out how the campus was going without polling places in the 2024 general election.
The Tippecanoe County Election Board voted on Aug. 15 to set up 15 Election Day vote centers and nine early voting sites, starting Oct. 8. Election officials said at the time that the county looked to work through logistics – including getting state-required dedicated and secure connections for voter registration data, as well as state-required parking spaces – with Purdue and suggested various sites on campus without getting the university to commit before the Election Board vote.
Election Day vote centers will include one at West Lafayette City Hall – about three blocks from the eastern edge of campus – and five hours of early voting on Oct. 22 at First United Methodist Church, a half-mile west of the university’s residence halls on Mitch Daniels Boulevard.
Purdue rallied last week, lining up needed space in a Co-Rec gym to host vote machines, bring in a dedicated internet connection for poll book check-ins and necessary parking spaces for voting on Thursday, Oct. 24.
The Election Board signed off on that spot Friday. The board also added an early voting site Oct. 19 at the McAllister Center, after concerns about options in Lafayette’s north end.
On Friday, Smith said that after the initial issues with Purdue sites weren’t worked out by August, the election office selected vote center locations based on density of registered voters.
Smith said there are 3,058 students registered as Tippecanoe County residents in the four on-campus precincts, as of this week. He said that was down from 6,696 students in those precincts in 2020, the most recent presidential election. He said that decline in students registered to vote in Tippecanoe County elections was a factor. He said off-campus sites in the initial list were close to most students who lived off campus.
Complicating things was that the county’s 275 ballot machine were already being lined up, election officials said. Some of those are committed to early voting, which collect what technically are “absentee in person” ballots. Smith said those machines may be reused in early voting sites set up in the four weeks before Election Day, with the results counted after polls close on Nov. 5. He said those absentee in person results are canvassed separately on Election Night, and the machines, by state law, can’t be reused at an Election Day vote center.
Election Day machines already have been assigned to vote centers and are being and programmed through the vote machine vendor and reported to state election officials ahead of required random testing and certification before voting starts.
Moore proposed moving the Election Day site to the Co-Rec, saying he believed the election staff and Election Board “are motivated to try to do this the right way.”
“But perception sometimes can be reality,” Moore said.
County Clerk Julie Roush, a Republican and the third member of the Election Board, said she was wary about taking away a vote center and moving it to campus.
“If you move Margerum (West Lafayette City Hall) back over to the Co-Rec, to all those residents we just made this public statement to say you’re not as important,” Roush said.
Moore’s proposal died for a lack of a second. The same thing happened when he suggested bumping early voting at the Co-Rec from six hours to eight hours.
The votes came before the board took public comment. Afterward, the feedback was scathing.
“Extreme dissatisfaction,” state Rep. Chris Campbell, a West Lafayette Democrat, said. “This is unnecessary, inexcusable. … I question whether nearby locations are going to be able to handle the capacity. We have less room at (West Lafayette City Hall) than we would have at Purdue to handle nearly three times the number of voters in addition to the voters who would use (City Hall) on Election Day.”
Speakers said the decisions made ignored that Purdue students aren’t the only ones who vote on campus, which is home to Tippecanoe County’s largest workforce with more than 18,000 listed among faculty, staff and graduate student staff.
“In 2018, lines were going out the door at the Union, while we still had voting going on at Margerum (City Hall),” Lisa Dullum, a Tippecanoe County Council member, said. “I’m still very concerned about the lines on Election Day.”
Anne Huber, a West Lafayette resident, said: “You don’t want to send a message to say the people who are served by the Sonya Margerum (City Hall) location that they don’t matter. I guess what I see is when we have an area that has been served by a vote center at Purdue all these years, and suddenly this year that’s being left out, that sends a strong message of you don’t matter as much. That’s what I see.”
Smith did not release how many voting machines would be at the West Lafayette City Hall site, but said that “every effort has been made to have a deep staffing and the correct number of machines at every location.”
Heather Maddox, a former election staff member and former Tippecanoe County Democratic Party chair, said she was concerned about how the number of vote centers had dropped from numbering in the low-20s in the earliest days to 15. (Beyond Purdue, six townships in Tippecanoe County have no vote centers – something that brought its own line of complaints in recent weeks to the election staff.)
“This is the scenario … we didn’t want to see happen,” Maddox said.
For more
Voter turnout in past campus vote sites: This has been out in previous accounts, but for context …
Tippecanoe County uses a vote center system that allows voters to go to any polling place in the county to cast a ballot, rather in their home precincts. Here’s how voting when at on-campus vote center sites in the past four presidential elections.
- 2020: 1,127 on Election Day (Mackey Arena); 1,299 in early voting (Mackey Arena)
- 2016: 2,409 on Election Day (Purdue Memorial Union); 426 early (Stewart Center)
- 2012: 2,171 on Election Day (Purdue Memorial Union); 450 early (Stewart Center)
- 2008: 3,475 on Election Day (Purdue Memorial Union); 3,793 early (two days at Stewart Center)
When early and Election Day ballots were combined, here’s how campus vote centers contributed to the overall turnout in each of those presidential election years in Tippecanoe County, based on county records.
Your ballot and voter registration check: The voter registration deadline to vote in the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 7. To check your voter registration, get registered or to see candidates who will be on your general election ballot, go to the Secretary of State’s portal at www.indianavoters.com.
Tippecanoe County voters may cast a ballot at any vote center, whether on Election Day or during four weeks of early voting. Here’s where they’ll be, including two early sites added by the Election Board Friday, Sept. 27.
Dave Bangert retired after 32 years of reporting and writing on just about everything at the Lafayette Journal & Courier. He started the Based in Lafayette reporting project in 2021.
