By John Estridge
As most everyone knows, because the public is living it every day, the pandemic has changed life as it has been known and continues to do that with each new day.
One of those changes brought out a complaint at the Union County Commissioners’ meeting Friday morning, September 4.
Marilyn Revalee, a College Corner resident, expressed her strong reservations about the commissioners moving the College Corner polling place to Liberty for the General Election on Tuesday, November 3.
At the August 21 commissioners’ meeting, commissioners unanimously approved moving all of the county’s polling places to one polling place, the 4-H building in Liberty for the November election.
Union County Clerk Loree Persinger came to the commissioners at that meeting and was speaking both for her office and for the Election Board.
The reason for the adjustment was manyfold, Persinger said at the August 21 meeting.
The 4-H building is the only polling site that has a separate ingress and egress. There is plenty of room inside for voters to wait in line while being social distanced and be inside out of the weather. Also, the age of the poll workers is such many do not want to work in an environment where they might catch the virus. Thus, the move eliminates the need for more polling workers to be at the regular polling places.
Revalee also had many reasons why the polling place in College Corner should not be closed. It was held at the Junction. And she asked the commissioners to change their minds and allow the Junction to be a polling place for West College Corner residents.
She said, after she heard about the plan to close all the polling places except the one at Liberty, she called seven people, and they all said they would work the polls.
Revalee was also concerned about the planned public transportation shuttle. She said the round trip would be at least 30 minutes, and the bus would have to be disinfected after each trip. What if there are more people waiting in College Corner than the shuttle can hold due to social distancing requirements. She said maybe five people would be able to make the trip at the time. Do those people left in College Corner have to remain standing in line for a half hour or more waiting for the shuttle to come back?
She said many people may not use the shuttle because of the fear of having to wait.
Revalee also had a voter registration list for the College Corner area. She said many on the list are dead, moved out or live in Ohio.
Revalee also talked about the post office situation regarding mail-in voting. Prior to her comments about post offices, she said she was not putting the post offices down. However, she said a letter mailed in College Corner does not travel directly to Liberty. Instead, it goes to Cincinnati or Northern Kentucky for sorting and is then sent to Muncie for more sorting before it is returned to Liberty. This makes it a several day journey.
Persinger, whose father passed earlier in the week, was on bereavement leave, but made the trip into Liberty to listen to Revalee and enter into the discussion. Persinger is also a College Corner resident. Also present at the September 4 meeting were election board member Jeff Mathews and first deputy clerk in the clerk’s office, former clerk, Susan Ray.
Persinger started her talk by discussing the three ways people can vote: absentee or mail-in voting, early voting at the courthouse and election-day voting.
According to Persinger, she talked to officials at the College Corner and Liberty post offices during the primary. She said when she takes ballots to the post office, it does not go the circuitous route but goes directly to residents. However, she said the mailing back of the ballots by the voters would probably take those extra steps.
Persinger said her voter registration list is more updated than the one Revalee had, which was from 2018, but admitted the process for purging the voter registration list is complicated and lengthy due to Indiana Codes concerning that.
“It can take years to get them off,” Persinger said.
According to Persinger, she is going to send out a mailing to the registered voters in the county explaining the options to voting. And every letter is going to contain an absentee voter application.
“That’s their choice if they want to do it (absentee voting),” Persinger said.
Commission president Paul Wiwi, who also lives in the College Corner area, said this is a one-time thing.
Persinger said she hopes it is, but no one knows how long COVID-19 will be a part of everyone’s life.
“This is a one-time thing,” Wiwi said. “We don’t know, but if everything gets cleared up by the time the next election comes around, we’ll go back to the Junction just like normal.”
“That is our intention,” Persinger said. “But I will say this: we were contacted right before the primary by the federal agency that conducts handicap accessibility. We had to send in a report and pictures to them. They are probably going to review them. Upon their review, if the Junction passes everything, qualifies for them, then yes we can continue to have it there.”
Revalee said if people know what needs to be done to make it pass for handicap accessibility, ahead of the next election, that can be taken care of.
Commissioners said they would coordinate with Trisha Persinger, the head of public transportation, about the shuttle bus. Also, the school corporation will also be contacted to make sure no high school students park in the parking lot nearest the 4-H building on the day of the election.