Porter County Democrats are asking the county’s election board for a public meeting to go over what they claim are a wide array of problems from the May 8 primary — from poll workers without enough training to voters given ballots for the wrong party.

County party chair Jeffrey Chidester and J.J. Stankiewicz, the lone Democrat on the election board, want the meeting.

However, Clerk Karen Martin, who oversaw the election for the first time and who is one of the Republicans on the election board, said the concerns aren’t any different from past elections.

“Most of the concerns, I feel, have happened at previous elections. Considering the time and the changes, we did very well overall,” she said.

Martin said that results from the county’s 123 precincts were totaled in about two hours and 20 minutes.

Board President David Bengs, also a Republican, said the brunt of the concerns were routine and procedural in nature, and didn’t involve the election results.

He expects the meeting to be held the second week in June and hopes voters who had problems will voice their concerns directly to the board.

“We’ve never done this before, and some of the concerns that were brought forward were brought forward in the past. I didn’t hear anything alarming,” he said.

The election board voted 2-1 in March to give election duties to Martin after Kathy Kozuszek, the Democratic director in the county’s Voter Registration Office, sent a letter to the county’s party chairs and some members of the election board that she would not continue to handle election duties because having that office conduct the election was outside of state statute.

Officials with the Indiana Election Division of the secretary of state’s office have said Porter County was the only county in the state where election duties are handled through voter registration.

In the majority of counties, the clerk handles elections, they said.

“The Republican Party is not going to admit they screwed anything up,” said Chidester, who drafted a letter to the election board outlining his concerns Friday.

Chidester said the county didn’t have any close races that would be overturned because of problems..

“It’s kind of a victimless crime,” Chidester said

Among the errors, Chidester said in his letter, were a voter given the wrong ballot in Portage, confusion over a voter purged from the rolls when someone with the same name went to vote, a nursing home resident with advanced Alzheimer’s disease who was allowed to vote, questions over whether a provisional ballot was counted after a voter brought a renewed drivers license into voter registration and a lack of Democratic involvement in the election.

Stankiewicz, who said he refused to certify election results Friday until the Republican majority on the election board agreed to a meeting, said he received calls May 8 from both Democrats and Republicans that polling places, particularly at Valparaiso schools under construction and the county’s Emergency Management Agency building on Indiana 2, were not fully accessible to handicapped voters.

He also received an email from a Republican poll inspector who said poll workers were not sufficiently trained, there was confusion where to take suitcases with ballots and a tally of votes when polls closed, and some showed up at the administration building as they have in the past instead of the courthouse a couple of blocks away.

“The best shot to continue what they’re doing or legalize what they were doing in the past would be if it was reasonable and efficient,” said Stankiewicz, who voted against giving election duties to the clerk, adding the handling of the primary met neither of those parameters.

Martin countered that poll workers were sufficiently trained and while state statute dictates training inspectors, the county also opts to train judges and clerks, which isn’t mandated.

All of the polling places have been used in previous elections, she said, including the EMA building, and she had people review Valparaiso High School and Memorial and Northview elementary schools, all of which are in the middle of renovation projects, to make sure they were still accessible as polling places.

“I actually sent people out there,” she said.

Chidester proposed two solutions for the problems he outlined in his letter. It includes more training for poll workers and also including voter registration officials from both parties in the handling of the election, since that office has all of the voting records.

“What did we really solve? Show me. They’re using the voter registration office, but only the people they want to use,” he said, claiming Democrats were shut out of assisting with the election on an administrative level.

His biggest worry is that people were denied to right to vote during the primary, a problem that will only increase in November with more competitive races on the ballot and greater voter turnout.

“November turnout is going to be higher than 14 percent, and that’s what concerns me,” he said.

Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.