(La Porte County, IN) - Emergencies on Election Day, like a storm or worse, are every county clerk’s worst nightmare. Just last week, La Porte County officials attended a conference on election security. It was hosted in Lafayette by the Department of Homeland Security.
County Commissioner Rich Mrozinski attended the workshop. “We always have subversive groups that want to disrupt the election,” he said, “and some of those are very close to our home here.” He said the possible scenarios were eye-opening. Examples ranged from bomb threats to power outages. What if someone pulls a gun and demands to vote? What if election workers just decide to walk out? “You know what they say, anything that could happen, just might happen,” Mrozinski said.
“We need to be prepared ahead of time, we need to have a plan,” he explained, “and I was kind of shocked that we’re really unprepared. But we learned a lot, and we’re going to be preparing with what we know now, and things we want to watch out for in the upcoming election.”
A handful of county officials attended, including the county’s EMA and IT directors, two county commissioners, and a council member.
Of course, the person in charge of elections, County Clerk Heather Stevens, was there. She was proud of the teamwork of all involved, which led to a number of concrete plans for future La Porte County elections.
“The people that went were fantastic,” she said. “It was great to have that many people who are like, okay, this is serious, and we need to attend this.” Stevens said the group brainstormed through solutions to various difficult scenarios. “We were able to come up with different ideas, and everybody worked very, very well together,” she said. “I was super impressed with the group from La Porte County. It was amazing.”
Stevens says communication between county officials and with the public is a key. One conclusion from the workshop, she said, is to use the county’s Rave system to notify people via text messaging if anything goes wrong. Hopefully, come November, democracy runs its course without any problems.
