The Lake County Board of Elections will take a two-pronged approach to tracking poll workers they would no longer like to see working Election Day.
LeAnn Angerman, deputy director, said ultimately the office will track poll workers via the new PollChief election worker management system by Konnech purchased earlier this year by the board for about $75,000.
“It does have the ability to flag workers so we know not to utilize them,” Angerman said.
Until the system is fully up and running and everyone is comfortable with the system, the office will use a spreadsheet to help track workers they do not want to return to the polls, she said.
Angerman said poll workers could be flagged for needing more training or they could be flagged to not use at all because of more egregious errors that have not been corrected and that training will not fix.
Board member Michael Mellon moved Tuesday to keep the matter on the agenda until the system was up and running.
Angerman said PollChief does a number of tasks for the office, allowing it to not only track poll workers but to track things like equipment and supplies checked out on Election Day by scanning the items in and out of the system.
“It’s an asset module system that allows us to track voting equipment and supplies in the field,” she said.
In other business, the Election Board approved early voting times and locations, which will be the same as they were in the May primary. Kevin Smith, board president, said early voting begins Oct. 12 and will continue through noon on Nov. 7. Locations may be found on the election board website: https://lakecounty.in.gov/departments/voters
Officials also set the next meeting at 3 p.m. on Aug. 31 to hear challenges filed against independent candidates running for office in the November general election. The deadline to file a challenge is noon on Aug. 26.
