Battle to be Vanderburgh elections chief roils over 'harassment'

EVANSVILLE — A Wednesday night gathering may thrust into the open more details about Vanderburgh County Clerk Carla Hayden's planned departure under duress 10 weeks before a presidential election she was going to run.

The story touches on former President Donald Trump, intimations of election fraud by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and an accusation — untrue, as it turns out — that the chief promoter of fraud suspicions in Vanderburgh County was put on a police escort list in the Civic Center.

Wednesday's 6 p.m. caucus of Republican Party precinct committee members at The Foundry will choose a caretaker to preside over the Nov. 5 election in Vanderburgh County and perform the clerk's other duties after Hayden's planned departure on August 29. Whoever is chosen will step aside on Jan. 1, after a newly elected clerk — likely Republican Dottie Thomas, the only candidate for the position — is sworn in.

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Hayden, a Republican, has said she can't face running another election involving former President Donald Trump after months of what she calls harassment by a tiny but "relentless" band of pro-Trump individuals demanding confidential voting records and threatening to come to polling places.

The veteran elections supervisor had declined to name the persons she says are bothering her, but GOP Chairman Mike Duckworth pointed the finger at conservative activist Ken Colbert — the same Ken Colbert who engineered a looming takeover of the party that threatens Duckworth's position. Hayden confirmed Colbert is "exhibit A" for the group.

Colbert also is one of two candidates at Wednesday's GOP caucus to succeed Hayden, and he said he intends to speak.

But even Colbert acknowledges he won't defeat former County Clerk Marsha Abell in a vote of the current Republican precinct committee's members. Hayden, a committee member, and Duckworth support Abell.

Harassment allegations involve a dataset

At issue between Hayden and Colbert and his supporters is a dataset called "cast vote records." It's been an issue in Indiana and elsewhere since 2022, when Trump supporters encouraged by MyPillow CEO Lindell began asking elections officials across the country for the vote-tallying data. The aim is to demonstrate voter fraud that they believe robbed Trump of victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Hayden says the cast vote record is not something her office's version of Unisyn software can produce. More importantly, she says, it would disclose which specific candidates voters supported. That's confidential.

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The Association of the Clerks of Circuit Courts of Indiana late last year obtained an advisory opinion of Indiana Public Access Counselor Luke Britt stating that the Indiana Election Division "determined that the closest analog to a CVR (cast vote record) was a ballot or other election material deemed to be statutorily confidential."

"I mean, (it would show) particularly how they (voters) voted," Hayden said last month. "Not that they picked up a Republican or Democrat (primary election) ballot. It would tell, ‘You voted for this person and you voted for this person and you voted for this person.'"

Colbert said it wouldn't, and believes Hayden doesn't understand the issue. He said the clerk is shirking her responsibility to provide information that will assure local voters elections are free and fair.

"What the data does, it’s what goes into the system, what the vote was," Colbert said Tuesday. "So as an example, it would show 100 votes — we’ll use Trump and Biden as an example — there’s 100 votes that go into the system and it shows the split that 70 went for Trump and 30 for Biden.

"That’s all the cast vote record does."

"The cast vote record shows specifically the vote of the person," Colbert said. "It doesn’t have the data that Joe Smith voted for this person. That’s private. What is public is the volume of votes that are going through."

Indiana First Action, which describes itself as "a grassroots, citizen-driven evidentiary team," also believes state and local officials around Indiana don't understand the data.

"The Cast Vote Record is a way for us to see trends in tabulation that may look awry," the group said in a news release. "It does not in any way encroach on the secrecy of any voter."

But some experts say cast vote records can't show fraud.

Nonprofit election news organization Votebeat reported in 2022 that some seeking cast vote record data believe they can find voter fraud based on the sequence in which ballots were scanned.

"For example, they would flag whether a large number of consecutive ballots came in for one candidate," Votebeat wrote. "But, in the case of ballots cast by mail, the order in which ballots are scanned doesn’t always correlate with when the ballots arrived. And citing ballot sequences as proof of fraud is a flawed premise: Different people, with different political affiliations, tend to vote using different methods because of their trust in early voting or other factors."

Was Colbert on the Civic Center's 'escort list?'

In the run-up to Wednesday night's Republican caucus, GOP chairman Duckworth charged that Colbert has been so obnoxious while pressing his demands for vote data that "he had to have a police escort to go up to the clerk’s office or the election office."

"He’s now wanting to be the clerk," Duckworth marveled.

Sheriff Noah Robinson, whose department handles security in the Civic Center in cooperation with the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Building Authority, then said Colbert isn't on the "escort list."

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Duckworth didn't think that was completely true.

"He’s not now, but he was," the party chief said. "Ask Carla Hayden. Ask the people in the election office."

Robinson deferred to the Building Authority when asked if Colbert ever was on the escort list. Building Authority Director Dave Rector said Colbert never was on the list.

Hayden had a different recollection.

"I know the (county) commissioners asked for Colbert to be on the escort list when (former Democratic commissioner) Jeff Hatfield was still in office because Jeff told me so himself," the clerk wrote by email. "This was after Colbert caused a disturbance in the commissioners’ office."

Hatfield said an "agitated" Colbert did enter the commissioners' office two or three years ago, asking pointed election-related questions. The commissioners didn't try to have him put on the escort list, Hatfield said, but he did ask a deputy to speak to Colbert.

"We talked to the Building Authority about any kind of button that could be installed to alert deputies if there was something real serious going on," Hatfield said. "I'm not sure this rose to that."

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Battle to be Vanderburgh elections chief roils over 'harassment'