HAMILTON COUNTY— Hamilton County is considering using vote centers in the next election. Officials say it’s an idea they’ve been talking about before, but will start to look into them in 2025.
A handful of polling locations saw wait times of two to three hours long on Tuesday.
“I’ve never seen lines this long and I’ve worked the polls before,” said Steve Harrell, who voted at Northview Church on Tuesday.
Northview Church in Fishers was one of the locations with wait times of up to three hours. The church is used for four different precincts in Hamilton County.
“Those that had long lines had three or four precincts at the locations,” said Beth Sheller, the election administrator in Hamilton County.
This year, Hamilton County had 111 voting locations for 220 precincts. In the last presidential election, they had more than 120 locations.
“I even picked up five new precincts in this election,” said Sheller.
Sheller says the county has enough voting machines and poll workers, but finding enough voting locations is a different story. They have to be ADA compliant, have plenty of parking, and be willing to be a polling location.
“We use every government building besides schools that we can,” said Sheller. “Especially in Fishers, I’ve had some difficulty and that’s where my lines were.”
With an off year coming up, the election office will be drafting up a plan for vote centers in Hamilton County. 65 counties in Indiana have vote centers.
“Not only will it help with if you go to one and it's busier, just go to a different one, but it will also help with people showing up to the wrong locations like we had yesterday,” said Sheller.
The vote center plan will need 100% approval by the election board.
