New election website will be used Tuesday

Jay County Clerk’s Office will be utilizing its new website for election results Tuesday.

The site at uselectionslive.com/jayin will provide a place for voters and candidates to check for results as they come into the clerk’s office after the polls close at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

Jay County clerk Jon Eads said that after information from precincts arrives at Jay County Courthouse and results are compiled, the data will be downloaded to a flash drive. From there, it will be uploaded via a laptop computer to the new website. (He pointed out that representatives of the radio and newspaper at the courthouse during election night will be handed copies of results at the same time the results are downloaded to the flash drive.)

The website allows users to sign up for text message notifications to be alerted as results are filed.

“We haven’t done this yet, so it’ll be interesting to see —  I think it’ll go pretty smooth,” said Eads. 

In March, Jay County Commissioners OK’d a $20,000 grant application and approved a contract with website developer An Island to create the site. The funding came from Indiana’s portion of the Federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) Election Security Grants program, which had been shared with Eads via the Indiana Secretary of State’s office.

The website is expected to cost about $7,000 annually to maintain.

Jay County’s election supplies have changed significantly in the last few years. The county purchased 30 voter verifiable paper audit trail machines and 50 voting machines from Microvote Corporation for about $140,000 in 2023. (Its previous machines dated back to 2004.) The state — it required all polls to have the voter verifiable paper audit trail machines by 2024 — had already purchased 20 of those devices for Jay County and contributed an additional $76,750 toward the 2023 purchase.

Created in 2018, the Federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) Election Security Grants aim to provide “states with additional resources to improve the administration of elections for federal office, including to enhance technology and make certain election security improvements,” according to its website.

Eads expressed excitement for folks to check out results online quickly.

“I know there’s a lot of out-of-towners, for example, like, my son, who lives in Illinois. I’ve given him the site so that he can get the information from it,” he said. “My wife is going to do the same thing …”

As of about 10:30 a.m. Monday, about 1,167 registered voters had participated in early voting. (Early voting at the courthouse closed at noon Monday.) Another nearly 60 had sent their ballots by mail or travel board. That comes out to about 10% of registered voters.