County clerks in Indiana are left to teach each other the actual mechanics of running an election, because the Secretary of State's office doesn't. Clerks tell us they call other counties for help. Some have traveled to another county and stayed there for a stretch, working alongside that office's staff, just to learn how to administer their first election correctly — in at least one case, paying that county's employees out of their own pocket to come in on a weekend and walk them through it. Sitting clerks hold their own informal conferences, on their own time, because there's nowhere else to get this training.
The Indiana Election Division does hold training sessions for them — but they are PowerPoint presentations primarily designed to cover what changed in the law since the last legislative session: new deadlines, new forms, new required language. They don't cover hands-on use of the systems clerks are responsible for, including the statewide voter registration system, or how to run an election from the ground up. Knowing the new law and knowing how to run an election are two different things — and only one of those is currently being taught.
The current system forces our clerks to learn the mechanics of the job cold, live, with real ballots and real voters, unless they have the time, money, and connections to go find that training themselves. Clerks with no hands-on training are left guessing on procedural questions where the law is strict and unforgiving. Small errors, like a missing set of bipartisan initials on a ballot, can call into question ballots that should have been counted — and mistakes like these are exactly what triggered the Senate District 23 recount, where procedural errors by county officials led to ballots being thrown out and the outcome of an election being changed, disenfranchising voters through no fault of their own.
The people running the polling places on Election Day need training much like clerks do, yet they have even less such training available. Indiana passed a law more than 20 years ago authorizing the Secretary of State's office to build standardized, certified poll worker training. It has never been funded or implemented — leaving poll worker training to whatever each county manages to put together on its own.
Elections are only as secure as the training and standards behind them, and Indiana doesn't have consistent versions of either. Ninety-two counties are effectively running 92 different election systems, so a Hoosier's vote isn't handled the same way, or held to the same standard, depending on where they happen to live. The Senate District 23 recount shows how little room for error there actually is. The current system asks 92 county clerks to essentially train each other and their poll workers informally, county by county, on the fundamentals of the job — sometimes literally out of pocket, on weekends. That's not a serious plan for election security.
The Plan
As Secretary of State, Greg Ballard will establish a hands-on election training program for county clerks and poll workers, built and taught by the people who actually know how to run elections in Indiana: experienced county clerks themselves, working alongside the SOS's own staff.
1. A Clerk Training Boot Camp: An in-person training program for new and current clerks, run in a "sandbox" version of the statewide voter registration system — a safe practice environment where clerks can actually work through setting up an election, processing ballots, and handling problems, without touching live data. This is a complement to the state's existing legal-update sessions, not a replacement for them — it's the hands-on, how-to-actually-do-the-job piece that's been missing. It will be built and taught by a team of experienced, sitting and former county clerks.
2. Finally Funding and Implementing Poll Worker Training — the Smart Way: State law already authorizes the Secretary of State office to provide standardized poll worker and county election official training. It's never been funded or built. The Secretary of State's office can't train every poll worker in every precinct directly — but it can equip county clerks to do it well, consistently, and with real support. Ballard's plan does that through three steps:
- A standardized SOS curriculum. The office will produce a professional training curriculum — video modules and printed materials, customized to the specific voting systems used across Indiana's counties — covering the issues that come up over and over: acceptable voter ID, provisional ballots, electioneering rules, chain-of-custody paperwork, and keeping lines moving without cutting corners. Every county starts from the same playbook.
- Train-the-trainer for Clerks. Clerk boot camp attendees are trained not just to run elections, but to deliver poll worker curriculum locally — with the materials, timing, and talking points to run an efficient in-person session for their own poll workers.
- SOS regional field staff support counties directly. The Secretary of State's office already has staff positioned around the state. This plan puts those existing employees to work helping county clerks plan and run local poll worker sessions — answering questions, troubleshooting, and making sure every county, especially smaller ones without the staff to build training themselves, has real support.
3. Consistency Across All 92 Counties: Right now, Indiana effectively runs 92 different election systems, because there's no shared standard for the hands-on side of how clerks and poll workers are trained. This plan creates a common baseline of practical knowledge and best practices so that every Hoosier's vote is handled the same rigorous way, no matter what county they live in.
Indiana needs a professional election-training system built around demonstrated competency, clear authority, practical experience, accountability, and continuous improvement.
This is what election security actually looks like: not slogans, but making sure the people running our elections — including the poll workers on the front lines every Election Day — have the training and support to do it right, every time. It's a plan built to work, using the people and the laws already in place.