New Vanderburgh elections chief: 'I don’t intimidate very easily'

EVANSVILLE — It took only 29 seconds and no one else attended, but there's nothing short or small about the responsibility Marsha Abell Barnhart assumed Thursday when she took an oath to run the 2024 election in Vanderburgh County.

Barnhart was sworn in as a caretaker county clerk by Clerk Carla Hayden, who then stepped away four months before her four-year term in office was to end. Thursday was 68 days before the election.

As Hayden handed off her office keys and parking permit to Barnhart afterward, the two women chuckled about their role reversal. Nearly 28 years ago, when Barnhart was elected county clerk, it was she who swore in Hayden as her chief deputy. There was comedy even in the parking permit handoff: Barnhart will have the same parking spot she used in her first stint as clerk from 1997 until 2005.

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But running an election headlined by the polarizing Trump-Harris presidential race is no joke.

Neither is the reason Hayden retired rather than run another election involving former President Donald Trump: She said she could no longer deal with Trump supporters who, she said, were demanding confidential voting records and threatening to come to polling places. The group led by conservative activist Ken Colbert countered that Hayden didn't understand the vote records being requested, records they insisted would not reveal how people voted.

Hayden is done haggling over it.

"Relief," the veteran clerk said when asked what she was feeling just before swearing in Barnhart.

"It was a lot about (Colbert and others supporting him)," Hayden said. "That was the catalyst. If everything was the same as it has been in years past, I'd still be here."

But Hayden acknowledged Colbert's group hasn't requested any vote records recently. Barnhart? She said she will work with Colbert and his supporters if they do make requests, but there's a new sheriff in town.

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"Carla (Hayden) and I are different personalities," she said. "I don’t intimidate very easily. I’ll give them everything that they’re entitled to by law, but they’re not entitled to disrupt my office."

Colbert, for his part, said he and his group will continue to seek answers about the volume of votes cast and trends in tabulation. He has said all along that the goal is to ensure elections are free and fair. But others around the country who have sought the same records from local elections officials have said their aim is to demonstrate voter fraud that they believe robbed Trump of victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Barnhart should be prepared for more public records requests, Colbert said.

"We've got new ones that's coming her way," he said.

Some of the requests should be simple. From the Vanderburgh County Election Board, the group wants lists of certified precinct committee members for both major parties.

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It's not the same clerk's office

Barnhart said the county clerk's staff of more than 50 includes three who she hired herself before she left office nearly 20 years ago. She has gotten to know many staff members since local Republicans chose her over Colbert in a caucus in May to serve the remainder of fellow Republican Hayden's term. She said she plans no staff or policy changes.

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The GOP already has a candidate to succeed Hayden in the Nov. 5 general election — County Treasurer Dottie Thomas. But Thomas didn't want to be caucused into the office before the election, saying she has too many commitments to fulfill as treasurer. Democrats don't have a candidate, so Thomas will be the next clerk.

None of this should be taken to mean that Barnhart is assuming control of the same Vanderburgh County Clerk's Office she left in January 2005.

When Barnhart was clerk, early in-person voting was done the old-fashioned way — on machines in the Election Office in the Civic Center.

The first stirrings of change would not come until three days after the 2006 general election, when then-County Clerk Susan Kirk told the Courier & Press she would ask the Evansville-Vanderburgh Library Board to consider allowing the use of three branch libraries for 15 to 20 days before the 2007 city election.

Kirk later said she had been inspired by revelations from her two brothers in Florida that they had cast early ballots at satellite voting centers. The sight of voters waiting in long lines at the polls for the 2006 election made an impression, too.

Early voting at libraries got off to an inauspicious start in Vanderburgh County, with the library board approving just one site for the 2007 election and a mere 55 voters taking advantage of it. It looked like a high-minded idea that would die on the vine for lack of support.

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Then Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's epic spring 2008 battle for the Democratic presidential nomination happened. In all, 6,744 Vanderburgh County voters cast early ballots in libraries or at the Election Office.

Early in-person voting at libraries has been a fixture ever since. It starts this year on Oct. 8 . The clerk's schedule can be found online at Early Voting: In-Person / Vanderburgh County (evansvillegov.org) .

And those voting machines that Barnhart knew in her earlier stint? Forget it. This time she'll be working with still-relatively new state-mandated "voter-verified paper audit trail" technology.

"That was the only thing I felt the least bit uncomfortable with," Barnhart said. "It's different machines, but the basics are still the same."

But it's not all about running the election.

The clerk — the full title is clerk of the Circuit Court — is also the record keeper and financial officer for the courts. Every case filed in Vanderburgh County, whether it's a divorce, a murder charge, a small claims case or a traffic ticket, comes through the clerk's office. The clerk also issues and records marriage licenses and sets up new child support arrangements.

This year, the job paid $79,728 annually.

The last rodeo

Hayden joked Thursday that she plans to sleep for a month now that she's retired.

"I've got some stuff at home I want to do, and then my dad's got some stuff he wants me to do," she said.

After that: a solo 10-day Mediterranean cruise in November, stopping at points in Italy and Spain, among others. Hayden will fly to London, too.

"I may never get to that part of the world again, so I'm going to make the most of it," she said.

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Barnhart, who has been retired for years, put off a train trip across Canada with her husband to spend these next four months filling in for Hayden. She didn't want to do it, she said, but Kirk wasn't available and no one else had the requisite experience.

This is the last rodeo for her, Barnhart firmly declared.

She's been Evansville city clerk and county clerk. She's been a member of the budget-writing County Council and the Board of Commissioners, county government's three-member executive governing body. She was willing to be pressed into service one last time, she said, because the community has been good to her.

"I’m 73 years old," Barnhart said. "I’m really too old to be back there.

"This community, to flourish, needs young people to run it. You need those people that are wanting to build their resume and anxious, you know, and have got a lot of energy. That’s not me. I’m not building a resume. I’m through."

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: New Vanderburgh elections chief: 'I don’t intimidate very easily'