Patriotism motivated the county’s new clerk, Sondra Sixberry, to run for public office.
“I have a father and grandfather who served this country, and fortunately they came back from service. But a lot of the men and women they served with didn’t. We’re at a time and place in our country where we need people to step up,” said Sixberry, who began serving as county clerk on July 29.
Sixberry believes that more people running for office will build trust in the American democratic system — not just elections, but representation.
As county clerk, she’s now secretary of the election board and her office partners with the board to conduct our elections.
With fewer than 40 days leading up to the Nov. 5 elections, Sixberry and her office are ramping up. On top of the usual record keeping — marriage licenses, passports, naturalization records, wills, and court documents — the office phone has been ringing with people checking their voter registration. They can also check their voter registration online at vote411.org and vote.gov, just as they can file for a marriage license online in about 10 minutes. But Sixberry knows some people prefer the face-to-face connection.
The last day to register to vote in the November elections is Oct. 7. For those already registered who have requested mail-in ballots, Sixberry’s office has finished the first round of mailings. They set up a good system for processing and receiving requests, sending out the ballots and securing them to safeguard the process.
In addition, they’ve published the election schedule, set the early voting and election day locations, recruited most of their volunteers, and aligned with Unison, the election software provider. To make sure everything on the machines is up-to-date, the machines go through a logic and accuracy test. On Oct. 1, they conduct the annual machine test, an election year event that is always open to the public.
Sixberry and her staff have also discussed emergency backup plans with the county’s emergency management group. They set up contingency plans should someone be sick at the polls, a weather incident causes a problem, or, in the case of other emergencies, for the sheriff’s department deployments to be close on hand.
All of these routines are new when a newly-elected clerk like Sixberry starts the job, but those safeguards, along with statewide efforts, exist to protect elections and keep people’s records and data safe.
Sixberry notes that the clerk’s office has access to statewide voter rolls and knows people want assurance their data is protected. After all, she knows people who’ve been hacked and knows it’s a priority for all of us to be aware and protect ourselves.
“The systems I’ve seen seem to put up some pretty good safeguards to protect that kind of data,” said Sixberry of the election safeguard efforts. In terms of Indiana’s elections, from what she’s seen, Indiana has put in some good safeguards. “When called to task — to do a headcount on an election — it seems like we have done much better than many other states.”
She noted that when dealing with computers and computer-based systems, diligence is required. She doesn’t assume any system is immune. “Entities” — she didn’t define who or what — are trying to access “every bit of data,” she said. She’d heard a report that “our IT department is constantly dealing with people trying to hack into our system.” But she credited them with doing a good job of protecting people’s data.
As a part of her job, Sixberry sits in on classes that prepare local officials for emergencies, including cyber-attacks. These classes prepare them should a cyberattack would knock out a local office, even for just a few hours. These groups, she said, are trying to protect Hoosiers from such encroachments.
Since no voter is the same as another, Sixberry weighs many reasons for the growing distrust. Sixberry believes that some people’s distrust comes from more than data vulnerability. They want to know that the money they’ve “entrusted [to the government] is being used wisely.” She believes it could be improved with more accountability and transparency.
“When I was on the campaign trail, what I heard was a lot of people just distrust the system,” Sixberry said. “If you’ve never talked to someone who holds a political office and you don’t know where they’re coming from and what encouraged them to do what they did, you shouldn’t have judgment for them.”
She also believes the lack of trust and engagement in voting is in part due to the shortage of candidates on the ballot in the county for county offices. The lack of competition in electoral races leads people to sit at home or skip voting in those races.
“So it’s not that my vote doesn’t count, but my vote doesn’t really matter because there’s only one candidate anyway,” Sixberry said.
“I was looking through some of the old records from the 1800s — we have records from back in the day,” Sixberry said. She didn’t have precise numbers, but about 8,000 people voted in the county election and four or five political parties were represented. Two or three did well enough to be within 100 votes of each other, she observed. In the present, “People have expected the government will do what we want it to do and everything will be fine. Some are realizing that maybe more of us need to step up and start participating in the process.”
“Having candidates we trust, our neighbors, running for office is a good thing,” Sixberry said.
She’s seen how Democrats and Republicans in Marion and Tippecanoe counties are active. That’s a sign of health.
Running for office is a leap, she knows. She’s a mother with children in college; she finally had the right circumstances. And she took from what her mother instilled in her to take that leap.
“If you really want to do it, you feel like you’re led to do it, then do it,” she said. “When you are given the opportunity, you do the best you can with the skills you have.”
Sixberry encourages those who don’t run for office to engage more with each other and become more active with their political party on a local level. In the meantime, she makes herself available.
As a constitutional officer, Sixberry represents the people. She feels strongly about representing the people who helped put her in this position as well as the whole community.
“I want to have an open door policy that if there’s something they want or need from my office that I’m here to listen, and then if there are things that we need to change, we will look to change them,” Sixberry said.
The League of Women Voters, a non-partisan, multi-issue organization encourages informed and active participation in government, works to increase public understanding of major policy issues and influences public policy through education and advocacy. All men and women are invited to join the LWV where hands-on work to safeguard democracy leads to civic improvement. For information, visit the website www.lwvmontcoin.org or the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County, IN Facebook page.
