Hoosiers who believe Indiana should scrap its secure electronic voting machines in favor of hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots may never know how many members of the General Assembly share their opinion.
The leader of the Republican-controlled House used a procedural maneuver Thursday to prevent state Rep. Curt Nisly, R-Milford, from getting a chamber vote on his proposal to return Indiana elections solely to paper ballots.
Nisly, a professional computer programmer, said he has no objection to technology. But he said more than 50% of Americans don't trust voting machines and want to go back to marking paper ballots to elect candidates for local, state and national office.
"Elections are based on trust," Nisly said. "We need to be able to trust that the vote we cast is the vote that is counted."
Under Nisly's proposed amendment to House Bill 1116, Indiana's paper ballots would have to be printed on security paper and counted by hand after the polls close.
The legislation also would have permitted a machine ballot count subsequently be used to verify the hand count, a reversal of the current process where a hand count can be requested to verify an electronic vote tally.
State Rep. Dan Leonard, R-Huntington, objected to Nisly's proposed amendment. He claimed the change was not germane to the underlying legislation as required by House rules.
House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, concurred with Leonard's objection, and the House then voted 83-10 — via electronic device — to deny Nisly a vote on his proposal by sustaining the ruling of the chair.
Nisly unsuccessfully argued his proposal could not be more related to the underlying proposal, which limits who is permitted to submit a mail-in ballot and speeds the required use of paper audit trails for electronic voting machines — but provides no funds for counties to convert their machines.
Leonard said his objection stemmed from Nisly creating a different statutory regime for voting in Indiana instead of modifying specific components of the legislation as House rules direct.
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