The “what’s-in-it-for-us?” factor shouldn’t matter. Indiana lawmakers should take any meaningful steps that lead to more Hoosiers voting, even if they don’t need such changes to keep winning elections.
On top of that, organizations in communities such as Terre Haute and surrounding towns can help boost their local voter turnouts.
Indiana and Vigo County need more residents to participate in the election process.
The state ranked ninth from the bottom in turnout of eligible voters in the 2024 general election, according to estimates by the respected U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida. (Its calculations essentially include residents 18 years or older who aren’t disqualified from voting by their states.) An estimated 58.64% of Indiana’s voting-eligible population cast ballots in the Nov. 5 election. That’s 2,974,193 Hoosiers out of a possible 5,071,615.
Trailing Indiana (in order) was New York, Tennessee, Mississippi, Texas, West Virginia, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Hawaii.
The bottom-10 of voter turnout isn’t unfamiliar territory for Indiana. The state ranked 46th in the previous presidential election in 2020, and 50th in the 2022 midterm election.
Meanwhile, Vigo County’s 2024 turnout among registered voters — the most readily available measure of local numbers — was 59%. Vigo tied for 12th-worst turnout with Scott County in rural southern Indiana, according to figures from the Indiana Election Division. The lowest-turnout counties range from those with larger metros (Marion, Allen, Lake, Vanderburgh, Elkhart, Tippecanoe, St. Joseph and Vigo) to the more sparsely populated (Switzerland, Fayette, Grant, Starke and Scott).
Many of those counties have high poverty rates, like Vigo.
In its 2021 biannual report, the Indiana Bar Foundation’s Indiana Civic Health Index recommended the Indiana General Assembly take steps, already in place in high voter-turnout states, to raise civic participation at the polls. The Index’s goal was to lift Indiana from the nation’s bottom-10 in voter turnouts to the top-10. The Index recommended legislators adopt automatic voter registration through, for example, license branch transactions; same-day registration, allowing eligible voters to register right before they vote (made verifiable by Indiana’s voter-ID law); no-excuse-needed absentee voting; and Election Days longer than the current 12 hours.
The Legislature did none of those things.
The 2023 Index report pointed that out, saying, “None of these policies were considered by the Indiana General Assembly, and it is fair to predict that the legislature is not inclined to enact any of them for the foreseeable future. Thus, the principal influencer of turnout in Indiana will continue to be registered voters’ perceived intensity of the election contests.”
Instead, the organizations behind the Index focused on voter registration.
A twist in the situation emerged in the 2024 election, though. Indiana Republicans have resisted more accessible voting, and favored more restrictions, based on the outdated assumption that larger turnouts favor their rivals, the Democrats. Somehow in the latest election cycle, party officials convinced former president (and now president-elect) Donald Trump that his rants against early-voting and vote-by-mail were hurting his chances of victory. So he urged his backers to take advantage of those options (while also decrying them), and he won.
That development should give Trump-abiding state lawmakers permission to implement improved voter access in Indiana. Of course, they should do that, regardless of whether such changes help their political party retain its commanding power.
Yet it seems there is little political incentive — and, thus, motivation — for the Republican super-majority Legislature to pursue automatic voter registration, same-day registration, no-excuse absentee voting or extended Election Day hours in the upcoming 2025 session.
Bill Moreau, head of the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation and a co-author of the Civic Health Index, noted the uphill battle for healthier voting laws.
“Unmotivated Hoosier voters have figured out that the combination of the Electoral College and gerrymandered legislative maps have pre-ordained the winners of those elections,” Moreau said late last month. “Even statewide elections are no longer competitive. One could argue that it would be completely irrational for those in power to enact policies to encourage participation and competition, unless you believe in representative democracy.”
In Vigo County, the League of Women Voters chapter hopes to broaden the network of groups encouraging more voting, which could allow the county to become a state leader.
“It requires an ‘all hands on deck approach’ to overcome many of the challenges our residents have when it comes to voter access and engagement, said Carly Schmitt, co-chair of the League’s local chapter.
“The demographic characteristics of our county, particularly the high poverty rate, greatly contribute to the lower level of voter turnout in our county compared to others in the state,” Schmitt continued. “Given this, it is critical for community groups, government entities, and the political parties to actively promote voter registration and information to the broad landscape of the public. This includes not just how to register and vote, but why voting is important and that the choices we make on Election Day directly impact our lives.”
The League established a platform for such a unified effort. Its Working Group on Voter Engagement targets populations of voters who aren’t typically active and “find it difficult to undergo the many steps to becoming a voter,” Schmitt explained.
“Moving forward, we hope community organizations — the political and those that are not — will be interested in working with us to encourage voter participation and civic engagement,” she added.
It’s the best option, realistically.
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