I think everyone agrees that Indiana’s elections are safe and secure, which makes a move by Senate Republicans to hamper voting even more perplexing.
The chamber collected three bills that would’ve made significant changes to Indiana’s election system without a convincing explanation why.
The trio of bills sat collecting amendments day after day — indicating their support was tenuous at best. Two died on Wednesday after sitting for two weeks on the calendar.
The legislation would have made it harder or more complicated for voters to cast ballots, at the same time the state is scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of voter turnout. And I haven’t seen any similar efforts to ease voting.
The company line for the bills is that they make Indiana elections more secure, but they already are. Sure, an occasional person steps out of line and gets arrested — caught by systems already in place to block fraud.
One of the bills is still moving, though: Senate Bill 10.
There is no reason to suddenly block use of student IDs from public colleges and universities that meet requirements in current law. They have been accepted for decades and now Republicans have a problem with them — without a single example of misdeeds offered up.
The IDs are used simply to make sure the person voting is indeed the person registered. Poll workers look at the name to make sure it matches the poll book and then glance at the photo to match it with the person in front of them. That’s it.
The IDs have nothing to do with registering to vote, and college students still must meet those requirements.
Now these students will have to go get a driver’s license or ID card from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to vote. Some students don’t have an Indiana license because they are from out of state.
According to the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office, that is fine.
“NOTE: The intent of where students plan to return after attending college, or during summer and winter breaks, is not to be factored into the decision to approve their registration. They may register at school, if they so choose,” the agency’s website says.
Dead bills
Now let’s talk about the bills that were halted this week.
Senate Bill 284 would have cut the period of in-person early voting from 28 days to 14 days. Again, the month-long early voting has been around for years. Many people stop at their county office and vote during the week and some counties have satellite locations on the weekends.
For years, lawmakers have resisted allowing more mail-in voting by saying Indiana leads the nation in the opportunity to vote early in person. Now they want to take that away too. Why?
The reasons given were mixed. First was that most of the early voting is in the second half of the period. But that still means thousands voted in the first 14 days. And in some counties, there are so many people voting that they wait in line for hours.
There was anecdotal evidence that a few counties struggle to find poll workers, and that the measure could save money.
I, for one, don’t want minimal cost savings to be the reason to take away voting options.
The other bill to die was Senate Bill 201, which would’ve closed Indiana’s primary system. Right now, Indiana’s is partially open, meaning you can ask for whichever partisan ballot you want when you vote in a primary. No one registers specifically as a Democrat or a Republican. But a move to get Democrats to vote in the Republican gubernatorial primary last year riled up the GOP and they want to close the primary completely.
I really don’t have a dog in this fight. I just believe that the change would be chaotic at best as tens of thousands of Hoosiers no doubt would be unaware of the change and show up to vote — only to be told they can’t cast the ballot they want.
House Speaker Todd Huston (R-Fishers) said recently that he likes the current election laws and doesn’t see the need for major change. Let’s hope cooler heads prevail in tthe House.