ANGOLA — Five years ago when a local lawmaker tried to end straight-ticket voting in Indiana, he saw it as being on the decline.
In 2015, then-Rep. David Ober, R-Albion, introduced legislation that would end straight-party voting at a time when Indiana was one of 11 states in the U.S. that allowed the practice.
That measure never went anywhere, even as a few of the hangers-on in the U.S. dumped the practice. Indiana is now one of six states that still allows straight-ticket voting.
“I just think that it’s a bad thing for our election process,” Ober told KPC Media Group in January 2015. “A bad thing for our democracy.”
Ober’s bill didn’t get though the Legislature and straight-party voting is still a strong force in northeast Indiana, with upwards of half of all voters using the option in the booth.
“People truly use the party label as a proxy,” said Andy Downs, director of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Purdue University Fort Wayne.
Ballots can get lengthy, particularly when township races are added to national, state and county races. People won’t take the time to learn about the candidates so they use the party label to do their homework, Downs said.
Recent election data would indicate straight-party voting is not on the decline, which was one of the reasons Ober gave to end the practice.
In fact, in Steuben County straight-ticket voting almost doubled between the 2014 and 2018 general elections. In DeKalb County it increased by about 50%. When Ober’s legislation was starting to make it through the system, about 30% of voters in the two counties voted straight ticket. In the 2018 General Election, nearly 62% of Steuben County’s voters pulled a single lever. In DeKalb County in 2018, it was about 44%. In northeast Indiana, Adams County was the low, with about 25% of all voters casting straight tickets. Steuben was the high.
Straight-ticket voting in northeast Indiana is used more by Republicans than Democrats. Of the counties examined for this article, with the exception of Steuben County at 74% and Allen County at 64% straight-ticket voting rates for Democrats, Republicans made up huge majorities of straight-ticket voters in most of the counties.
More Republicans
That shouldn’t come as a big surprise seeing that the Republican Party has more registered voters than Democrats, based on primary election results, across the 3rd Congressional District.
Downs said it makes sense that Republicans outnumber Democrats when it comes to straight-ticket voting because there tend to be fewer Democratic candidates.
Democrats have also tended to produce more gadfly candidates that will steer voters to the Republican Party, Downs said.
The degree to which people vote straight tickets in northeast Indiana varies from county to county.
For this story, KPC Media Group was able to access voting data for all but two of the 11 counties that make up the 3rd Congressional District. Jay and LaGrange counties did not respond to requests for election data and it wasn’t available on the counties’ websites.
In the 2018 General Election, Adams County had the fewest straight party voters, 25% of those who cast ballots. The high was Steuben County, where 62% cast straight party votes.
Even in Allen County, where there are more Democrats than the non-urban counties in the 3rd Congressional District, Republicans tend to pull one lever in the voting booth more than Democrats. About 36% of the straight-party voters in Allen County were Democrats.
When it comes to the Libertarian Party, its straight-party voters are minimal. With the exception of Steuben County, the high at 95 voters, and Allen County, 42 voters, five or fewer Libertarians voted straight party in the 2018 General Election in the district’s other seven counties that have data included in this article.
While Indiana remains one of six states in the U.S. that still allows straight ticket voting, there was a law change in 2016 that abolished straight-ticket voting in at-large races.
Ober made a couple attempts to end the practice but his legislation was voted down. Ober is no longer serving in the Legislature; he left his seat to take a position with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission.
Even though Ober wanted to end the practice that tends to favor Republican candidates, he didn’t think forcing people to mark multiple boxes on their ballots would hurt Republicans because he thought they always put forward the best candidates, Downs said.
Good candidates suffer
Downs said straight-ticket voting tends to hurt excellent candidates, typically from the Democratic Party, because people do not take the time to learn about them or what they stand for.
Then the voter closes his or her eyes and pulls the R lever and because so many other Republicans have done the same, that excellent candidate loses, no matter what the county.
When you can assume that a plurality of voters are going to pull the Republican lever only, a Democratic candidate often enters election day in the hole.
A couple examples from the 2018 election stand out.
In the race for House District 51 in the Legislature, incumbent Rep. Denny Zent, R-Angola, defeated Democratic challenger Michael Stephenson, 75%-25%. Based on the Steuben County results, Zent received about 4,200 votes from straight-party voters and Stephenson only received 4,285 votes total, putting him at a clear disadvantage right out of the gate. That doesn’t include data from LaGrange County.
On the congressional level, it was obvious that Republican straight-party voters put Democratic challenger Courtney Tritch at a clear disadvantage to first-term incumbent Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican.
“She ran a good campaign. Any way you look at it, she ran a good campaign,” Downs said.
Tritch had good name recognition from her previous work with the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership and spent a considerable amount of time campaigning in each of the district’s counties.
Still, even without statistics available from LaGrange and Jay counties, straight-party Republican voters sunk Tritch’s chances from the get-go. Nine of the district’s 11 counties saw 70,310 Republicans vote a straight ticket. Tritch collected 86,610 votes total and Banks had 158,927. Banks carried about 65% of the vote to Tritch’s 35%.
“The numbers just weren’t there,” Tritch said after the election.
And unless something changes, Downs said, it looks like it’s going to be a long time before a Democrat can be competitive in this congressional district.