Ind. House committee discusses voting bill

Lake County officials testify in support of, against legislation

A House committee discussed a bill Tuesday that makes changes to the absentee vote by mail law and the ability to change election dates during an emergency, which Republican members argued will ensure election security and Democratic members argued is a form of voter suppression.

The House Elections and Apportionment Committee heard from 11 people, the majority testifying against the bill. Both directors of the Lake County Election and Voter Registration Board testified before the committee, offering different positions.

The bill — authored by Sen. Erin Houchins, R-Salem, Sen. Eric Koch, R-Bedford, and Sen. Jon Ford, R-Terre Haute — does not allow a county election office employee to write in the driver’s license number or last four digits of a Social Security number associated with a voter’s registration onto an absentee ballot application.

Instead, the bill requires the voter to write in their driver’s

license number or last four numbers of their Social Security number on their absentee ballot application that is on file with their election board office.

The bill also doesn’t allow the Indiana election commission to expand vote by mail options, and prevents the commission or the governor from changing the election date during emergencies.

Houchin said she drafted the bill after receiving emails from constituents with concerns about how the 2020 primary and general elections were held amid the pandemic “and some of the things that happened nationwide in other states.”

Houchin, citing an op-ed written by Cummins CEO Tom Linebarger, said people will likely testify that the bill is a form of voter suppression.

“We’re probably going to hear testimony today that what we’re trying to do in this bill is voter suppression. I vehemently disagree,” Houchin said.

On the other side of the issue, a representative from Common Cause said that’s exactly what it does.

Julia Vaughn, Common Cause Indiana Policy Director, said the bill is “unnecessary” “ill advised” and disenfranchises voters. The bill seems to be written to address the unfounded claims of voter fraud in the 2020 general election.

“While there’s been lots of insinuations about election irregularities in 2020, they just haven’t been proven, and you cannot write election law based on rumors and innuendo. It should be based on fact,” Vaughn said.

Houchin said the state requires showing identification when voting in person, so requiring a driver’s license number or last four digits of a Social Security number on an absentee ballot application keeps the processes similar.

Lake County Election and Voter Registration Board Director Michelle Fajman said that is incorrect because when voting in person election workers are trained to look at the photo, name, expiration date, and if the ID is issued by the state — not if the driver’s license number matches the number the voter listed when registering to vote.

Getting a driver’s license is free, said Attorney General Todd Rokita.

Rep. Cherrish Pryor, D-Indianapolis, said the additional documents needed to obtain an ID cost money and getting to the offices to get the documents costs money.

An elderly voter who has voted absentee by mail for the last 20 years, Pryor said, won’t know if they registered with their driver’s license or Social Security number.

“There are a lot of elderly people that vote absentee,” Pryor said. “Do you not think that a lot of elderly people who may sometimes get confused would have problems or challenges, or is there not any concern about, what I would say, the disenfranchisement of a lot of seniors?”

Houchin said if a voter’s absentee ballot application is rejected, he or she could go through the process to correct that — which is currently being addressed in a separate bill moving through the legislature — or a travel board.

Lake County Election and Voter Registration Board Assistant Director LeAnn Angerman testified on behalf of herself and Republican board members John Reed and Michael Mellon in support of the bill.

The Indiana legislature should make decisions about elections and not pass that authority over to “another entity, especially to a board which is appointed and not accountable to the voting public,” Angerman said.

The driver’s license number or last four digits of a Social Security number requirement on the absentee ballot application “ensures the requester is the voter,” Angerman said.

“If that’s used as a method of verification then it seems counter intuitive to allow those personal identifiers to be preprinted on an application,” Angerman said.

Fajman urged the representatives to vote against the bill because, in the event of a pandemic, someone needs to take emergency action to help elections move forward. The Indiana Election Commission and the Secretary of State helped provide personal protective equipment to help run the 2020 elections safely, Fajman said.

“I think there’s a whole lot of action being taken over something that maybe only happens once every hundred years,” Fajman said.

The biggest concern, Fajman said, is the ID requirements on the absentee ballot application.

In Lake County, the staff sends out a letter to each voter when their application is rejected, Fajman said. By the time the letter makes it to the voter, Fajman said, it’ll be too late for the voter to correct the error and that voter will be disenfranchised.

It will take staff members longer to verify each absentee ballot application, Fajman said.

“There’s a whole lot of things that when you do a law you don’t realize what all goes into it and how much pressure this is going to put on us, on the staff, on the voters, and we are disenfranchising them,” Fajman said.

Stephen Fry, Eli Lilly senior vice president of human resources and diversity, said he opposed the bill and called it “a solution in search of a problem.”

“A solution that has the potential to make it more difficult for some Hoosier voters, particularly in vulnerable populations, to cast their ballot to have their voice heard,” Fry said.

Rokita said the 2020 election “was unlike any other in our history,” and some voters now don’t have confidence in the process.

As former Secretary of State, Rokita, who grew up in Munster, said he pushed for the state’s voter ID law at polling locations that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court “because of the state’s legitimate interest in combating voter fraud.”

Marjorie Hershey, professor emeriti of political science at Indiana University Bloomington, previously said she was part of a lawsuit opposing the state’s voter ID law for suppressing votes of minority and disadvantaged voters. While the voter ID law was upheld, many judges “later turned around and said they had been mistaken.”

“Voter fraud is not a major problem in American elections. There have been studies after studies that have shown that in-person voter fraud at the polls, which is what these ID requirements are designed to get away from, is so minuscule that you can find only handfuls of cases among literally billions of votes cast,” Hershey said.