07

Dwight Adams
The Indiana Citizen
May 7, 2024

Foreboding skies and an intermittent raindrop didn’t dissuade voters from entering the Sheridan Community Center in northern Hamilton County to cast their ballot in the Indiana primary for 2024.

It’s located in House District 24, which has an open seat, since Rep. Donna Schaibley, a Republican from Carmel, announced late last year that she wouldn’t seek reelection after serving for a decade in the Indiana General Assembly.

Voters interviewed Tuesday in Sheridan and outside the Jill Perelman Pavilion on 3000 W.116^th St. in the far southern end of the district (and county) expressed both their pride in voting in the primary as well as strong opinions about the election process in Indiana today, including crossover voting.

Phillip Cupa, a Sheridan resident and longtime plumber, said he votes in every election, adding “I care about my country and my state.”

“It’s my civic duty,” Elizabeth Vannoy, of Carmel, said about voting. “It’s how the government is set up. If you are not going to follow the format, then you really can’t complain.”

House District 24, which comprises much of Hamilton County and a portion of Boone County, is one of the Indiana districts that were the focus of an effort by ReCenter Indiana to encourage “crossover voting.” The bipartisan nonprofit and PAC, which says it wants to help more moderates get elected in Indiana, has raised a half dozen or so billboards in major cities across the state with the message “Even Democrats can vote in the Republican primary.”

Crossover voting usually means one party encouraging its registered voters to vote for the most extreme candidate running in the other party’s primary in hopes that that extremist will win and be easier to defeat in the general election.

However, ReCenter has a different goal in mind. By encouraging Democrats to bypass their own party and instead vote for the Republican candidate who most aligns with their views, the nonprofit’s hope is that more centrist candidates will eventually be elected to office in Indiana – and thereby be more reflective of the average Hoosier voter’s viewpoint.

Despite formerly being a “staunch Democrat,” who said he now votes for Republicans, Cupa doubted that crossover voting would become common. He said that it would “lead to a lot of disappointed people,” who would end up voting for candidates whom they didn’t know much about.

Vannoy also didn’t like the idea of crossover voting, calling it “too manipulative.” “That’s playing games,” she said. “It takes away from voting for the reasons we’re supposed to vote.”

The Sheridan Community Center attracted a trickle of voters shortly after noon on Tuesday, while a steady, if leisurely, flow of voters was seen entering Perelman Pavilion later in the afternoon. An attempt to interview Sheridan poll workers to see if they faced any voting-related issues, and to check on the voter participation rate there, was stymied by a Hamilton County Republican Party official’s demand that a journalist receive prior credentialing from the GOP or their Democratic counterparts before asking questions – which wasn’t required at polling places in other Indiana counties.

The voters interviewed by The Indiana Citizen were eager to talk outside the polling places about the current state of Indiana’s elections. Voter registration and participation has been declining in recent years with the Indiana Secretary of State reporting just 24 percent of registered Hoosier voters casting ballots in the 2020 primary, the last presidential election year. The 2024 Indiana primary also was dominated by candidates from one of the two major parties; a Citizen analysis found that there were 7,551 Republicans running for office – nearly 87 percent of the total number of candidates – compared with 1,173 Democrats.

Cupa, one of the voters in Sheridan, said the imbalance of candidates was “a party problem,” adding that he turned away from the Democratic Party, because it “moved away from me and my values.”

He said his two main issues, the economy and immigration, drew him to the polls on Tuesday. When asked whether he thought Indiana elections were safe, he said, “I do, simply by the fact that they require an ID.”

Lyle Padgett, 67, of Sheridan, said he didn’t like the candidate imbalance, adding that Democrats or Republicans should have “equal rights to run.” The Army veteran also said he tries to vote in every election but isn’t surprised by the continued low voter turnout in the state.

Padgett said he thinks voters may be turned off from voting, because they think “no matter what I do, they’re (the political establishment) going to put in whomever they want.”  “(Voters) just don’t have confidence in the voting system anymore,” he said.

Christine Bednar, who cast her ballot at Perelman Pavilion, said the low voter participation rate in primaries in the state “is not very good.” She said that might be because “people are too busy” and also because Indiana’s primary is so late in the election cycle that the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are already decided by the time the state gets around to voting.

Bednar also said she is tired of being bombarded by election-related phone calls and negative campaigning. “Instead of telling me who not to vote for, I would rather they tell me why I should vote for them,” she said.

When asked whether she supported crossover voting, Bednar’s friend, Jennifer Jones, said “an upside” might be “getting less extreme people” running for office. “The majority is not good on either side,” Jones said, “because you don’t have motivation to find the middle.”

Rosemary Vannoy, 20, who accompanied her mother, Elizabeth, to the polls at Perelman Pavilion and voted in person for the first time, said “some younger people think their vote doesn’t matter. But if they don’t cast their vote, then it really doesn’t.”

Elizabeth Vannoy said she prefers more moderate candidates, steering clear of extremes on either the far left or far right. But she also sees the scarcity of Democratic candidates in Indiana as a problem.

“I do think there should be both sides represented,” she said. “That might factor in to why people don’t vote – if they think that no one represents them.”

Dwight Adams is a freelance editor and writer based in Indianapolis. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.

The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org