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House Bill 1264 is now headed to the Indiana House of Representatives where it must receive a third reading by Feb. 5. (Photo/Xain Ballenger at TheStatehouseFile.com)

By Marilyn Odendahl

The Indiana Citizen

January 18, 2024

An election security bill that has divided county clerks was passed by the Indiana House Elections and Apportionment Committee on Wednesday a in party-line vote with fighting over the measure likely to continue.

House Bill 1264, authored by committee chair Tim Wesco, R-Elkhart, was filed a day before its first committee hearing on Jan. 10. Opponents scrambled to stop the bill, repeatedly telling the committee during their testimony that they were still reading through the measure.

The measure establishes new processes and imposes new mandates for verifying a voter’s citizenship status and residency.

On Wednesday, 13 people testified, eight in support, including county clerks and three representatives of national groups: the Opportunity Solutions Project, Heritage Foundation and Honest Elections Project. The proponents said HB 1264 would help them verify voters actually live at the addresses on their voter registration forms and are U.S. citizens.

“If our local library’s requiring our citizens to bring in a valid photo ID or current utility bill, bank statement or a government paycheck with that new address on it, I don’t see why our voter registration office can’t require the same thing,” Destry Richey, Cass County Clerk, told the committee.

However, opponents said the bill would place undue burdens on multiple groups of eligible voters and possibly prevent them from participating in elections.

“This bill will result – and some of the amendments, too, will result – in numerous erroneous cancellations of voter registrations due to false matches discriminating against immigrant citizens and reducing the accuracy of the voter rolls that, I would hope, we’re all on the same page about wanting to be as up-to-date as possible,” Ami Gandhi, director of strategic initiatives and the Midwest voting rights program for the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, said.

HB 1264 was amended with the committee agreeing by consent to remove the controversial provision allowing election officials to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program database. In place of SAVE, officials will use the “list of temporary credentials” compiled by the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

An amendment offered by Rep. Cherrish Pryor, D-Indianapolis, would have deleted the language allowing the use of “commercially available data,” such as credit reports, to verify voters’ addresses. It failed in a party-line vote, 8 to 4.

No consensus from county clerks

HB 1264 requires a voter prove he or she is a U.S. citizen by showing either a birth certificate, passport or naturalization document. Also, the amended measure requires the National Voter Registration Act official to compare the Statewide Voter Registration System with the records from the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles and if evidence exists that a registered voter is not a U.S. citizen, the individual must be contacted and given 30 days to provide proof of citizenship.

In addition, the bill places new requirements on individuals who register in person to vote. It also creates a process that county voter registration officials must follow to verify the addresses of voters who say they live at nonresidential sites and allows the use of commercially available data to verify a voter’s residential address.

Nicole Browne, Monroe County Clerk and president of the Association of the Clerks of Circuit Courts of Indiana, told the committee the association members had “two very spirited discussions” about HB 1264 but could not reach a consensus. She asked the committee to move the bill to a summer study committee to do a “cautious and more thoughtful” review of the new responsibilities that would be placed on clerks by HB 1264.

“I want to make clear, and in no uncertain terms, all 92 county clerks believe and support election security,” Browne said. “All 92 county clerks only want lawfully registered U.S. citizens to vote in Indiana elections.”

Concerns related to verifying residency

Richey, the Cass County Clerk, and Julie Roush, Tippecanoe County Clerk, recounted instances where voters had given addresses that placed them as living in a parking lot or a ditch in a corn field. Roush told of one voter who lived in a neighboring county but said he listed his business address on his voter registration so he could vote in Tippecanoe County. Richey said her office discovered a man who was registered and voting in Indiana even though he resided in Kansas.

 Rep. Cherrish Pryor pressed Richey about county clerks using credit reports to verify a voter’s address.

“What information will you be getting and how would you make sure that your information is kept secure?” Cherrish asked. “You (will) have people’s credit score, you (will know) if the people have credit cards and how much they owe. … To me, I think that if someone gets access to my credit information, that is something that I should approve and it should not be something that government has and they’re able to use it, god only knows how, and potentially sell it as well.”

Richey replied that it was her understanding that clerks would only be looking at the addresses on the credit reports. She noted county clerks probably already have voters’ Social Security numbers through SVRS, but that information can only be accessed by certain people who have been trained and have the password, passcode and special key.

“I don’t even think we’re going to be able to see your credit score or things like that,” Richey said. “It’s just being able to implement it with SVRS to make sure that (the voters’) addresses are on point and are correct.”

Angela Nussmeyer, co-director of the Indiana Election Division, who was testifying on her own behalf and not representing the IED, said she had “a very real concern” about the types of databases that could be used to crosscheck voters’ addresses. She cautioned against “using bad databases that may have old information.”

Also, she pointed out that state law currently permits election officials to use the National Change of Address program at the U.S. Postal Service. This program contains the change-of-address orders that Americans submit to the post office when they move.

“I would argue before implementing commercially available databases that are very broadly defined in this bill,” Nussmeyer said, “that we look first to the tools that we are permitted to use under state law, which would be the NCOA information, and to give that information to counties to do their ongoing list maintenance work.”

Citizenship status hiccups

Mike Smith, who introduced himself to the committee as being in his “42^nd year of election service,” talked about the potential consequences of voter fraud. He cited stats from the Pew Research Center that found 12.5% of voter registrations in the United States have some sort of inaccurate information and he said more than an estimated 3,000 noncitizens in Indiana voted in the 2020 election.

“Some assert these small numbers don’t make a difference and I say otherwise,” Smith said. “I won my first election by one vote. I lost my second by seven votes. … Shifts of just a few votes routinely change outcomes. Any illegal vote dilutes and undermines legitimate votes.”

Roush, the Tippecanoe County Clerk, testified that noncitizens are being registered to vote by the BMV. She told the story of two individuals who were on Tippecanoe County’s voter rolls, but the clerk’s office only learned of their ineligibility when their relatives called and said the two individuals did not understand what they were doing at the BMV.

“Upon investigation, it was revealed that the BMV officials claim they’re only required to ask whether an individual wants to register to vote,” Roush said. “They argue that filtering potential noncitizens during this process would discourage people from registering. However, this default procedure where the citizenship box (on the voter registration form) is automatically filled with “yes” is equivalent to facilitating perjury on a massive scale.”

Following her testimony at the hearing, Rachel Van Tyle, director of legal services at Exodus Refugee Immigration, said people are automatically registered to vote at the BMV and “that can be problematic.” She also noted that using BMV records to check citizenship status is not foolproof because the data may not be up to date.

Using the BMV information is “mildly” better than relying on the data from the SAVE program, Van Tyle, said, but it does not solve the problem. The database to provide the information the supporters of HB 1264 want does not exist, she said.

Also, Van Tyle said that from her experience, every immigrant client she speak with understands they are not allowed to vote and, while some noncitizens do falsely register to vote, they do not intend to actually vote. The bill’s intent to find noncitizens on the voter rolls could prevent naturalized citizens from voting, she said.

It’s not a privilege,” Van Tyle said of voting. “It’s a fundamental right that naturalized citizens learn about when they are studying for (the citizenship exam). … So they really need this fundamental right to vote, they earned if through their naturalization process.”

Dwight Adams, a freelance editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. 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.