By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
February 7, 2025
Of the numerous election and voting bills filed in the 2025 Indiana General Assembly session, the two bills described by Common Cause Indiana as the worst – Senate Bill 10 and House Bill 1680 – are moving through the Statehouse with little opposition from lawmakers in the GOP supermajority.
Sen. Blake Doriot, R-Goshen, author of SB 10, and Rep. Tim Wesco, R-Osceola, author of HB 1680, say their proposed legislation will make Indiana elections more secure. Both bills are dense and contain multiple provisions.
Senate Bill 10 prohibits the use of a college ID as a voter ID, requires individuals who have not voted in the two previous general elections to be removed from the voter rolls and renews the effort to get other states to join Indiana in sharing voter registration lists. House Bill 1680 requires naturalized citizens to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote; allows pollbook holders, challengers and watchers to enter and leave multiple polling places on Election Day; enables voters to challenge other voters at a primary election; prohibits any part of the voter registration form from being executed by another person; prohibits the use of a post office box or commercially available mailing box as an applicant’s address; and requires an absentee ballot be rejected if the voter does not include the date when signing.
Tuesday, SB 10 passed a third reading in the Senate with Sen. Greg Walker, R-Columbus, joining Democrats in opposing the measure. The bill has moved to the House, where Wesco has been added as a co-sponsor. Wednesday, HB 1680 was given a hearing by the House Elections and Apportionment Committee, chaired by Wesco, and passed on a party line vote.
Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales’ office is supporting both bills.
“The last thing I want to do is keep people from voting,” Doriot said during the Senate Elections Committee’s hearing on SB 10. “The first thing I want to do is to keep people from voting who shouldn’t be voting.”
However, critics counter the bills will likely keep eligible Hoosier voters from the ballot box. They say both measures are unnecessary, since no evidence exists about noncitizens voting or widespread voter fraud in Indiana elections. Moreover, they contend, if the bills become law, the state could be sued for possible violations of the U.S. Constitution and the National Voter Registration Act.
“Democracy and the American dream mean making voting more accessible, not less,” Sen. J.D. Ford, D-Indianapolis, said during the third reading of Doriot’s bill. “Senate Bill 10 is not about securing elections. It’s about choosing who gets to participate in those elections.”
Indiana’s voter ID law, first enacted in 2006, required all registered voters to present an identification card with their photograph when they went to the polls to vote. The statute withstood a challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court and today is considered among the strictest voter ID laws in the country.
SB 10 adds another limitation by specifically excluding the IDs issued to students at state colleges and universities from being used as voter identification.
At the committee hearing on the bill, Doriot contended college IDs were not issued under the same rigorous standards as a state driver’s license. He recalled that in a conversation about voter IDs, an official from Purdue University had told him, “We are not in the ID business for anything other than the university.” So the solution, he said, was “very simple” because a college student could do “the same thing that every one of us does on their own,” which is go to the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles and get a driver’s license or a state identification card.”
Daniel Jenkins, a student at Indiana University and voter registration director for College Democrats of Indiana, opposed SB 10 at the committee hearing, saying it would create a barrier to young voters. He told the story of his classmate who was denied an absentee ballot for the 2024 election, because her home state of Texas did not consider being away at school in another state as a valid reason for receiving a mail-in ballot. Fortunately, he said, his friend was able to register and vote in Indiana using her student ID.
Also, Jenkins said obtaining a voter ID from the BMV can be a challenge since getting to the license branch is difficult without a car. Moreover, students can struggle to produce the proper documentation, despite meeting the requirements to vote in Indiana.
“The elimination of student IDs as valid voter IDs does not do anything to strengthen our election security and only further threatens to disenfranchise Indiana residents,” Jenkins said at the hearing. “The registration process, by itself, already confirms that a registrant is a valid resident and a legal U.S. citizen. … Students spend nine months out of every year in their college communities, and certainly should be able to vote in them.”
Doriot’s and Jenkins’ arguments were echoed during the third reading of SB 10 in the Senate.
Republicans emphasized election security. They raised the specter of foreign students using their college IDs to vote and out-of-state students flashing their college IDs to vote in Indiana, while also casting a ballot in their home states.
Sen. Greg Goode, R-Terre Haute, said SB 10 clears up some confusion. Currently, students at Ivy Tech Community College cannot use their IDs to vote, because, even though they are enrolled in a state educational institution, their college ID cards do not have expiration dates. Indiana law requires that voter ID cards have dates of expiration.
“So we’re sending mixed signals, raising expectations among people who may think that their college ID can allow them to vote, when we’re wasting their time,” Goode said. “So, I think this bill provides the clarity, especially when we provide ways for individuals to obtain the identification card to vote.”
Democrats pointed out that college students who vote in Indiana have to go through the registration process and prove their eligibility to cast a ballot. The college IDs are just used to confirm the students’ identity when they go to the polls. The lawmakers also noted that college ID cards are not handed out “willy-nilly.” The cards are only given to those individuals who have successfully completed the college application and enrollment process, which includes confirming their identity.
Sen. Andrea Hunley, D-Indianapolis, said SB 10 would erect another barrier to voting in Indiana, which already has some of the lowest voter-turnout rates in the United States.
“If we really want to talk about voting security, let’s do it, and let’s do it in a way that doesn’t make it harder for people to vote,” Hunley said. “We know that voting is a cornerstone of democracy, and the pursuit of addressing a problem that doesn’t exist should not supersede that point. We all want safe and secure elections, of course, and we’ve passed a lot of legislation over the years, spent millions of dollars to ensure that our elections in this state are safe and secure. Let’s defeat this bill.”
Wesco’s House Bill 1680 brought strong opposition, too, but did not provoke many questions or much discussion from the legislators during the Elections and Apportionment Committee hearing.
Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, said HB 1680 presented “a number of dangers to Hoosier voters.” In particular, she cited to provisions that seemed to target minorities and one section, she said, could be seen as implementing literacy tests like the ones used during the Jim Crow era to keep many Blacks from the polls.
The proposed change in the code prohibiting individuals from helping another person fill out a voter registration form could be interpreted as a literacy test, Vaughn said. Previously, in order to vote, some states required people to demonstrate that they could read, write and comprehend the printed matter they were given, but the practice was outlawed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Disabled voters, individuals with limited English proficiency and individuals who are unable to read are permitted to obtain assistance while voting,” Vaughn told the committee. “It doesn’t make any sense to deny them assistance while they’re trying to register to vote, and this provision likely violates federal law because it could be construed as a literacy test.”
Rep. Ben Smaltz, R-Auburn, had questions about the bill possibly containing a literacy test, but he did not pose them to Vaughn. Instead, he asked Valerie Warycha, the Republican co-general counsel of the Indiana Election Division, whether HB 1680 could be read as preventing individuals who cannot read or write from asking another person to help them complete the voter registration form.
Warycha responded she did not read the provision as doing that. She said she interpreted the language as prohibiting people or groups from pre-filling the registration forms.
However, Smaltz raised the need to clarify that section of the bill.
“As you mentioned in your testimony a little bit ago, you have a lot of non-lawyers looking at these laws on the day in the election,” Smaltz said, referring to Warycha. “So I just want to make sure that we’re very clear that if we have someone who can’t read, they should not be disenfranchised from voting.”
Another provision that likely violates federal law, Vaughn said, is the requirement that county voter registration officials send a request for proof of citizenship to individuals who use a temporary credential as an ID when they register to vote. She said the provision “unfairly burdens naturalized citizens,” and with the state’s early voter registration deadline, could force some voters to have to cast a provisional ballot at the polling place or block others from voting altogether.
The League of Women Voters of Indiana had concerns that some of the provisions in HB 1680 would actually encourage disruptive behavior at the polls.
Barbara Tully, a member of that organization, said the language allowing pollbook holders, challengers and watchers to leave and re-enter multiple polling places at any time on Election Day would increase detrimental behavior, such as “voter intimidation, harassment of election workers or the spread of disinformation.”
Also problematic, Tully said, was the section enabling voters who reside in any precinct to challenge a voter in a primary election. “This could incentivize voters from a precinct with one set of characteristics to challenge voters or individuals in precincts with different characteristics, setting up improper partisan-based voting challenges,” she said.
SB 10 and HB 1680 both contain provisions to get Indiana officials to enter into agreements with other states to share voter registration data.
Under HB 1680, the secretary of state would be given the authority to sign memorandums of understanding with other states to check their voter rolls for people who might be registered to vote in more than one state. SB 10 goes a step farther by attempting to resurrect Indiana’s voter-data-sharing system, called IDEA (Indiana Data Enhancement Association). The 2020 law greenlighting the use of the IDEA database, which has been described as similar to Kansas’ controversial Crosscheck program, was found by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to violate the National Voter Registration Act, because the statute allowed for names to be removed from the state’s registration rolls without contacting the voter.
Sen. Greg Walker, R-Columbus, who was instrumental in the creation of IDEA and the law implementing its use, was skeptical about making another attempt to convince states to join the program. He said he had confidence in then-Secretary of State Connie Lawson and her strength as a leader to get other states to join, but he said that legal disputes and questions about IDEA’s methodology kept other states away.
“I feel like we’re trying to sell tickets on the bus with four flat tires by continuing to encourage people to join what we haven’t really figured out how to accomplish in seven years,” Walker said during the Senate debate.
Kegan Prentice, legislative director for the secretary of state, indicated his office was more receptive to the data-sharing provision in HB 1680, rather than trying to revive IDEA.
HB 1680 allows the secretary of state to enter into a memorandum of understanding with another state to share voter registration information in order to ensure the voter rolls are accurate. Prentice told the Elections and Apportionment Committee that nationally, states are tending to sign MOUs with other states individually, instead of joining some kind of national database.
“States are more and more willing to just pick the states that surround them, pick the states that people move to,” Prentice said referencing MOUs. “So we, we would plan on reaching out to states like Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Illinois, and then Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Texas, (which are) the states around us that people moved to and then sort of the southern states that people moved to.”
Matthew Kochevar, the Democratic co-general counsel for the Indiana Election Division, suggested HB 1680 be revised to let the co-directors of the Election Division – Bradley King and Angela Nussmeyer – oversee any MOUs about sharing voter registration information. The Election Division has experience with MOU agreements and the co-directors are also the state’s National Voter Registration Act officials, so they could ensure compliance with federal law, he said.
In addition, having the secretary of state enter into these agreements could leave the Election Division in the dark, Kochevar said. County election officials often call the Election Division when they have voting questions, but, since the division is not always aware of what the secretary of state’s office is doing, it might not have information about how the voter registration information is going to be shared and what the rules are for sharing.
“So maybe there’s some consideration of, if you move forward with this, make sure we’re involved and that we’re able to make sure that data is being used properly and that we’re ensuring that the counties and everyone else is following the voter registration laws, as is one of our statutory requirements,” Kochevar said.
SB 10 passed the Senate on a 39-to-11 vote and has been referred to the House.
HB 1680 is scheduled for a second reading in the House on Monday.
Dwight Adams, an 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.
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.
