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By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
March 1, 2024
Although the Indiana Senate’s passage on Thursday of the contentious election legislation, House Bill 1264, may not have been in doubt, Democratic senators continued questioning the purpose and potential adverse impacts of the measure.
House Bill 1264, authored by Rep. Timothy Wesco, R-Osceola, and sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Mike Gaskill, R-Pendleton, passed the Indiana Senate on Thursday by a 34-to-13 vote. The Democratic caucus plus four Republicans – Sens. Ron Alting of Lafayette, Eric Bassler of Washington, Vaneta Becker of Evansville and Greg Walker of Columbus – all voted against the bill.
The measure has been described by supporters as an election security bill, but Sen. Andrea Hunley, D-Indianapolis, pointed to testimony from the committee hearings and from Wesco that consistently assured lawmakers that Indiana’s elections are secure.
“In 2020, Indiana ranked 46th for voter turnout and in 2022, we were 50th for voter turnout. What I’m wondering about House Bill 1264 is what problem we’re trying to solve for?” Hunley asked. “Is it a worry that if we expand voting that … we will hear the voice of the people, that we will ensure that more Hoosiers participate in the voting process?”
Gaskill presented HB 1264 to the Senate. No other Republican senator spoke in support or in opposition to the bill.
House Bill 1264 has drawn steady criticism since it was introduced at the start of the 2024 General Assembly session. The bill includes several provisions but most concerning are the proof-of-residency requirements. If the measure becomes law, county voter registration officials will be required to verify the residency of voters who have nonresidential addresses and data from the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles must be used to confirm the citizenship status of registered voters. Also, the Indiana Secretary of State can use “commercially available data,” possibly including credit reports, to double-check voters’ residency.
Voting rights organizations Common Cause Indiana and the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights told legislators the bill likely violates state and federal constitutional protections and will bring lawsuits if it becomes law.
The Association of the Clerks of Circuit Courts of Indiana could not reach a consensus among its members about HB 1264. Some clerks spoke in favor of the bill, saying they have discovered voters on their rolls who either do not live in their counties or are not U.S. citizens, while others raised concerns about the impact the bill could have on first-time voters, especially those with unique or “culturally identifying” last names.
However, during the first hearing on the bill at the Jan. 10 meeting of the House Elections and Apportionment Committee, Nicole Browne, president of the association, told the lawmakers the clerks support secure elections.
“We stand strong on election security,” Browne said.
Senate minority leader Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis, said HB 1264 was not an election security bill, but, rather, a voter registration bill that would create hurdles to the process of getting registered to vote.
He and Sen. Lonnie Randolph, D-East Chicago, questioned Gaskill about how the bill would impact young adults who are registering to vote for the first time. The Democratic senators pointed out that those just turning 18 may not have the utility bill or government check or other document that could be used to prove they reside at their stated address. Also, if they are at college and want to register to vote in the college town, their driver’s license might have the address of their home community.
Randolph said the requirements the bill places on voters may discourage many young adults from even trying to register.
“It’s tough to try to convince them their obligation, they duty, in my opinion, is to participate in the system by registering to vote and voting,” Randolph said. “Then you ask them to do these things and they’re going to say, ‘Well, look, I’m having fun, I’m enjoying my life, I got no time for this.’ So it seems like we’re compounding the conditions of requiring people to participate in the system.”
Gaskill replied, “It’s a lot more complicated world. You’ve got to have an ID to get on an airplane.”
Randolph countered, “That’s kind of different because we have a constitutional right to vote. We don’t have a constitutional right to fly on an airplane.”
Monday, Sens. Hunley and J.D. Ford, D-Indianapolis, offered amendments to HB 1264. All were defeated.
Ford offered two amendments. One would have allowed Indiana to join ERIC (the Electronic Registration Information Center), which, Ford said, would enable voter registration officials to obtain national change-of-address information and identify which voters on the state’s voter rolls may have moved. The other amendment would have required the BMV to train its employees on voter registration to ensure they do not register ineligible individuals to vote.
Democrats voted in favor of both of Ford’s amendments. The amendment on the adoption of ERIC failed 38-11 with Alting and Greg Walker joining the Democrats and the amendment on training BMV workers failed 39-10 with Walker voting in support.
Hunley’s amendment would have deleted the provision allowing the secretary of state to access commercially available data. HB 1264 lists “data from a credit agency” as an example of this kind of information that could be used by the secretary of state.
Describing her proposal as safeguarding privacy, Hunley noted HB 1264 does not place any limits on what the secretary of state can do with the data or with whom it could be shared. She said the secretary of state could hypothetically sell the data or turn it over to the Indiana attorney general’s office of the Indiana treasurer.
“Here we are talking about data privacy and really throwing all caution to the wind and just say, ‘Yes, state, have our data to do with it what you will,’ which is really, really concerning,” Hunley said. “It’s also concerning not just that we’re going to give our data to an office, but we also are not setting any guardrails around the usage of that data.”
Sen. Mike Young, R-Indianapolis, challenged Hunley, saying the bill does not require the secretary of state to use credit card information and, he said, the bill appears to limit the secretary to just accessing the addresses. Also, he said, consumers’ credit information is protected by federal laws.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with checking an address” Young said, explaining the bill allows the state to compare the address on its voter registration rolls with those from an outside entity like a credit reporting company. “I think we want to make sure people are eligible to vote. But this doesn’t disqualify somebody from voting just because we might find somebody’s address is incorrect.”
Hunley responded while voters’ addresses should be verified, better information is available from the U.S. Postal Service.
“We can’t use bad data to create bad policy,” Hunley said. “I hope that we’re seeing that this really is problematic legislation and that it has absolutely no guardrails on what can be done with that information. Yes, it’s supposed to be addresses, but (the bill) doesn’t say that’s all it can be.”
Hunley’s amendment was defeated 34-14. Republican Sens. Alting, Bassler, Becker, Walker and Sue Glick, R-LaGrange, voted with Democrats in support of the failed amendment.
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.
