It comes down to this: Is voting a right or a privilege?
For too long, Indiana has presumed the latter. We’ve looked for ways to make voting just a little harder for the people who have the most trouble voting.
Voter ID law, check. Polls closing at 6 p.m. on Election Day, making it impossible for some workers to get there, check. Enrollment in a flawed interstate voter-purge operation that enabled Indiana officials to cancel registrations of people who hadn’t voted in several elections without even talking with the voters involved, check. A step back: A federal court ruled that process invalid and issued a preliminary injunction; last year, a federal appeals court upheld that ruling. The case is now back in district court.
Now, Gov. Eric Holcomb and Secretary of State Connie Lawson face one of the biggest voting-rights-related decisions in Indiana history: Whether to allow “no-excuse” vote by mail in this fall’s election. Given the uncertainties of the pandemic at this point, failure to act could mean thousands of Hoosiers could face the choice of possibly being exposed to COVID-19 or being disenfranchised.
Opponents of Indiana’s efforts to make voting harder often presume they are efforts by Republicans to eliminate minority, poor and elderly voters who might be more likely to vote Democratic.
“No-excuses” vote by mail isn’t really a partisan issue. Both parties have instituted such systems in other states; both Democrats and Republicans have won in places it is used. Given Indiana’s history on this subject, though, Holcomb and Lawson’s failure to approve such a system could be read in the worst possible light.
The current dilemma stems from a good decision Holcomb and Lawson made as the pandemic descended this spring. They postponed the primary election and bypassed the rule requiring voters who wished to cast a ballot by mail to be 65 years old or meet one of several other specific criteria.
Voters could still vote in person early or on Election Day. State officials decided to keep in place an unfortunate requirement that mailed ballots must be received at the polls by noon on Election Day, an arbitrary deadline six hours before polls closed.
The results? A decent turnout by Indiana standards, more voting by mail than ever – and Hoosiers who mailed in their votes were able to avoid possible exposure to the coronavirus.
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