(INDIANAPOLIS) – The House has approved new limits on who can vote absentee.
If you’re disabled or over 65, you can still vote absentee. But being out of town on Election Day wouldn’t be enough — you’d have to show you’ll be gone throughout the early voting period. And if you request a ballot online, you’d have to provide your driver’s license number or the last four digits of your Social Security number.
House Speaker Todd Huston (R-Fishers) says Indiana should be proud of the expansion of early voting, giving voters four weeks to cast their ballots before Election Day. He says with that many opportunities to go to the polls, there’s less need to offer mail-in voting instead.
The House sent the bill to the Senate on a 66-28 party-line vote. Democrats argue there’s wide variation in the availability of early voting. Muncie Democrat Sue Errington says the lone early-voting location in Delaware County is at the clerk’s office, out on the edge of town. And she notes 26 states, including several staunchly Republican ones, allow you to request an absentee ballot for any reason, while deep-red Utah is among eight states which conduct their elections entirely by mail.
Both parties support a provision requiring counties with electronic voting machines to provide a verifiable paper trail in time for the 2024 presidential election. Current law gives them until the 2030 primary.
