Tribune-Star Editorial: No excuses now for restricting mail-in voting

Indiana Republican state legislators have learned to dislike voting by mail.

Former president Donald Trump has taught his followers to distrust and restrict mail-in voting almost daily since losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden by 7,059,526 votes. Trump’s claim that he was the victim of widespread voter fraud was found baseless in more than 60 court challenges in multiple states, and refuted by local, state and national election officials from his own Republican Party. Nonetheless, he has continued to repeat the canard, and Republican-dominated state legislatures, like Indiana’s, have dutifully restricted voting, as a result.

Hoosiers must have one of 11 state-approved excuses to receive a mail-in ballot for an election.

By contrast, Hoosier legislators have only flimsy excuses for not expanding mail-in voting for most or all Hoosiers.

One of their foundational excuses — Trump’s relentless attacks on any method of casting a ballot other than in-person Election-Day voting — just eroded recently. The former president has undergone an epiphany. Actually, the more accurate term is “self-serving flip-flop.” After years of denigrating early voting, absentee voting and mail-in voting, Trump has recorded a video message for a “Swamp the Vote” campaign, urging his supporters to vote “any way possible,” including by mail.

Republican campaign experts have apparently gotten Trump to understand that expanded voting methods do not favor one party or the other.

Of course, Trump’s stances and policies are frequently incoherent and mercurial. And, his endorsement of expanded voting methods like mail-in balloting came with his typical rants about being cheated. Still, as he once famously said, it is what it is — Trump has told his followers to use those varied outlets to vote, for him of course.

Thus, Republicans controlling the Indiana Statehouse should end their constriction of voting opportunities for Hoosiers. Voting by mail should be an option for any registered Indiana voter, instead of being limited to those who can offer one of those 11 excuses the GOP lawmakers find acceptable.

“They have no explanation for why Indiana still has 11 excuses in place to request an absentee ballot,” Barbara Tully, president of Indiana Vote By Mail, told the Tribune-Star earlier this week. “How is the state served by knowing why a voter can’t show up on Election Day? Nor are these excuses monitored by county election offices, who don’t have the time, money or staff to do so. So how is this even enforceable?”

It’s not. However, the law does manage to do one significant thing — it discourages people who might not vote Republican from getting involved in the electoral process. Those folks also might not be Democrats, but the state’s ruling party cannot be sure so it leaves the hurdles in place.

Voter turnouts in Indiana reflect the hoop-jumping path faced by would-be voters. The state ranked last in the nation for turnout in the 2022 election, according to the Indiana Civic Health Index. Legislators seem OK with that, given their unwillingness to expand voting access.

“There seems to be a good number of legislators in key positions who still believe the myths about fraud and aren’t interested in making mail-in voting more accessible,” said Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana. “In a state that ranked 50th for turnout in 2022, that is extremely unfortunate. Indiana lawmakers should do anything and everything at their disposal to encourage voter participation and voting by mail is an important tool in their toolbox, if only they would use it.”

More than half a million Hoosiers, including hundreds of thousands of Republicans, embraced the state’s lone foray into a universal mail-in voting option. Indiana allowed any registered Hoosier to vote by mail in the 2020 primary, when COVID-19 spread through the state, nation and world. A few months later, the Indiana Election Commission nixed the idea of allowing it in the more consequential general election. Why? In late summer of 2020, Trump was already ranting about mail-in voting, sensing the reality that he was going to lose in November.

Four years later, he is OK with it. So, Hoosier legislators — what’s your excuse now?