Voters casting straight-party ballots in this November’s general election will have an added step not seen before, and some election officials are concerned the changes will present unnecessary challenges. In March, Indiana Public Law 21-2016 went into effect, after Indiana Senate Enrolled Act 61 passed this year’s legislative session and was signed into law by Gov. Pence. The main crux of the bill states that straight-party tickets no longer count for partisan races in which more than one candidate can be chosen, specifically at-large races. Prior to the new law, voters could select their straight party choice in the beginning of the ballot, and this would in effect cast a vote for all candidates in that party without any extra steps, if no other candidates were chosen separately. In this election, they will have to manually select any at-large candidates for whom they wish to vote.
Indiana Republican Sen. Greg Walker, who authored the bill with Republican Sen. Randall Head, said the main goal was to take away unclear logic in Indiana code that caused complications in interpreting ballots where a voter marked straight party, but strayed from that in at-large sections.
“In an attempt to make the vote true and accurate, we had to deal with the error in the logic as it was in the code,” Walker said. “If someone votes a straight ticket, let’s say they vote Democrat and then they mark a single Democrat county at-large candidate, did they intend to vote (only) for that one candidate, or are they trying to vote four times if there were four Democrats on the ballot?”
This can also apply when a voter casts a straight Democrat ticket, then chooses one Republican, for instance, in the at-large race and makes no other marks. “Do they want to vote for two of the Democrat candidates, and how would you know which two of those three to include?” Walker said. “The complexity is greatly reduced (with this law.) I think if anything, going forward, there will be fewer opportunities for challenge than more.”
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