A threat to voters casting ballots before Election Day has been averted at the Statehouse, but the fight might not be over. Currently in Indiana, voters can cast ballots at their county clerk’s office up to 29 days before an election, even in counties that don’t allow satellite voting. But a pair of amendments that were prepared for a vote Monday but then withdrawn could have reduced that to just 10 days. Last year, nearly 40,000 people voted early in Marion County. People who do so say they like it because it’s convenient, it doesn’t interrupt their job schedules and it eliminates the possibility that a last-minute problem might cost them their vote.
“I guess it’s the freedom that I don’t have to go and do it on that day and that we have it behind us,” said one early voter.
“Well, it gives me a lot of flexibility,” another early voter said. “It’s not determined by the weather. I can go on the weekend. I can go over on my lunch hour.”
The lawmaker who drew up the amendments but didn’t introduce them, Rep.Jeffrey Thompson, R-Lizton, said people need to decide whether month-long voting is a good thing or a bad thing.
He might still bring them back as amendments to another election bill.
“It wasn’t the time to do that. Sometimes you want to wait, want to think some more, don’t want to jump off a cliff too quick,” Thompson said. “And so it may come back, and it may not. We’ll talk to other folks, be sure we have consensus, at least among some to go forward.”
Full Article: RTV6 – Threat to early voting neutralized for now as amendments pulled – Politics Story.