Senate bills to close Indiana primary elections, reduce early voting days die. Could they come back?
Two Indiana Senate bills that might have made it harder for Hoosiers to vote have died, just before the halfway point of the legislative session.
Senate Bill 201 would have closed primary elections in Indiana to allow only people affiliated with a specific party to vote in that party's primary election. Senate Bill 284 would have shrunk the state's early voting period from 28 days to 14.
Both bills, carried by Republican senators, passed through legislative committees earlier this month but are now considered dead after the authors did not open them up for amendments on the Senate floor before a deadline to do so on Wednesday.
Sen. Mike Gaskill, R-Pendleton, who authored SB 201 on closed primaries, said there wasn't enough support for the bill to pass the Senate. A similar bill filed in the House from Whiteland Republican state Rep. Michelle Davis also died this week after it did not receive a committee hearing.
Similar language to all three bills could potentially be amended into other legislation during the second half of the legislative session, but it's unlikely that the concepts would pass the full Senate if they couldn't garner enough support the first go-around.
More: Indiana voter turnout is almost last in the nation. Many are working to turn this around.
The closed primary bills were filed after ReCenter Indiana, a centrist group, encouraged Democrat-leaning voters to cast ballots in the six-way Republican gubernatorial primary last year. The Democratic primary for the 2024 race was uncontested.
Gaskill said he plans to continue to study the issue and share information with fellow lawmakers and political parties around the state. In recent years, there has been a national trend of Republican-leaning states closing primaries.
'I think it's something that people in Indiana are just completely unfamiliar with and a little cautious about,' Gaskill said. 'So it's fine to move a little slower on that and see if the appetite changes in the future.'
Questions sent to a press secretary for Byrne about his bill reducing the number of early voting days were not immediately returned Wednesday evening. During the bill's hearing in the Senate's Committee on Elections, Byrne argued that some counties struggle to staff voting centers for the 28-day period for Hoosiers.
While those two bills died, the Indiana Senate earlier this month advanced a different bill seeking to prohibit the use of student IDs for voting. Senate Bill 10, from Republican Sen. Blake Doriot, passed on a vote of 39-11. It now heads to the House.
Contact IndyStar state government and politics reporter Brittany Carloni at brittany.carloni@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter/X @CarloniBrittany.
Contact IndyStar state government and politics reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on Twitter @kayla_dwyer17.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana Senate bills to close primary elections, slim early voting die
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