IFA Legislative Update – Indiana First Action
IFA Legislative Update
Indiana had forty-four bills introduced this legislative season for ‘election integrity’ consideration ranging from ‘Prohibiting firearms in the polling places to Full Forensic Audits of the 2022 through 2024 elections.’ The most comprehensive bill was introduced by Senator Jon Ford, Chair of the Senate Election Committee, Senate Bill 262. Senator Ford and Representative Mike Speedy’s similar bill HB1505 addresses the use of electronic voting systems in this state by forensically imaging all components used in Indiana elections including machines, routers, servers, USB drives, central logs, E-Pollbooks, etc. Further strengthening their bills, they call for the Secretary of State to contract with an independent, out-of-state forensic imaging company. Representative Speedy’s bill went even further to say that contracts the Indiana county clerks are signing may NOT prohibit access to the source code of any part of a voting system. Both bills were killed. Since next year is a presidential election, IFA doesn’t expect any meaningful legislation to go into effect.
In fact, Senator Ford through Bill SB370 addressed prohibiting the use of and phasing out of DREs which are used in over half of the State of Indiana. Indiana First Action did a thorough analysis as shown on their Rumble channel that all vendors in the state appear to have a controlled mechanism in place with R correlation factors ranging from .975 to .999. Phasing out only one vendor to substitute Microvote with an ES&S, Hart InterCivic or Unisyn system does NOT go far enough. Hoosiers want to go back to paper ballots, hand-counted.
Instead of pursuing meaningful change in Indiana elections, the House of Representatives is pushing bills through which allow MORE electronic devices into Hoosier precincts (displaying ballots on electronic devices instead of using an already printed out provisional ballot), as well as introducing “no residency requirements” for mail-in voter registration applications. One of the most egregious bills being read in the Senate involves the cast vote records. Legislation will now deem CVRs ‘confidential’ in direct contradiction to National Institute of Standards and Technology publications (SB 224). Hoosiers had requested cast vote records from all 92 counties for the 2020 elections as well as the primaries of the 2022 election and were across the board denied by the clerks under the direction of the Public Law Access Counselor in conjunction with the Indiana Election Division and voting machine vendors. Cast Vote Records do not show voters’ private information, but simply selections made on tabulators. By not allowing citizen analysts the ability to review these records in conjunction with the black voting boxes being deemed private (intellectual property), there is no true way to truly audit these machines for intrusions.
Why are Hoosier constituents being told no at every turn? Why the concerted effort to hide information surrounding their ‘safe and secure elections’? All actions being taken by the Supermajority of Republicans in the legislative body is not strengthening Hoosier elections at all. The direct opposite is occurring … opening them up to nefarious actors and hiding true transparency from Hoosier voters.
