With fewer than 100 days until Election Day, Indiana’s election landscape is being reshaped by a high-profile recount fight, an unusual independent bid for Secretary of State, and ongoing legal battles over proof-of-citizenship requirements for voters.
In an interview this week, Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, said the state is experiencing one of its most complex and contentious pre-election periods in years.
At the center of recent controversy is the Indiana Recount Commission’s 2–1 decision not to subpoena and depose voters in the disputed Senate District 23 race, where Democrat David Deery narrowly defeated Republican Paula Copenhaver by just a handful of votes.
Vaughn called the commission’s refusal to question voters about how they cast their ballots a critical defense of ballot secrecy.
“The secrecy of one’s ballot is just basic to the American voting process, and it’s something that we cannot allow to be breached at all,” Vaughn said.
She noted that Secretary of State Diego Morales, a frequent target of criticism from voting-rights advocates, cast the decisive vote against issuing subpoenas.
“Kudos to Diego Morales who cast the deciding vote not to subpoena those voters and force them to disclose what should always be a secret ballot,” she said, adding that the move avoided overturning decades of election law.
Vaughn urged the commission to finalize the matter quickly so counties can proceed with ballot printing ahead of the November election.
“The horse is dead. They need to quit beating it,” she said. “We’ve got to have this resolved so that the counties can get to the work of actually printing ballots.”
Beyond the recount, Vaughn warned that broader national rhetoric and executive actions around elections are sowing confusion among ordinary voters and undermining trust in the system.
She said many Hoosiers are unsure about rules for mail-in voting and other procedures, often misinterpreting nonbinding or blocked federal actions as changes to state law.
According to Vaughn, this confusion is not accidental. She argued that efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies are designed to pre-emptively cast doubt on results if Republicans underperform.
“They want to undermine public confidence,” she said. “When you get Americans to distrust the electoral process, that is deeply damaging.”
The ballot itself is also changing. Former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard has secured enough signatures to appear on the November ballot as an independent candidate for Secretary of State.
Vaughn said Ballard’s bid could have long-term implications for ballot access in Indiana if he meets the threshold for automatic placement of future independent candidates. She praised Ballard’s proposal to mail a statewide voter guide to all registered voters, calling it “a fantastic idea” that could help create more informed participation.
Meanwhile, Common Cause Indiana and allied groups are pursuing a federal lawsuit challenging Indiana’s new documentary proof-of-citizenship law for voter registration. The plaintiffs have asked for a preliminary injunction and are awaiting a ruling.
Vaughn said discovery in the case shows that large numbers of naturalized citizens have been wrongly flagged and forced to re-prove their citizenship to stay registered. She argued that the law is both unnecessary — citing research that ineligible voting is exceedingly rare — and discriminatory, because it treats naturalized citizens differently from native-born citizens.
She also pointed to millions of Americans who lack ready access to birth certificates or passports, as well as married women, derived citizens born abroad to American parents, and people who have legally changed their names, as groups likely to face significant barriers under proof-of-citizenship regimes.
On the local level, Hoosier voters will also confront a large number of school funding referendums this fall, a result, Vaughn said, of state legislation forcing districts to seek voter approval for additional revenue. She urged voters to study the details of each proposal rather than reflexively voting against tax-related measures and noted that success or failure often hinges on public confidence in school leadership.
