Beth Henricks, Associate Pastor at Indianapolis First Friends, spoke at Democracy Day last Wednesday, February 12.
Other representatives from IFCL (Phil Goodchild, Deb Goodchild, Ed Morris, Clark Hadley and Diana Hadley) attended the event co-sponsored by IFCL.
Beth’s remarks are covered in the Indiana Citizen article by Marilyn Odendahl below.
FAILING GRADE: Advocacy groups use Democracy Day to rate legislature, press lawmakers on ‘anti-voter legislation’
Common Cause Indiana and other voter advocacy groups gave the Indiana General Assembly a mid-term report card during Democracy Day 2025. (Photo/Marilyn Odendahl)
By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
February 14, 2025
With the midpoint of the 2025 legislative session coming in one week, voter advocacy groups from across the state are giving the Indiana General Assembly a failing grade for advancing election and voting bills that they say create barriers to the ballot box and do not protect democracy.
“I’ve been working on voting and elections issues for over three decades and I can tell you that I’ve never seen a deeper slate of anti-voter legislation than what is moving through the process this year,” Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, said. “If all of these bills become law, Indiana is sure to remain at the bottom of voter turnout among all states for the foreseeable future.”
Indiana ranked 50th in the nation in voter turnout in the 2022 midterm election with just 41.9% of eligible voters casting a ballot, according to the 2023 Indiana Civic Health Index. The 2020 presidential election saw turnout tick up to 61.0%, but the state was still ranked 46th in the nation, and in the 2024 election, according to Indiana secretary of state data, turnout only increased marginally to 62%.
The election and voting bills the groups are opposing are all authored by Republican lawmakers. Provisions in the bills would, among other things, require voters to declare whether they are Republicans or Democrats before being allowed to vote in a primary election; ban voters from using their college ID cards as proof of identification when casting a ballot; shorten the early voting period; restrict absentee ballots; and make school board elections partisan.
To try to prevent at least some of these bills from getting to Gov. Mike Braun’s desk, Common Cause Indiana, the League of Women Voters of Indiana, Stand Up Indiana, ACLU of Indiana, the Indiana Citizens Action Coalition and other organizations gathered their supporters for Democracy Day on Wednesday. The event started in the morning at the Indiana State Library with some of the group leaders discussing particular bills and then attendees, many clad in light blue Democracy Day T-shirts, walking the short distance to the Statehouse, where they met with legislators.
As a way to facilitate their conversations with state lawmakers, the attendees were given the “Democracy Report Card,” which had been prepared by the advocacy groups to grade the General Assembly. The cards had a big, red letter F beside the issues of access to voting, fairness and equity, voter list maintenance and voter registration. Also, a red letter G was given for two other categories – gerrymandering and redistricting and voter safety – to signify the legislature had made no effort to address those concerns.
Vaughn, of Common Cause, emphasized that the report cards were grading the General Assembly as a whole and not individual representatives or senators.
“The majority has voted for some of these bad ideas, so we need to let them know where they stand with the leading democracy groups here in the state (and) that they are failing us,” Vaughn said. “This is their midterm report card. They could really put their nose to the books and turn this around if they wanted to, and abandon some of these bad proposals.”
‘New burdens’ for naturalized citizens at the ballot box
Among the election and voting bills being considered this session is a provision requiring naturalized citizens to present proof of their citizenship when they register to vote.
Maria Douglas of Hoosier Asian American Power is concerned the requirement could keep eligible voters, especially Asian American voters, from the polls. She cited statistics that show a majority of Asian Americans are naturalized citizens and not native-born Americans.
Many naturalized citizens, Douglas said, do not have the papers or documents that prove their U.S. citizenship, and citizens of color are three times as likely to lack any form of documentary proof of citizenship. Moreover, she said, getting the records can be difficult and costly.
“The fact that I am a naturalized citizen doesn’t make me any less of a citizen and definitely does not make my right to live in this country any less valid,” Douglas said. “The current political climate puts immigrants in a precarious situation. The citizen check provisions of multiple state bills this session impose new burdens for voters, especially naturalized citizens and voters of color.”
An analysis from the Indiana Business Research Center at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business highlighted 2022 data that showed nearly 6%, or 377,934, of people living in Indiana were born in another country. Of the foreign-born population, 42% were born in Latin America and 35% were born in Asia. Also, 42% of Indiana’s foreign-born population are naturalized citizens.
Douglas, who described herself as a “Korean transracial adoptee,” arrived in the United States in February 1976 and took the oath of citizenship in December 1982 at the age of 7.
During her remarks at Democracy Day, Douglas read from a 1982 article printed in the Noblesville paper that profiled her becoming a U.S. citizen. The story said she would now be “part and parcel of the land where she was given love, safety, nourishment and security.”
Douglas said naturalized citizens are excited about being able to vote but are easily dissuaded from casting a ballot. Many are already confused by the process and feel their voices will not be heard. The potential proof-of-citizenship requirement will add another reason to stay home on Election Day if they fear being singled out, questioned or belittled at the polling place.
Even before they get to the polls, naturalized citizens can be “othered,” Douglas said. She pointed to Arizona removing a significant number of voters from the registration lists in 2024, because they had not provided documentary proof of citizenship. Many of those individuals were taken off the voter rolls not because they were not U.S. citizens but because either they had registered years before proof of citizenship was required in Arizona, or an error had been made when their data was entered, she said.
The Arizona Supreme Court ordered that the registrations be restored so the individuals could vote in the recent presidential election.
In Indiana, Secretary of State Diego Morales and Attorney General Todd Rokita asked the federal government to verify the citizenship status of 585,774 Hoosiers on the state’s voter rolls in October 2024, only a few weeks before the election. The move was blasted by Stand UP Indiana, a voter advocacy organization, as a “blatant attempt to suppress voters.”
The Indiana Citizen filed a complaint with the Indiana public access counselor, after Morales and Rokita denied the media access to the list of nearly 600,000 names.
Douglas said her message to state legislators was to stop erecting barriers to the voting booth.
“There is no evidence of widespread voter registration (fraud by noncitizens) or voting by noncitizens,” Douglas said. “These changes are unnecessary, because Indiana state law already adequately ensures that only U.S. citizens may vote in Indiana elections.”
No bills to ban weapons at polling places
Not all of the proposed election legislation is seen as harmful. The advocacy groups are supporting some of the election and voting bills that would remove straight ticket voting, improve the accessibility of polling places, and allow absentee ballots to be processed, counted and tabulated before 6 p.m. on Election Day.
However, Beth Henricks, associate pastor at Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Church, noted the General Assembly is not taking any steps to ban guns at polling places.
First Friends has served as a polling site for decades.
On Election Day last year, Henricks said the atmosphere was positive and uplifting with many people coming to vote, but that changed drastically when a man became irate at being asked to remove his hat and turn his T-shirt inside out because they violated state law prohibiting the display of clothing with a campaign logo or an image of a candidate while in the polling place. The man was yelling about his constitutional rights and using a lot of profanity, she said, when he took his shirt off and revealed he was carrying two guns and a knife around his waist.
“My heart was pounding and I was afraid of where the situation might escalate with so many people in the building,” Henricks said.
She credited the poll workers with getting the man to the front of the line and through the voting process quickly. After the man exited the building, he wandered into the church’s meditation woods where police found him and questioned him but did not make an arrest.
The Marion County Election Board is now investigating the incident. Board members are trying to determine whether the man violated the Indiana election worker protection law, which was enacted in 2024.
Henricks noted that First Friends is still feeling the impact of the incident.
Immediately, the number of voters dwindled on Election Day with few people coming to cast a ballot for the remaining hours the polling site was open. Since then, parents who use space in the church for a preschool have paid for private security.
Henricks said she planned to use Democracy Day to talk to legislators about banning weapons in polling places.
“The bigger issue for me is why have we allowed guns into a polling place in Indiana?” Henricks asked. “Why are guns needed while our citizens cast their votes in places like churches and civic centers? What I experienced ended without violence, but it could have been devastating.”
Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.