Tag Archives: Indiana legislature

Ranked Choice Voting

As I write this, Indiana’s legislature is close to passing Senate Bill 12, a measure that would prohibit the use of ranked-choice voting in Indiana. The bill was co-authored by Republicans who are evidently worried that the state might use the system some day in the future (it is not in effect now and has not, to the best of my knowledge, been proposed). 

What, you may be asking, is ranked-choice voting, sometimes called “instant runoff” voting?

It’s simply a system that allows voters to rank candidates in their order of preference, rather than forcing them to select just one. In other words, voters rank the candidates–first choice, second, and so on. The vote count begins with the first choices; if one candidate receives over 50%, that’s it. Election’s over. If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and his or her votes are reassigned to the remaining candidates based on each voter’s next highest preference. The process of eliminating and redistributing continues until a single candidate achieves a majority of the remaining votes.

Organizations concerned with fair elections support ranked-choice voting. Indiana’s League of Women Voters supports it because–among other things– the system would “give voters meaningful choices to reduce the toxicity of negative campaigning.” Indiana’s Common Cause supports ranked-choice voting because the organization finds the system makes elections more equitable, allows voters to choose among more diverse perspectives, and provides more choices.

The legislators opposed to the system insist it is “too complicated”–that there is something “unAmerican” about allowing voters to say, in effect, “my first choice is candidate X, my second choice is candidate Y, and if neither of them wins, I suppose I can live with candidate Z. Evidently, they think voters in states that currently use the system, like Maine and Alaska, are smarter than Hoosiers. (Given some of the people we’ve elected, maybe they have a point.)

Interestingly, according to Governing Magazine, in 2020, the state Republican Party used the method to select delegates.

In an article on the subject, Indiana’s Capital Chronicle noted that the award of the Heisman Trophy is the result of ranked-choice voting. The article explained why using that method ensures that the candidate with the most support wins.

This is the same reason why so many states and localities have adopted ranked choice voting for elections for governor, state legislature, city council and other offices. It is an incredibly useful tool for voters in any race with more than two candidates. 

It ensures a majority winner in a crowded field. Voters can choose the person they like best, without fearing that their vote might go to a “spoiler” and help elect the person — or the quarterback — that they like least.

The article then turned to Indiana Republicans’ current effort to ban the system, pointing out that in a state where some 3% of voters are libertarians, ranked-choice voting would mean Republicans would no longer need to worry that a Libertarian candidate might tip the race to the Democrats — and Libertarian voters could support the candidate of their choice without that fear, as well.

Why prevent Indiana and its localities from giving voters more choice? The bill’s sponsors suggest that ranked choice voting is confusing, and that they want to protect Indiana’s current election system. But every poll conducted after a ranked choice election shows that huge majorities of voters — often even bigger than Mendoza’s Heisman margin — like it, find it easy to use, and want it expanded to other elections. 

Beyond the flaws of SB12 are other questions: Why, in a short session with limited time to address other pressing issues, has the GOP super-majority decided to spend time banning something the state isn’t doing anyway? Why is our legislature overruling– in advance–the ability of Indiana’s local jurisdictions to adopt a voting measure used in hundreds of cities and counties across the country?

As the Capital Chronicle quite properly concluded, we need to reject this nonsensical ban. “Ranked choice voting produces more positive campaigns, majority winners, and puts an end to spoilers. It’s proven and it’s easy. If Indiana’s political parties, cities and towns want to adopt it, they should have that right.”

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Monetizing Everything

Could Indiana’s legislature be any more arrogant, or any more oblivious to what constitutes value? (That was a rhetorical question, since the correct answer is obviously “no.”)

The Indianapolis Star recently reported on yet another example in the General Assembly’s continuing war on education. The report described Senate Bill 199–which recently passed the Senate– as a “Frankenstein of technical education-related changes.” (The bill had originally included restrictions on social media access for minors, but that measure was stripped by the bill’s author on the Senate floor.)

It is possible that many of the legislators who voted for SB 199 were unaware of a single line, “buried in the middle of the bill and absent from the bill digest,” that would eliminate any public college degree if graduates holding that degree are found to earn less than those with only a high school diploma. As the Star noted, that provision is “yet another blow for the state’s higher education institutions less than a year after last-minute language from last legislative session led colleges to cut more than a fifth of the state’s degrees because of low enrollment.”

The bill ties the definition of a “low earning outcome program” to a section of federal law amended by President Donald Trump’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That bill already restricts federal student loans from going toward such degrees, but the Indiana bill would go further by putting the degree programs themselves on the chopping block.

It’s unclear what programs could fall into such a category. Programs where the median earnings of its cohort surpassed the median earnings of Hoosiers between 24 and 35 with only a high school diploma — around $33,500 — would be unaffected by the bill.

If a university wants to keep a low earning degree program, it can appeal to the higher education commission. Without commission approval, the university would be mandated to eliminate the program.

According to the report, the bill still needs to pass the House and be signed by the governor to become law. Given the makeup of the House, and the cluelessness of the Governor, not to mention the fact that the bill contains numerous other–arguably reasonable–provisions, I don’t hold out much hope for a last-minute reprieve.

Where do I start with a critique of this ridiculous provision?

For one thing, it is yet another display of what might be called the legislature’s “overlord complex”–the evident belief that, by virtue of winning a (gerrymandered) seat in Indiana’s General Assembly, legislators have been endowed with the right to make all manner of decisions: controlling (i.e. overruling) municipal governments, school corporations, medical personnel…Our overlords deem themselves capable of deciding a wide range of issues that are arguably none of their concern–from whether local governments can ban plastic bags or puppy mills to whether doctors and medical practitioners can determine the medical necessity of abortions or provide gender care.

Our overlords’ zeal to redefine education as job training, and place a fiscal value on everything, is also burdensome and expensive. Some state functionary will be tasked (and paid) to assess the earnings of students who’ve chosen these “low value” degrees. Is that really where citizens want their tax dollars spent?

What happens when inevitable changes in the job market depress the earnings of people with degrees that previously escaped the ax?

And what do we tell the student who wants to major in art or philosophy or a similar subject–a student whose intellectual interests trump her concerns about earning potential? (For that matter, how do we factor in MAGA’s new “tradwife” focus–which, if it took off, would see female graduates taking “home ec” and then staying home with multiple children rather than earning anything at all?)

What really, really makes me livid, however, isn’t the legislature’s obvious inability to recognize the practical problems and jurisdictional breaches such measures represent. It is the constant equation of education with job training, legislators’ evident inability to recognize the value of intellectual inquiry.

A few days ago, I quoted passages from David Brooks’ final column for the New York Times. In that essay, he noted that the road to Trump and MAGA had been paved by the generations of students and their parents who fled from the humanities and the liberal arts, “driven by the belief that the prime purpose of education is to learn how to make money.”

Indiana’s legislature has been drinking that Kool-Aid for years. It’s one reason Indiana is often said to be in competition to be the new Mississippi….

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Extremism’s Costs

Important notice: Due to the cold, the rally on January 20th has been moved to Broadway United Methodist Church, 609 E 29th St, Indianapolis. Indoors.

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I have lived in Indiana almost all of my life. I was born in Indianapolis and raised in a small Indiana town (Anderson). After a brief hiatus in college, I returned to the state and have spent my adult life here. I’ve participated in the state’s civic and political affairs, and been part of Indianapolis’ government. During my stint as Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU, I sued the state on more than one occasion.

Given that history, I think I’ve earned the right to comment on the state’s deficits–deficits that have grown more concerning over that timespan.

On this platform, I frequently criticize what former NUVO editor Harrison Ullmann called “The World’s Worst Legislature.” Thanks to extreme gerrymandering, that body is controlled by extremists–culture warriors pandering to the White Christian Nationalists who want to eviscerate the very notion of a diverse “public” entitled to a government that serves the common good rather than the interests of political donors and fundamentalist churches.

The most vivid example of the General Assembly’s misplaced emphases–but most definitely not the only example–was the legislature’s unseemly rush to impose a ban on abortion in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. That ban ignored medical science, endangered the lives of pregnant women, and rode roughshod over the rights of women whose religious commitments differ from those of fundamentalist Christians.

Indiana is now reaping the negative consequences of that ban.

We’ve already seen reports that the state has growing  ob/gyn “deserts,” where women–including but not limited to pregnant women–must travel long distances to access a wide range of care. (The legislature’s decades-long effort to shut down Planned Parenthood clinics had already made it difficult for poor women in much of the state to get birth control or mammograms.)

We’ve already seen reports that doctors of all specialties are leaving the state, and that fewer medical students are choosing to intern in Indiana’s hospitals.

Now we are seeing evidence that others are joining those medical refugees–that people are choosing not to live in Red states with abortion bans.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the majority of justices decided that the right to an abortion should be left up to individual states. Two years later, thousands of Americans in parts of the U.S. with strict abortion bans are deciding to leave those states, new research finds.

Following the Dobbs decision, the 13 states with strict abortion bans, from Alabama to West Virginia, collectively lost a net 36,000 residents per quarter, meaning the difference between the number of people leaving the states versus those migrating in, according to the analysis from economists at Georgia Institute of Technology and The College of Wooster and published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The analysis, which is based on change-of-address data from the U.S. Postal Service, found that the state impact is larger among single-person households, which may suggest that younger people are moving out of abortion-banning states at a higher rate than families. That could be due to the greater challenges for families in trying to move, given the need to change schools or uproot careers for parents.

The freedom of young people to choose where they will live carries significant implications for states’ economies. States with bans are already having difficulty attracting and retaining workers, especially younger workers. Indiana companies are reporting such difficulties, which will likely have a negative impact on the state’s already struggling economic development.

“Younger Americans are paying attention to a state’s access to reproductive care. In a 2022 Axios poll, about 6 in 10 people 18- to 29-years-old said a state’s abortion laws would sway their decision on where to live from “somewhat” to “a lot.”

Surprise!! It turns out that things like quality of life and respect for individual liberty have a greater impact on young people’s residential choices than low tax rates.

Researchers found that most states with strict abortion bans also fail to provide adequate social safety nets. They make it difficult to access programs such as food stamps, and have growing numbers of maternal care deserts. That is certainly true of Indiana, where our legislature routinely imposes punitive measures on–and erects barriers to– people needing public assistance.

People who claim to be pro-life, who advocated for these abortion bans, often suggest that these policies are designed to protect children, women and families,” said Dr. Nigel Madden, lead author of the study. But weakness in the safety net shows “the hypocrisy of that argument.”

The kindest thing one can say about the culture warriors who dominate Indiana’s legislature is that they are incapable of connecting the dots.

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More About Those “Rutabaga” Districts..

A few days ago, I wrote about the problem posed by what I called “rutabaga” voters--Hoosiers who would elect a vegetable if it had an “R” next to its name on the ballot. In that post, I focused on District 88, but I’ve received an email from a very politically-savvy friend about another district that is eminently winnable if the sane candidate has sufficient resources to get his message out. My friend has long been negative about Indiana voters and Democratic chances in the state, so his belief that this district is winnable is consequential.

Here’s that email in its entirety.

Friends,

I have had multiple discussions with people regarding how to make a meaningful and impactful impact on elections here in Indiana. That is genuinely a challenge these days. After chatting with knowledgeable people, the most meaningful thing we can do is to try to help the Democrats win enough seats to end the Republican supermajority in the Indiana legislature.

If we are going to be successful in doing so, the most challenging seat to flip will be in IndianaHouse District 24. If we win this district, however, we impact the Republican’s ability to keep their uncontested grip on Indiana governance.

Indiana House District 24 encompasses Westfield (54%), Carmel (33%), Sheridan (7%), and portions of Zionsville (7%). It is a lean Republican District with much new suburban growth since 2020. Joe Biden received 45.7 percent in 2020. Since 2020, registrations have increased by 70% inWestfield. These registrations bode well for Democrats, as new voters are mostly under fifty and tend to lean Democrat. House District 24 is an open seat.

The Democrat candidate is Josh Lowery. Josh and his family live in Westfield. Josh ran for the state senate in 2022. His wife Alexis ran for Westfield City Council in 2023 and lost to a well-funded Patrick Tamm by thirty votes. So, the Lowry name identification is better than average, particularly in the population center of Westfield. Josh is an attorney. Josh and Alexis are well-known in the community beyond their political participation. They are foster parents and have fostered twelve children, five of whom they have adopted.

Hunter Smith is a former Indianapolis Colts punter who lives in the Zionsville portion of House District 24. Hunter Smith is a disciple of Republican Lt. Governor candidate Micah Beckwith and his extreme Christian nationalist agenda and the most extreme elements of the Republican party. He supports Beckwith’s positions, including those he took as a member of the Hamilton East Public Library when he voted for a book-banning policy that put Hamilton County in the national news.

Smith won a contested GOP primary where he ran to the right. He is pro-life without exceptions, pro-parents’ rights in school, pro-school choice, and anti-LGBTIQQ, particularly emphasizing he wants to ban Pride Month because it promotes the “wickedness of the LGBT agenda.”

House District 24 is winnable and a key district in House Democrats’ push to flip four seats to break the Indiana House Republican’s supermajority in the House. While it is a lean Republican District, Josh Lowry is more aligned with the district than the far-right extremist Hunter Smith. Lowry’s hopes are enhanced by the top of the ticket, where both Kamala Harris and Democratic Gubernatorial nominee Jennifer McCormack are currently polling above expectations in that district.

This race is winnable if Josh can raise the necessary funds to inform voters that Hunter Smith is one of the most extreme candidates in the state on the Republican ticket this fall.

I am not holding a fundraiser or going to pressure anyone to donate. Still, I wanted to share this information if you are inclined to do something that could make a material difference for Indiana. It takes relatively little money to make a meaningful difference in a legislative district, and winning this district could have an oversized impact on the Indiana government. If you are inclined, you can learn more about Josh and donate online at www.lowryforindiana.com.

That’s the end of the email.

I have sent a contribution to Lowry, and I hope many of you reading this will join me. The last thing we need in this state is a pro-censorship, anti-choice clone of theocrat Micah Beckwith buttressing a GOP super-majority in Indiana’s already-terrible, culture-war legislature.

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Let’s Send A Message

I have occasionally quoted my cousin Mort, a noted cardiologist, on issues involving medical care. He recently shared with me his concerns over the challenge of providing appropriate–or even barely adequate–medical care to women in the wake of the Dobbs decision. In Indiana, this is a huge problem, because–unlike other states– We the People lack any effective electoral mechanism to reverse our GOP-dominated legislature’s assaults on reproductive liberties.

As I was reading my cousin’s email, it occurred to me that while Indiana voters might not be able to mount a referendum, we do have a way to send a message to the pious, self-important legislators who think that occupying a gerrymandered seat in the General Assembly entitles them to overrule people with specialized expertise who actually know what they’re doing.

That message is our vote.

Here’s my proposal: Every pro-choice voter in Indiana should go to the polls and vote Blue “all the way down.” In addition, they should make sure their state senators and representatives know that their vote is tied to reproductive choice–by posting on social networks, writing their legislators, or by carrying a sign or wearing a t-shirt saying “pro-choice voter” when they go to the polls.

As my cousin knows–and Indiana’s Republican legislators evidently don’t– reproductive autonomy isn’t just about being forced to give birth; it is often a matter of life and death.

The U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee’s Ranking Member, Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), has recently released a 40-page report detailing the findings of a 10-month-long investigation into the impact of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs vs. Jackson ruling on the practice of obstetrics and gynecology. This was the court’s decision on June 24, 2022, that took away a woman’s previously recognized constitutional right to abortion and gave states the right to limit or outlaw abortions.

In September 2023, Pallone launched the investigation to examine how providers and, by extension, their patients, are impacted by the Dobbs decision. In conducting the investigation to determine the effects on medical practice, the Democratic Committee staff interviewed OB–GYN educators and resident physicians. The investigation disclosed alarming effects that included the following:

  • Providers are seeing sicker patients suffering from greater complications due to delayed care caused as a result of the Dobbs decision.
  • The Dobbs decision has harmed the training of OB–GYN residents in restrictive states.
  • Residency applicants are increasingly concerned about the quality of abortion training programs offered in restrictive states.
  • Residency directors are finding restrictions on clinical communication are degrading trust between providers and patients and are robbing patients of the ability to make informed decisions about their health.
  • The training of OB–GYN residents in abortion-protective states has been harmed as programs in those states strain their capacity and resources to help train out-of-state residents from restrictive states.
  • Restrictive state laws are already leading us to a future with a provider workforce less prepared to provide comprehensive reproductive health care.
  • OB–GYN residents and program directors are increasingly frustrated, discouraged, and experiencing negative mental health effects in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision.
  • Residency program leaders who participated in the report universally agreed that abortion care is integral to other components of reproductive health care and should not be eliminated or isolated from residency training.
  • After Dobbs, OB–GYN residency applicants more strongly preferred programs in states that permit abortion access.
  • A patchwork of state restrictions is leading to disparate systems of reproductive health care, worsening reproductive and maternal health care shortages, and fracturing the OB–GYN workforce.

As my cousin concluded (I could almost see the smoke coming out of his ears!), Dobbs was yet another example of the naivete and hubris of a politicized Supreme Court. The Court flouted scientific evidence, overruling knowledgeable and skilled medical practitioners in a field in which they were totally unqualified.

I will readily admit that my recommendation–vote Blue to send a message–might require a few Hoosiers to be single-issue voters this November. Those of us who have already surveyed the caliber of candidates being offered by Indiana’s GOP and the issues they are peddling will have no problem voting Blue from top to bottom, but pro-choice Republicans may find it more difficult (although really, Republicans–have you looked at your statewide ticket? Those MAGA theocrats sure don’t resemble the Republicans I used to know…)

Trump keeps saying that abortion/reproductive liberty is no longer a “big deal” electorally. He’s so wrong.

Even one election cycle that turned Indiana Blue–or even purple–would send a much-needed message to our legislative overlords. And we might even elect competent and thoughtful public servants for a change!

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