After mail-in ballots have been at the center of political discourse, Lake County Elections and Registration Director Michelle Fajman is reassuring voters that they’ll still be able to submit absentee ballots this election season.
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“For people who have already requested them, those initial ones have been approved and will be going in the mail this Saturday,” Fajman told the Post-Tribune Wednesday. “And then on a daily basis, we’ll be mailing them out. … Election season’s upon us, and we’re moving forward with our early voting.”
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots for the midterm elections, according to the Associated Press. Ballots are already being mailed out to voters in Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
According to an election office news release, the Lake County Board of Elections and Registration received “a high number of inquiries” about mail-in voting ahead of November midterm elections.
Lake County voters can submit an application for an absentee ballot until Oct. 12, according to the news release. Indiana voters are required to provide a reason for absentee voting, including if they have a disability, are a deployed member of the Indiana National Guard or on assignment, prevented from voting due to a lack of transportation, or are unable to vote in-person due to religious discipline or holiday.
Voters have until 6 p.m. Nov. 3 — Election Day — to return their ballots. Fajman said any ballot received after that time and date will not count.
Voters must also write the date they voted on their ballot and include a signature.
“That needs to be consistent,” Fajman said. “If there is no date, then it’s rejected.”
As of Wednesday, Lake County’s mail-in count was at 1,120 voters, Fajman said. She expects the number to grow in the following days.
In 2022, on the first day of mailouts for the general election, Lake County had 1,448 ballots, Fajman said. By the 2022 election, the office mailed out 10,337 ballots, she added.
For the 2024 presidential election, the election office mailed almost 13,000 ballots, but Fajman said they expect more ballots during the presidential elections.
“Each election cycle usually stays pretty consistent with the exception of the 2020 election for COVID,” Fajman said. “Of course, those numbers jumped substantially for COVID, so you can’t really throw that into the comparison.”
Porter County Elections and Voter Registration Assistant Director Tara Graf was unable to immediately respond to request for comment about the county’s mail-in voting system.
In its decision, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing parts of a rule that would restrict mail-in voting. The preliminary injunction will remain in place through the Nov. 3 midterm elections, according to a news release from the American Civil Liberties Union.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the court’s decision.
The USPS cannot refuse to deliver mail-in ballots for the election, according to the ACLU, and it cannot require states to upload personal voter information into “its new and untested online portal.”
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“The decision means that all 50 states can continue to use their existing processes for mail voting, which have proven for decades to be safe, secure, and reliable,” the ACLU release said. “Hundreds of thousands of mail ballots are already being delivered to eligible voters, with millions more to follow this month. Many Americans rely on mail voting because disability, distance, or work or caregiving schedules make it difficult or impossible to get to their polling site in person.”
Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, called the Supreme Court’s decision a major win for hundreds of thousands of voters nationwide.
“Lots of senior citizens, people in the service, our rural voters, voters with disabilities, they really depend on the ability to cast their ballot by mail because it’s extremely difficult for them to physically get to the polling place,” Vaughn said. “Vote by mail is safe, it’s proven, and it’s really vital to many voters across Indiana. … These were attempts to suppress the vote.”
Although she’s pleased with the court’s decision, Vaughn said Trump’s actions have caused confusion amongst voters. She said that could lower voter turnout for the November election, especially if people do not know if they qualify for mail-in voting.
“I want to emphasize that nothing has changed,” Vaughn said. “If you were previously eligible to vote by mail in Indiana, you are still eligible.”
Indiana’s mail-in voting system is essentially fail-safe, Vaughn said, so she’s not worried about issues in November.
Vaughn believes Trump has attacked mail-in voting in the past few years because he lost the 2020 election. In her opinion, he needed something to blame, and mail-in votes became one of his excuses for the loss.
“Many states, including Indiana, because of COVID, relaxed the voting by mail rules for very good reason because it wasn’t a good idea for people to congregate in one place while a pandemic was going on,” Vaughn said. “And again, if Trump had won in 2020, we wouldn’t have heard a word about it.”
If things don’t go well for Republicans in November, Vaughn expects that people will hear the same excuses.
“It won’t be their fault,” she theorized. “The reason won’t be that the economy is in shambles, people can’t afford to go to the grocery store, pay their utilities and their rent. It won’t be because of the war in Iran.”
Common Cause Indiana works to provide education about voting and fair representation, according to its website. The team is working overtime to provide that ahead of the November election, Vaughn said.
The group works to recruit, train and delay volunteers to work at targeted poll locations across the state, she added.
Volunteers provide those at polling locations with their voting rights, and they also report any problems that might come up at sites statewide. Vaughn also encouraged people to call the Election Protection hotline — 866-687-8683 — if they have any voting problems or questions.
“There are a lot of things that can prove problematic for voters as they try to cast their ballot,” Vaughn said.
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