Democracy in Indiana Is What the GOP Says It Is

Other than some blue urban areas, Indiana is a one-party state. The state’s last Democratic governor was turned out of office in the 2004 election. The last time a Democrat was elected to one of the other statewide offices was in 2012. Democrats last held a majority in a chamber of the General Assembly during the session following the 2010 election and the GOP has held a supermajority in both chambers since the 2012 election. So democracy in Indiana is whatever the Indiana Republican Party says it is. One might draw the conclusion that the Indiana GOP doesn’t believe in democracy since they stripped the word from their platform, replacing it with “republic.” But that mainly shows that they remember one thing - incorrectly - from intro American Government. It might be somewhat more fruitful to look at legislation they have passed in recent sessions.

Niki Kelly at the Indiana Capital Chronicle points out that the legislation the GOP tends to focus on is at odds with Hoosiers’ policy priorities - even as measured by their own internal polling. Various rankings consistently show Indiana to be well down in the bottom half of states with regard to quality of life, yet the GOP-led General Assembly seems to have little interest in addressing most of those issues in ways that would lead to improvement. In last year’s session, one of the GOP’s top priorities was to ensure that K-12 teachers would give nazis and fascists a fair shake in classroom discussions. It’s a bit early in this year’s session to know what their priorities are beyond another round of tax cuts and a handful of culture war issues, so I’ll focus on their approach to democratic processes and procedures: voting and elections, districting and representation, and legislative debate.

Indiana consistently ranks among the states where it is the hardest to vote. Our election day is short. Voting by mail is restricted and cumbersome. We do have a fairly generous period in which we can vote early in person, but Marion County Republicans periodically provide a masterclass in vote suppression by obstructing efforts to provide an adequate number of early voting locations in the state’s largest county and Democratic stronghold. It’s not yet clear what impact our newly elected Secretary of State will have on the voting process. Before receiving the GOP nomination, he had prominently expressed skepticism about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and said that early voting should be more limited, but he walked those comments back during the run up to election day. In any event, he seems unlikely to advocate changes that would improve Indiana’s lackluster voter turnout.

Although Democrats overstate the impact of gerrymandering on their meager representation in the General Assembly, the GOP’s redistricting process unfairly favors the GOP, lacks transparency, and leads to underrepresentation of urban voters—especially voters of color. As a result, most legislators run in handcrafted safe districts, providing them little incentive to be responsive to constituents or to engage with voters other than their base. Consequently, they tend to skip candidate forums and debates where they might be confronted with opposition to their policies and forced to defend their policy choices.

But it is the quality of debate within the legislature that can be particularly appalling. The recent low point was the 2021 incident in which White Republican legislators booed, heckled, and shouted down their Black Democratic colleagues who were expressing concerns about discrimination in a bill under consideration. But even routine debate is concerning because so much of it happens out of the public eye. In Indiana, party caucuses are exempt from open meetings requirements. GOP legislators use this exemption to avoid public scrutiny of their decision making by holding key discussions in closed caucus meetings. In some cases they even use these private meetings to make substantial changes to legislation. Fortunately, they can’t avoid discussion forever. The legislation has to move to the floor for final passage, giving the minority party the opportunity to question bill sponsors and supporters and sometimes exposing neglected issues that lead to amendments. But that is less likely to happen in the future, as a new rule taking effect this year imposes new limits on questioning during debate.

So, where does this leave Hoosiers? I’m afraid that the short-term prospects appear bleak. Political scientists Lynn Vavreck, John Sides, and Chris Tausanovitch argue that the electorate is not merely polarized, but “calcified.” Similarly, Lee Drutman suggests that the decline in competitive districts is a result of the decline in persuadable voters and geographic sorting of the two parties. In Indiana these factors make it exceedingly difficult for Hoosier Democrats to get sufficient traction in statewide elections and rural areas to provide competition for the GOP.

Absent competition, Hoosiers will continue to be subjected to the state GOP’s poorly informed policy choices. In my more cynical moments I’m tempted to think, “When things get bad enough people will demand change.” But the realities of polarization and a weak opposition make the prospects for change complicated and unlikely in the near term. For people lacking social and economic privileges, some of these policies are literally a matter of life and death.