In November 2024, reported Indiana Capitol Chronicle’s Leslie Bonilla Muñiz, nearly 3 million Indiana residents voted. That is about 61% of those registered with the state, nearly 100,000 fewer Hoosiers than in 2020, when turnout hit 65% of registered voters. Even at its high in 2020, Indiana’s turnout ranked 46th in the nation, and in 2022, it was dead last.
Why is Indiana’s turnout so poor? One reason could be that it’s “costly” to vote.
Like citizens facing higher living costs, voters may struggle to quantify all the barriers, or “costs,” they encounter, as noted by Michael Pomante, a research fellow at Claremont Graduate University and a senior researcher at the States United Democracy Center (SUDC).
These voting "costs" are often invisible, felt not as formal monetary fees, but as time, effort, uncertainty, and risk embedded in election rules. These burdens vary sharply by state and, as Pomante’s 2024 Cost of Voting Index (COVI) shows, they correlate closely with partisan control and policy choices.
In the COVI framework, the “cost of voting” is the cumulative burden a citizen must overcome to cast a valid ballot. How easy is it for you to register or check your registration? Do you have time off, enough early voting options, polling centers nearby, or the ability to vote absentee? Do your age or the documents required complicate registration?
The COVI calculates this cost across ten categories that capture how states lower or raise barriers: registration deadlines and restrictions, registration drives, preregistration and automatic registration, voting inconveniences, voter ID, polling hours, early voting days, and absentee voting rules.
These dimensions matter because they translate abstract legal choices into concrete obstacles: planning ahead, gathering documents, waiting in line, and correctly completing forms for a ballot to count.
What burdens are counted?
Across the ten 2024 issue areas, the index measures many specific burdens. Key categories include:
● Registration, such as the number of days for registration, same-day registration availability, mental competency clauses, felony-related bans or delays, online registration, and documentation expectations (i.e., more documents make it harder).
● Regulated registration drives and youth access, including requirements for certification, training, reporting, or penalties for third-party registration drives, or outright bans, as some states impose. Allowing young people to preregister is another category.
● Permissibility of automatic registration, whether DMV-only or multi-agency. Automated registration reduces costs.
● Voting inconveniences, like a lack of Election Day holidays, prohibiting early voting, no all-mail elections, no vote centers, and no time off work or paid time off to vote. Other inconveniences include reduced polling places, long wait times, lack of postage-paid mail ballots, and bans on providing food or water in line. Additionally, strictly enforced photo ID requirements, birth name proof requirements, limits on absentee voting excuses, lack of in-person absentee options or permanent absentee lists, no online absentee applications, inconvenient drop-off locations, unpaid postage, restrictions on who may return a ballot, and bans on third-party distribution of applications or local officials sending applications with added requirements.
Taken together, these measures depict the ease or difficulty of participation in democracy as a voter. Indiana illustrates how a state can be burdensome in some respects while improving in others. In 2024, Indiana had a long registration deadline (29 days) but no same-day registration, scoring 5 on the Registration Restrictions index—moderately restrictive but not at the maximum. It allowed 16-year-olds to preregister as a policy (though not in statute).
Complicating registration is Indiana’s lack of multi-agency automatic registration; the state relies on traditional opt-in processes. Voting is further inconvenienced by not making Election Day a state holiday. While some polling centers reported long wait times, food and water are allowed in line, and the state provides a postage-paid absentee return.
On the COVI, Indiana scores 34th, which places it among the most restrictive states for voting. Indiana requires an excuse for absentee voting and imposes several administrative hurdles, but does not add every possible restriction; its absentee ballot burden is significant but not as severe as states with witness or notarization requirements.
Indiana enforces a strict photo ID requirement, placing it at the most restrictive end of the voter ID scale (score 4) compared to other states. Polling hours are average—not especially generous but not the shortest—resulting in a middling poll-hours burden. Indiana offers a long window of early in-person voting—27.5 days were available in 2024. Due to early voting and some changes to preregistration and documentation, Indiana improved its national ranking by 17 places since 2022, despite still having many restrictive elements such as strict ID and no same-day registration.
Many of these burdens arise from understandable concerns, though it would be beneficial to study the correlation or causation of these costs upon our depressed voter participation. Government regulations often lead to unintended consequences. When we support and pass such laws, we should have comprehensive data to better assess outcomes.
Legislators argue that requiring ID, imposing deadlines, and limiting who can handle absentee ballots protects the system from real or perceived fraud. From this perspective, extra signatures on mail envelopes or tighter registration rules signal a commitment to safeguarding the vote, which they believe may enhance trust among skeptical citizens. But does it increase the confidence of many or just a few? Does it create enough hurdles that people do not vote and feel unrepresented?
States face budget constraints and uneven local capacity. It is worth considering whether centralized polling places, more flexibility, longer hours, and more early in-person voting, as well as same-day registration, truly cost more. In Montgomery County, centralized polling places mean fewer staff are needed to manage all the precincts. More voting times give more citizens the opportunity to cast a ballot without losing work time. Officials might view strict rules—earlier deadlines, fewer registration options, or narrower absentee channels—as necessary to avoid errors, but do they actually reduce errors?
In a climate of deep mistrust and close elections, legislators may prefer predictable, tight controls. Policies like strict ID requirements or limits on third-party registration drives can be framed as uniform standards that reduce confusion and litigation. On the surface, these burdens seem less like attempts to suppress votes and more like trade-offs: some access is sacrificed to gain perceived integrity and order.
But they exclude voters. Pomante’s COVI data shows that, regardless of intent, layered voting costs systematically depress participation and skew representation. Each barrier favors citizens with more time, flexibility, documentation, transportation and political knowledge—traits unevenly distributed by race, class, age and disability. When a state like Indiana improves simply by adding early voting, it highlights how much timing and convenience can enhance accessibility.
High-cost, high-hurdle systems erode trust. Voters who miss a deadline, lack a specific ID, cannot find a notary, or stand in long lines internalize a simple message: the system is not built for them. Over time, that experience leads to a broader perception that government responds more to insiders than to ordinary citizens. As burdens diverge along partisan lines—with Republican-trifecta states becoming more restrictive and Democratic-trifecta states more permissive—citizens encounter fundamentally different democracies depending on where they live, undermining the notion of equal citizenship across states.
If we are to be healthy as a nation, we should all support elections that are legitimate and widely trusted. What COVI shows is that trust is not achieved by imposing difficulties on voters but by designing systems that are secure and simple to navigate. When the hidden costs of voting are reduced—through generous registration rules, ample early and mail options, and modest identification standards—more people participate, outcomes better reflect the electorate, and citizens have fewer reasons to view their institutions as distant or rigged.