A primer on primaries

Before the main elections arrive in November, the spring primary elections serve as the chance for voters to select the nominees for their respective parties. “I think what’s important to remember about primaries is that, in general, you’re nominating a party’s nominees,” said Kristi Robertson, co-director of the election division of the Secretary of State’s Office. “You’re not necessarily electing people; you’re picking the party’s nominees.”

Indiana’s primary elections, held Tuesday, May 4, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., don’t pack quite the dramatic punch they do in earlier states, while the presidential candidates are fighting it out, but a number of important statewide election slots remain up for grabs.

The biggest primary race in Indiana is between Eric Miller and Mitch Daniels for the Republican nomination for governor. John Kerry and George W. Bush are locked in as the Democratic and Republican nominees for president; Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh and Republican Marvin Scott are running unopposed in their respective primaries for Bayh’s U.S. Senate seat; and Gov. Joe Kernan is running unopposed as the Democratic nominee for governor.

In Indiana’s closed primary system, voters declare their party affiliation when they sign in, and vote for candidates on their party’s ballot, as well as non-partisan school board races. Voters wishing to vote only in the school board elections need not declare a party preference.

Statewide and local races will also be on the ballot. One-third of state senators and all state representatives will be up for re-election, though in the majority of those cases the primaries are uncontested.

The May 4 primaries will also see many of the first and second runs of changes and updates in voting systems, many of them results of the 2002 federal Help America Vote Act, passed in response to difficulties and scandals in the 2000 elections.

Some of the more visible changes include more extensive training for poll volunteers; public service announcements in print, television and radio; optical scanning voting machines, instituted in Marion County in the 2003 elections; and the Indiana Voter’s Bill of Rights posted in English and Spanish in every precinct.

“It’s major election reform across the country in a lot of different areas of election,” Robertson said. “It’s going to require all these changes to be in place by 2006. Some of them will be rolled out over the next couple of years. For example, the state has to be off punch card and lever voting machines by 2006. We have to have a statewide voter registration file system that we’re in the process of developing that will hopefully keep our registration cleaner.”

One of the biggest changes is the addition of provisional voting, which will be instituted for the first time in Indiana in next week’s primaries. Provisional voting is a system that gives voters the benefit of the doubt in circumstances where there might be errors in record-keeping, such as when thousands of voters in Florida were erroneously listed as felons and turned away at polling places in 2000.

“If you show up at your precinct and you think you’re registered but you’re not on the list for some reason, you’ll be able to vote on a provisional ballot,” Robertson said. “The county will thenreview the provisional ballots and determine if they were legally allowed to vote. We’re not just turning voters away when we can’t tell right then and there if they should be voting. We’ll be able to capture that vote on a provisional ballot, and if they’re not able to vote, they’ll be able to get it corrected by the next election.”

The state will also be surveying polling places to determine accessibility issues; by 2006, every polling place in America must be fully compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Turnout in Indiana primaries is not traditionally very high; 22 percent of registered voters statewide voted in the 2000 primaries. In Marion County that year, it was only 15 percent. Robertson noted that though most of the actual elections are months away, the primaries still remain an important opportunity for voters to speak out.

“It’s a party function, but it’s more open than a state convention,” Robertson said. “If you have an interest in who’s on the fall ballot, this is your chance to be involved.”