State and local Republicans have expanded early voting in GOP-dominated areas and restricted it in Democratic areas, an IndyStar investigation has found, prompting a significant change in Central Indiana voting patterns.

From 2008 to 2016, GOP officials expanded early voting stations in Republican dominated Hamilton County, IndyStar's analysis found, and decreased them in the state's biggest Democratic hotbed, Marion County.

That made voting more convenient in GOP areas for people with transportation issues or busy schedules. And the results were immediate.

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Most telling, Hamilton County saw a 63 percent increase in absentee voting from 2008 to 2016, while Marion County saw a 26 percent decline. Absentee ballots are used at early voting stations.

Population growth and other factors may have played a role, but Hamilton County Clerk Kathy Richardson, a Republican, told IndyStar the rise in absentee voting in Hamilton County was largely a result of the addition of two early voting stations, which brought the total to three.

"It was a great concept to open those (voting stations)," Richardson said, adding that the turnout might have increased with the addition of even more voting machines.

Other Central Indiana Republican strongholds, including Boone, Johnson and Hendricks counties, also have added early voting sites — and enjoyed corresponding increases in absentee voter turnout.

But not Marion County, which tends to vote Democratic, and has a large African-American population.

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During that same 2008-16 period, the number of early voting stations declined from three to one in Marion County, as Republican officials blocked expansion.

Some Republicans blame the dearth of early voting in Marion County on a lack of local funding. "I have never received any type of message that the individuals in charge of Marion County have any interest in spending the money (to expand satellite locations)," said Jim Merritt, chairman of the Marion County Republican Party.

But Indianapolis Mayor Joseph Hogsett, a Democrat, told IndyStar he is in favor of adding additional early voting stations to the county's 2018 budget. And four attempts to expand early voting in Marion County have been approved by Democrats, but blocked by the county's lone GOP representative on the elections board.

“It is a deliberate attempt by certain people in our government to make voting hard,” said former Marion County Clerk Beth White, a Democrat, who promoted those expansions.

Whatever the motives, it's a partisan squabble with serious ramifications for a democratic system already strained by claims of foreign tampering and fake news, not to mention presidential candidates describing the system as "rigged."

Democrats are challenging the state's early voting system in a lawsuit alleging the secretary of state and legislative supermajority have launched a concerted effort to suppress the Democratic vote, a debate that is also playing out on the national front.

When presented with IndyStar's findings, Richardson, who also serves on the Indiana House Elections Committee, said she would support additional early voting sites in Marion County, as well as statewide funding of elections to ensure a more equitable system. But she doubted state funding would receive political support.

When asked about IndyStar's analysis, legislative leaders including Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore David Long, R-Fort Wayne, and House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, did not return numerous requests for comment, or respond to questions submitted in writing. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb and Secretary of State Connie Lawson deferred to county officials for comment.

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Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, which is party to the suit, said in-person early voting is important because people are increasingly voting early — especially the poor and people of color who cannot take time off of work.

And the recent history of voting reforms strongly suggests new state policies contributed to the disparity in early voting opportunities now seen in Central Indiana.

Protecting the voter, protecting the polls

Since legislation passed in 2001, every county requires a unanimous vote of the three-member board to expand early voting. County elections boards are currently made up of a Democrat, a Republican and the county clerk. That legislation set the stage for the current disparity.

But it wasn't until 2008 until the issue developed. Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Crawford v. Marion County in April 2008, mandating all Indiana voters present government-issued ID at the polls, the Marion County Election Board approved early voting sites in the state’s largest county.

In October 2008, two satellite voting locations opened in Marion County at North Central High School on East 86th Street and the Southport Community Center on Derbyshire Road, along with the City-County Building Downtown.

The selections were based on recommendations from a bipartisan study committee and approved unanimously by the Marion County Board of Elections that summer, according to court documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.

In November 2008, Barack Obama was elected president and was the first Democrat to carry the state of Indiana since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 — heavily supported by Lake and Marion counties, which both have large, Democratic, African-American populations.

White, then head of the Marion County Election Board, said she believes Republicans feared a replication of Obama's 2008 win. “They started to change the rules,” she said, and 2008 would be the last year Marion County would have more than one early voting site.

In 2010, the Marion County Election Board, ceased approving satellite voting sites in federal elections due to the objections from the Republican member of the board. The Republican member of the board did so again in 2012, when the board considered a resolution that would have created two additional satellite sites, one at the Beech Grove Technology Center and another at the Washington Township Trustee’s office.

The two Democratic members approved the locations, and GOP member Patrick Dietrick cast a vote against it.

In 2013, the state legislature began implementing reforms with specific controls over Marion, Lake and Allen counties' early voting systems.

The legislature enacted IC 3-11.5-4, which applied to “counties with populations over 325,000," mandating that absentee ballots must be counted at a central site, "unless a county election board could unanimously agree to do so elsewhere."

White, who was clerk at the time, warned that the bill, Senate Bill 621, would make voting more expensive in those counties.

"Indiana’s other 89 counties still retain the flexibility to decide whether or not to send ballots to their precinct to be counted or count them at a central site," she argued in 2013. "In effect, county election officials will be operating under two sets of rules."

Again, in 2014 and 2016, Democrats attempted to expand early voting in Marion County, but were stopped by the Republican member of the election board. Most recently, Republican Maura Hoff, by proxy, cast a vote against expanded early voting sites. Hoff did not respond to emails, phone calls and written requests for comment.

Meanwhile, Hamilton County added two additional early voting stations in 2016, giving it one station for every 100,000 voters, as opposed to one for more than 700,000 voters in Marion County. The results were significant.

The number of in-person absentee ballots cast in Hamilton County rose from 32,729 in 2008 to 53,608 in 2016, representing a 63 percent increase. At the same time, there was a 26 percent decrease in Marion County, from 93,316 to 68,599. During that period, the percentage of absentee ballots rose from 25 percent to 34 percent in Hamilton County, and fell from 24 percent to 19 percent in Marion County.

Nadia Brown, a political science professor at Purdue University, says the stats are "ridiculous," calling the state's actions a form of "voter disenfranchisement."

"This is a clear way to make it more strenuous for people to vote," adding that she has seen similar tactics used in Texas, North Carolina and Kansas.

What's more, the uneven playing field is likely to become even more exaggerated in years ahead. GOP leaders admitted in court testimony that a project in Downtown Indianapolis is disrupting parking at Marion County's only early voting station.

The total number of voters increased in Hamilton County from 130,829 people in 2008 to 158,205 in 2016. However, in Marion County, the total number of voters declined in 2016, from 381,759 to 370,498 people. This comes despite an increase of registered voters in both counties.

In May, Common Cause Indiana and the NAACP’s Indianapolis chapter filed a lawsuit against the Marion County Election Board, Lawson and individual members of the Marion County Election Board, along with Marion County Clerk Myla Eldridge over the lack of early voting locations in the County.

They say the state has intentionally discriminated against minorities in forming these rules.

The individual members of the election board did not respond to IndyStar requests for comment. Eldridge declined to comment to IndyStar.

Republicans argue that there has been no effort over the years to suppress the vote in Marion County.

Richardson in Hamilton County says while she sees the benefits of early voting locations — it will be difficult to change the law allowing local decision-making. "The only way it could be equal is if the state took over the operations of elections and I don’t believe that will happen."

Vaughn with Common Cause says equity in elections is the only way to ensure a pure democracy.

“We need to give voters options, whether they choose to exercise them or not,” Vaughn said. “This is about a disparity that exists where voters in other counties have more opportunities than voters in Marion County.”

Will vote centers solve the problem?

The latest reforms being floated include vote centers, but the effect of those is also debatable.

The centers would do away with neighborhood precincts and drastically reduce the number of voting locations throughout the county and state.

A study by Pew Charitable Trusts indicates that vote centers are on the rise throughout the nation, from Colorado to Iowa and the District of Columbia.

In Indiana, from 2007 to 2010, the secretary of state's office ran a Vote Center Pilot Program. Three counties — Wayne, Tippecanoe, and Cass — experimented with the use of vote centers.

After three years and numerous elections, “the pilot program was a success,” according to the secretary of state website, and in 2011, the Indiana General Assembly passed Senate Enrolled Act 32 and House Enrolled Act 1242, making vote centers an option for any Indiana county.

According to the National Conference of State Legislators, there are a variety of positive and negative aspects to vote centers:

Positively, citizens can vote near home, near work or school, or anywhere there is a vote center. With fewer locations to staff, election day expenses are reduced and, because of convenience, turnout may increase.

However, vote centers can cause confusion if the switch isn't well publicized and explained to the public. The centers also change the traditional civic experience of voting with neighbors at a local school, church or other polling place.

Most important, the switch could drastically reduce the number of early voting locations throughout the county, the website states.

And efforts by some Republicans to establish vote centers died this year in the Republican-controlled legislature.

In the latest legislative session, Rep. Tim Wesco, R-Elkhart, proposed a vote centers bill that would have applied to the entire state, but the bill died before it could be discussed.

Merritt and other Republicans say Democrats have not been open to adding vote centers.

Vaughn with Common Cause says vote centers could be a Band-Aid to a larger problem, since Marion County “does not spend near enough money on elections.”

“This is the most basic part of the democratic process," she said.

"If we are not adding more additional early voting locations here, we don’t have our priorities in the right place.”

Call IndyStar reporter Fatima Hussein at (317) 444-6209. Follow her on Twitter: @fatimathefatima.