Dave Bangert

dbangert@jconline.com

The text came late one night last week, just about the time Indiana State Police expanded an investigation into potential voter registration fraud from nine to 56 of the state’s 92 counties.

The question, boiled down, was haunting: Want to see how easy it would be to get into someone’s voter registration and make changes to it? The offer from Steve Klink – a Lafayette-based public consultant who works mainly with Indiana public school districts – was to use my voter registration record as a case study.

Only with my permission, of course.

“I will not require any information from you,” he texted. “Which is the problem.”

Turns out he didn’t need anything from me. He sent screenshots of every step along the way, as he navigated from the “Update My Voter Registration” tab at the Indiana Statewide Voter Registration System maintained since 2010 at www.indianavoters.com to the blank screen that cleared the way for changes to my name, address, age and more.

The only magic involved was my driver’s license number, one of two log-in options to make changes online. And that was contained in a copy of every county’s voter database, a public record already in the hands of political parties, campaigns, media and, according to Indiana open access laws, just about anyone who wants the beefy spreadsheet.

As promised, Klink made no changes, but he made his point. Let’s just say it was unsettling at best.

“Does it make me nervous?” asked Tippecanoe County Clerk Christa Coffey, after I walked through the process with her personal voter registration stored online. “It absolutely does. I worry about anything that might compromise an election. … That said, nothing has seemed abnormal, so far this year. If anything’s happened here, we haven’t seen it. But it’s so hard to tell.”

Tippecanoe County has picked up more than 2,000 new registrations since the May primary, with nearly 111,855 registered voters as of Monday, Coffey said. The deadline to register is Tuesday.

Tippecanoe County isn’t among the 57 counties targeted by the Indiana State Police investigation that started in Marion County. As of late last week, it appeared police were working their way alphabetically through Indiana’s counties, making it to Owen County. Coffey said she was preparing in case police pull Tippecanoe County in next.

State police haven’t offered much about the investigation or about when it would be done. Last week, state police issued a search warrant for the business offices of Indiana Voter Registration Project in Indianapolis. (Patriot Majority USA, the parent organization for Indiana Voter Registration Project, in turn, asked the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to look for signs that the police probe was an attempt to suppress the black vote.)

As for what they were after, police offered a statement: “Victims of the activities by some agents of the Indiana Voter Registration Project may not discover they have been disenfranchised from voting until they go to vote and realize their voting information has been altered.”

How that might be happening, and whether it includes the state’s online system, state police aren’t saying. Valerie Warycha, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State’s office, said her understanding is the Indiana Voter Registration Project typically collects registration information on paper forms.

“To my knowledge, I’ve not heard of anyone getting to do that in the online system,” Warycha said. “The driver’s license is the safeguard there, and we don’t have evidence that that isn’t working.”

That, Warycha said, and the fact that tampering with voter data is a crime. Providing false information on a voter registration form is a felony, carrying a fine of up to $10,000 and a jail term of up to 2½ years.

Still, replicating the experiment Klink did with my voter registration data was a cinch. Co-workers freaked as I had them stand over my shoulder, giving permission at each screen, as I punched in numbers stored in a voter database I request through Indiana public access laws each election cycle.

The fact that someone accessed the account didn’t generate an emailed notice, similar to ones you’d get when passwords or account information is changed in Facebook, Google or on a credit card.

“This is a complete shock to me,” Heather Maddox, Tippecanoe County Democratic Party chairwoman, said after showing her how I could click into her account.

Maddox said her party uses the voter database several times a day during the election season.

“We run our walk lists and call lists off of it,” Maddox said. “Currently, we are making calls to folks who received absentee ballots to make sure they received them and will return (them). So it’s a very important piece to what we do.”

She paused.

“But the fact that you could do what you did so easily … oh, man,” Maddox said. “I don’t want to say I’m panicked, but that’s scary.”

Coffey said the biggest concern would be for a hacker to change an address and request an absentee ballot.

“Then you have a voter showing up to vote on Election Day and we already show a ballot cast,” Coffey said.

But even slight changes – transposing letters in a name or the numbers in an address – could flag a voter at the polls. In that case, Coffey said, voters should ask for a provisional ballot, which gives the voter and election officials 10 days to sort things out.

The upshot, state police say: This would be a good time to make sure your voter registration is not only up to date, but also accurate. That’s available at the “Confirm My Voter Registration” tab at www.indianavoters.com.

“Overall, is this my biggest concern?” Coffey said. “Not really, quite honestly. The vast majority of voters aren’t going to see any problems at all. … But do I hope it gives us a chance to look at some changes in how this works? I’d say, yes.”

Bangert is a columnist with the Journal & Courier. Contact him atdbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.

What you can do

The deadline to register to vote in Indiana is Tuesday. To register through the Indiana Secretary of State, go to indianavoters.com. The site also includes links to check or update voter registration information.

Download the Journal & Courier app