In Indiana, a US citizen needed to prove her right to vote

Transcript was created using an automated software.

Chris Fitzsimon  
This is Stories From The States. I'm Chris Fitzsimon. Here at States Newsroom, we know there's a lot going on around the country in every state capital. So, thank you for being here. This week we're trying something different. We're going to jump in first with the news of the week from around the country, including a political update of sorts with Graham Platner in, or should I say, out in Maine to the mystery around what's going on with Mitch McConnell. We'll also talk about how the federal government is at odds with the states on environmental issues and renewable energy. Then we'll talk about immigrant detention centers and the giant warehouses that the federal government bought, and the tax implications of all that. And then, of course, as we always do. We'll have one last thing. I'll give you a quick hint. Skee ball, which I was very good at as a teenager, could actually become illegal in Pennsylvania. Later in the show, we'll go to Indiana, where recent proof of citizenship law led to one US citizen's voter registration being revoked. We'll talk to Charrie Stambaugh on what it was like to get that reinstated, but first, let's go to the news with our two amazing States Newsroom newsletter authors, Danielle Gaines, who writes The Evening Wrap, and Madison Fitzgerald, author of Daybreak. Well, hi, Danielle and Madison, how are you guys?

Madyson Fitzgerald  
Doing well! ,

Danielle Gaines  
Hi, Chris, doing good.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Quite a week, we got all sorts of things happening in the news, but we have to start with not only the heat, but the World Cup, which is insane. Have you guys been watching?

Danielle Gaines  
Yeah, all my, all my teams are out, so you know I'm gonna pick some new teams, and we'll keep watching.

Madyson Fitzgerald  
Yeah, yeah, it's been super crazy. I'm really upset about the host countries being kicked out, but you know, they all put up a good fight, including the US, even though that last match was a little bit rough against Belgium.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Yeah, that was ugly. The I think the discovery for me, I knew about some of the stars. I don't follow football as closely as I should, but the Haaland guy from Norway - goodness gracious, that is, he looks like he was made in a lab.

Madyson Fitzgerald  
A monster.

Danielle Gaines  
He's incredible. And their fans are so fun, you know. The whole rowing thing is infectious.

Chris Fitzsimon  
It is. All right. Lot of news this week. We want to get to let folks know what's going on around the country. One big theme, of course, is in general the environment, energy. Let's, let's talk about that, Madyson. What was what's happening in the sort of the renewable energy environment world?

Madyson Fitzgerald  
Well, one of the big things that I noticed this week was about offshore wind, and from a story from Stateline, they basically were talking about how these buyouts have really upended the offshore wind industry. President Donald Trump has shown the immense power of the executive branch by stymying  offshore wind development, as nearly all projects are in waters where federal agencies operate as the landlord, and so now, as the feds are kind of blocking these new permits and dangling billion dollar bio offers to convince developers to walk away from the projects, state leaders are really hoping that some companies will kind of stick around so that they can be revived after Trump leaves office, and one example of this was actually reported by our Maine newsroom, where two federal leases in the Gulf of Maine were seeing a lot of uncertainty, simply because they were terminated, and people are hoping in the future that they will have the opportunity to come back under a different president.

Danielle Gaines  
I think what surprised me about that Stateline story, so much is like I've heard the court arguments and the court fights over the permits and the revocations and things like that, but the idea that the administration is just actually paying money for people to back away from their projects was had flown under the radar for me.

Madyson Fitzgerald  
It's really scary. I mean, it's like it's this isn't just for companies that are in the US, either there are other companies from other countries that are kind of also have their hand in these projects, and so it's created a bit of a mess in terms of how these developers are going to move forward, but I think a lot of state leaders have some faith that they'll be able to invest in this kind of clean energy in the future, so we'll see how that, how that happens.

Chris Fitzsimon  
It does seem like the Trump administration is making their priorities clear. You guys talking about freezing renewable projects, and then, but it looks like they want to make it easier to drill in the Arctic, maybe.

Madyson Fitzgerald  
Yeah, and that was one of the big stories that I saw. The Trump administration is treating a lot of their energy-related projects differently, and so they loosened rules for oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and from these examples, it really looks like the administration is fighting back against clean energy sources in exchange for the more traditional uses of oil and gas and other resources that we've been used to. So it's very, very clear which sources or resources the administration is prioritizing, and what they're hoping to focus on over the next couple of years.

Danielle Gaines  
Yeah, I mean, for me it just, this offshore wind made me think so much about the coal plants, and you know, the executive order on coal production, and you know, just 90 days at a time, I think it is, they are making an emergency order. To keep coal plants still running in states across the country, and in states where you know, like these plants had been slated for retirement for years, the state policies on energy portfolios had started moving away from coal. States, and utilities had created employee retraining programs, and all of these things, and now the coal plants are are being kept online at a cost to ratepayers, because we're paying to have subpar facilities still running.

Chris Fitzsimon  
I can't imagine what it's like to work in the renewable energy office at a state department of energy, that must be that must be one of the tougher jobs around. Well, let's, we can't talk about the news these days without talking about immigration, the administration's policy toward immigrants and immigration in general, but sort of a new wrinkle this week is the battle over these detention centers and big warehouses, and what's happening with that.

Danielle Gaines  
Yeah, so you know, the Trump administration again came in with fervor and money to achieve this goal of creating immigrant detention facilities all across the country, so they put billions of dollars towards buying warehouses in places that we don't typically think of as being safe for living, but one of the wrinkles in Pennsylvania, the governor and some lawmakers and the communities really fought against having these warehouses converted to immigrant detention facilities, and now they're faced with kind of a knock-on issue, which is that now that the federal government owns these properties, they aren't able to collect property tax on them, or sales tax from, you know, business activities happening within them, and so in Pennsylvania, you know, we had a story about these two different townships and a number of taxing districts within them that are facing double digit percentage losses of their budgets with the loss of actual businesses operating in actual warehouses, and while some federal agencies are able to do something called a payment in lieu of taxes, that's typically reserved for like national parks and forest land conservation areas, and it's not something that the Department of Homeland Security actually is authorized to do, so it's this interesting dynamic where you know they they achieved one goal and now have another issue with the federal government as nearby property owners.

Chris Fitzsimon  
And then there's the human stories we always hear on and then the Madyson a new policy or at least a battle over a policy about actually telling us what happens to immigrants.

Madyson Fitzgerald  
Yeah, there was earlier this week, there was a story, and it was out of Virginia and New York, where 23 states are hoping to urge the president's administration to reverse a new federal policy that would basically end investigations and public reporting of deaths that occur shortly after immigrants are released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, and there's been a lot of stories where once an immigrant is released from, you know, being detained, they don't really have the care that they need to be able to find their families, to go back home, to maybe get the medical attention that they need, because a lot of these people are being arrested while battling illnesses and things of that nature, and so it's been a really kind of messy situation, and there was actually, as I remember, there was a story a couple of weeks ago where a woman was released and then ended up sitting at the bus stop and freezing to death because there was nowhere for them to go, and so it's a situation that a lot of states are hoping that the federal government does not make that change, because it would, it would really make it hard to be able to track these people that you know their families are at home waiting for them, and so it's, it's, it's a little bit of a messy situation.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Yeah, and then we're, I think, in sort of troubling echoes of Minnesota, we had an immigrant killed by an ICE agent in Texas, and now folks are protesting.

Danielle Gaines  
Heartbreaking,

Madyson Fitzgerald  
Right? Yeah, and this was, I think, this happened earlier this week. It was there was a crowd that gathered, and they were very angry and just very upset, because this is a story that's happened several times. This is happening all over the country, not just Texas, not just Minnesota, but all over. And so I think that as people get more angry, hopefully they're expecting to the federal government to make some changes, or at least for state leaders to step in.

Danielle Gaines  
I watched the.. I don't know if you guys watched the press conference of the son of the man who was killed in Texas, and it was.. it was heart-wrenching, and part of what he had to talk about was. Well, he realized it was his father that was in the situation, because he recognized his dad's voice, which is just wrenching, but he could not get any sort of confirmation that it was his father from any sort of official source, or the hospital, it was ultimately news media by which he found out, so it's not easy to find out details about people hurt or killed in immigration custody as it is, and so the idea that we would be formalizing releasing less information is really interesting and not good.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Yeah, I feel like, for since this whole, really, since the Trump new administration started, there have been stories in our network almost every week about individual stories of people who are held. There was another one this past week in New Hampshire. The stories of the families and the people, I think, are so.. I think somebody.. I think Danielle used the word heart wrenching, it really does bring it home when you, when you know the details of a family's life and how they're caught up in all this.

Danielle Gaines  
Yeah, I mean, our reporters have been on the ground with folks, I think you know, we've had stories talking with a man as he was released from custody in Maine, in New Hampshire, we sat down with Fabian Schmidt, this German green card holder, who does, by the way, still want to become an American citizen, which is kind of remarkable. In Minnesota, I remember we had a story where our reporter and photographer went with a family throughout the day when they tried to self-deport, as we say now, and weren't able to, by the way, but just we had in the parking lot with the kids trying to keep themselves busy while their mom was trying to do paperwork. We have really great on the ground coverage by our journalists. It's really helps people understand what's going on.

Chris Fitzsimon  
And finally, our last sort of big category of things I know we're probably going to be doing this almost every week. It's an election year and politics is everywhere. There feels like there was giant political news in Maine, and sort of in Kentucky.

Danielle Gaines  
Yeah, well, Graham Platner is out of the US Senate race, so Platner was, you know, a controversial and interesting, I would say, candidate from the start, he had a, he had a grassroots campaign, he had a message that was very different than your typical democrat, he had early backing, especially on the left side of the party, but you know, he's been faced with controversies throughout, so now two days after this fuller accusation of sexual assault and rape came out in Politico. He has officially said that he is leaving the race. This comes one week before the ballot deadline to withdraw, and like two, three weeks before the state party needs to pick a replacement, that is at the end of this month, and so it's a mad scramble now. So he just released a video saying that he was going to remove himself from the race. It was not an admission of guilt, according to him, but that he had fully lost the kind of institutional support and funding that he needed to continue forward. So there's already people coming forward to say that they're interested in the seat. The state party announced that they're going to have a convention to do that. Maine, obviously, is one of the critical seats for Democrats to potentially take back the US Senate in November. That's going to be close. They have to do quite a bit of work. It's 53 to 47 in the chamber right now, and you know, before this news, it was talking about how maybe there is a blue wave, a tsunami building, we'll see, and now this is thrown kind of one of the Democrats' best hopes into, into obviously a state of play that we're just really uncertain about,

Chris Fitzsimon  
So that's somebody trying to get into the Senate. Madyson, there's somebody a long time member of the Senate who we don't really know what's happening.

Madyson Fitzgerald  
Yeah, it's really kind of interesting because you don't see a lot of instances where a congressperson is unavailable for so long, and there's no updates on what's going on, and so for US Senator Mitch McConnell, he was hospitalized nearly a month ago, and so people are in the home state of Kentucky, and all over the country are trying to figure out what's going on, and I think recently the governor actually came out and said that you are responsible for providing me and the public with an update on what's going on with your health, and in realistic terms, like if I had a representative, someone that was supposed to be representing me in the hospital, I would definitely like to know what's going on, because I voted for that person to go to work and do and make the make the changes that you know I want to make, and so it's very interesting, we'll have to keep an eye on it, and I'm hoping that this isn't something that they're trying to, you know, elongate, so that they can maybe push through to the midterms, and I don't know, it's a very interesting situation.

Danielle Gaines  
Yeah, there's a, there's a thought that they're trying to avoid a special election replacement for him. Um, you know, Kentucky is not one of, but not viewed as, like, one of.. he had already announced that he was retiring, but it's that wasn't viewed as one of the most competitive US Senate seats this cycle, but it's worth noting, you know, they've got a Democratic governor who is, who is part of the pushback on this current situation. So.

Chris Fitzsimon  
All right, I wish we could talk about politics some more, but we have to head to my favorite part, which is the one last thing, and I'm really worried about skeeball. So, Madyson, what is happening in Pennsylvania?

Madyson Fitzgerald  
Well, I always love talking about Pennsylvania, since I've lived here for a little while now, but this story is really one of my favorites, simply because we actually have a barcade very close by that we go to pretty often, and I'm not great at skeeball, but this is just something that I will be keeping in the back of my mind as the next time we head over there, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last month declared that skill games were unlawful, so this threw 1000s of businesses across the state into uncertainty as they await guidance from the legislature, but the ruling might have also put popular family games on the wrong side of the law, and so skill games typically resemble slot machines that are found in casinos, and players can bet to win jackpots from games that are based on chance, but while the ruling primarily deals with these types of skill game machines that allow players to win these jackpots. The judge said, in his opinion, that enforcement, hypothetically, could stretch to traditional arcade games, often found at places like Chuck E. Cheese or Dave and Busters, another arcade place that I really enjoy going to.

Danielle Gaines  
I love Dave and Busters. If you want to give me the best birthday, take me to Dave and Busters.

Madyson Fitzgerald  
I love it. It's so fun. So, Pace-O-Matic, which is the company that produces skill game software, argued in court that if their machines are considered a form of gambling, then games like skeeball and other arcade games that require skill to win would also technically be illegal. And so, the Commonwealth's attorney called this the "Chuck E Cheese Defense", which I think is so clever, and so I'll be thinking about Chuck E. Cheese the next time, the Chuck E. Cheese defense, the next time I head to the arcade.

Chris Fitzsimon  
That is great. Well, before I let you guys go, do you have any favorites? Who do you want to win the World Cup now? France is the favorite.

Madyson Fitzgerald  
Oh, France is the favorite, I've, I like a new team, I always love, like, rooting for the underdog, and so, like, obviously France, Argentina, like, those are the favorites, but, like, be so cool if, like, Morocco would win, maybe, who knows.

Danielle Gaines  
Yeah, definitely, I also like, I also subscribe to the idea that I always want whoever beat me to go as far as they can, so...

Chris Fitzsimon  
So you're a Belgium fan.

Danielle Gaines  
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, well, not really.

Madyson Fitzgerald  
Belgium's been nice.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Wait, we'll see.

Madyson Fitzgerald  
Yeah, we'll see.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Well, Madyson, Danielle, thank you very much. And we appreciate you being with us.

Madyson Fitzgerald  
Thank you.

Danielle Gaines  
Thank you.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Indiana lawmakers passed a law a couple of years ago that requires county election officials to request proof of citizenship from everyone who uses a number from temporary credentials as part of their voter registration application. Since that went into effect, reviews by state election officials have led to the rejection or cancelation of hundreds of voter registrations. One analysis found more than 60% of immigrant Hoosiers were impacted under a recent proof of citizenship law. Charrie Stambaugh, a longtime US citizen, was one of those people, and we'll hear from her in just a moment.

Moses Esheit  
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Chris Fitzsimon  
Charrie Stambaugh was one of the more than 1600 canceled or rejected voters who recently found out her registration was revoked. Charrie has been a US citizen for almost three decades, and she's cast a ballot in every election since she became eligible to vote, but after checking her registration status earlier this year, she found out it had been canceled. Charrie joins us now. Charrie, thank you very much for being with us. We appreciate your time.

Charrie Stambaugh  
Thanks for having me.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Let's talk about your experience. How did you first find out that you were no longer a registered voter?

Charrie Stambaugh  
Well, this began in late spring of this year, when I saw a Facebook post encouraging people to check their voter registration status. I checked mine and discovered that my registration was no longer active. At first, I assumed it was a clerical issue. I'd purchased a new home and moved the year before, so I thought perhaps the move had created a discrepancy tied to my BMV license, but I re-registered online, and I thought the matter was resolved. And then I received a letter from the County Clerk's Office requiring me to prove my citizenship in order to remain registered to vote.

Chris Fitzsimon  
When you say you re-registered online, was that after you found out that your registration was no longer active,

Charrie Stambaugh  
Correct.

Chris Fitzsimon  
And then you received a notice that you had to file some sort of proof. What was your first reaction when you saw when you sort of got into this? You'd mentioned you thought maybe it was a mistake.

Charrie Stambaugh  
Yeah, I thought it was a mistake. I mean, I, my first reaction was to contact the county clerk and say, "Hey, Trina McLaughlin, what's going on, and in fact, she herself didn't know. She was very kind and polite about it. Did some research, contacted me back immediately, and said it looks like there may be a BMV issue, but if you could just come to the county clerk's office and show your naturalization paper, we can scan it and override the system.

Chris Fitzsimon  
And you have, you've been a, you've been a diligent voter since you became a citizen.

Charrie Stambaugh  
Yes, yes, I became a citizen at age 14, but I've been in the United States since I was four and a half, almost five, and I have voted in every single election, I believe every primary as well.

Chris Fitzsimon  
What was it like to re-register? What? Tell us about that process.

Charrie Stambaugh  
To re-register, it was simply online. I just re-registered online. I actually thought that the entire process had been taken care of until I received that letter from the county clerk a few weeks later.

Chris Fitzsimon  
And what sort of documentation or what did you have to provide when you were registering again?

Charrie Stambaugh  
So I just showed them my naturalization paper from when I was 14, when I had taken the oath when I was naturalized.

Chris Fitzsimon  
What do you feel like that the, that there are other people in your shoes that might have a more difficult time doing this, like if you hadn't checked and seen that Facebook post? I wonder what would have happened.

Charrie Stambaugh  
Yeah, I think it could absolutely happen to everyone. I mean, I share this entire experience not because my right to vote matters any more than anyone else's, because it doesn't. It's, I'm familiar with the government system, civic responsibility, public service, and if navigating the process was confusing for me, I know that it may be more challenging for others. I'm not newly arrived, I'm not newly registered, I'm very engaged in my community, and I think that other people in the community could be embarrassed or afraid to come forward or do the processes necessary to correct their registration.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Yeah, what do you think would have happened if you had never noticed? I guess you would have just shown up to vote, like you always show up to vote.

Charrie Stambaugh  
Yeah, and then I wouldn't have been able to vote in my primaries, because that would have been the most next upcoming thing. So...

Chris Fitzsimon  
Y'know there's a lot of discussion about that, and the need to, the tension, I guess public officials feel is that it's they want to make sure that people are voting who are allowed to vote, but we also don't want to discourage people who are eligible to vote. So, we're what does this sort of make you think of the current debate?

Charrie Stambaugh  
I feel like some people are confusing the fact that I do believe in election integrity. As someone who is a city commissioner myself I do believe that voter access and election integrity are not competing values, they're actually the same value. Eligible people should be eligible to vote, and eligible people should not. That matters. The word eligible is what matters the most. I think the system may be that it's a little inaccurate, and it's flagging people that shouldn't be flagged, and when eligible citizens are being flagged and therefore not able to vote, it's taking away a fundamental right they were given.

Chris Fitzsimon  
When you, I know you, and thank you for talking to us again. When you spoke to the Indiana Capital Chronicle and other folks, what's been the reaction of folks?

Charrie Stambaugh  
The reaction of some people assume again that I was, you know, that I am not a legal citizen, that I did something wrong, that I am trying to cheat the system, and I am just trying to argue for accuracy, because I believe that accuracy protects elections for all citizens, not just naturalized or derived or born citizens here in the US, it protects everyone. We shouldn't.. I am sad sometimes that the social media people aren't reading the whole story. Maybe just read a headline or assume that I'm one of the people trying to cheat the system.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Yeah, I think if these numbers are right, you're more.. more than 1600 people were sort of in your shoes, it found out that their voters voter registration was revoked. That's a significant number of folks.

Charrie Stambaugh  
Yes, absolutely. I think the systems and the databases and the communication between the organizations that are impacted or contribute to this need to maybe look at their processes a little bit better. I mean, most people don't notice when the government is working well, they only notice when government doesn't work well, and that's really where it comes down to. There is a little bit of information that Leslie at the Indiana Capital Chronicle had found, and it was that they found that under the BMV agency policy, applicants who presented a certificate of naturalization received a restriction nine until their status was verified, so that's what the state spokesperson said, but the thing that I can't reconcile is that when I went to the BMV in October of 2025 to change my driver's license, and at that time I thought, hey, I need to get my real ID as well, I did present to my naturalization paper, so then the response was not that it's wrong or wrong or right or indifferent, was that their system was down intermittently from the dates of October 14 to October 20, and I was there on the 20th. However, the second part that I can't quite reconcile is that the BMV is supposed to send every night to the Indiana Election Division, the updates nightly, so if it were down on certain days, why did it take until March, April, May of this year for me to get re-verified? And in fact, I never did get re-verified until I did it myself.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Yeah, why do you think that is?

Charrie Stambaugh  
You know, I spent a majority of my career in government nonprofits. In fact, I worked for the Indiana State Department of Health as the women's health director. I know that government processes can be difficult. I think there just needs to be better communication between the agencies, clearer instructions, faster resolution, more transparency, and maybe not so much blame placed whenever these things happen, but oh, I can fix this, because these ideas aren't partisan. This is just good government. They need to be fixed and identified.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Right. And finally, before I let you go, I wonder why. I know this is going to maybe sound like an unusual question, but why is it so important to you to vote?

Charrie Stambaugh  
From the minute that I became a citizen, in fact, actually before I even became a citizen, my parents brought home to me the importance of being an American citizen, and what it meant, and how voting is a fundamental right that we're receiving, you know. As, as I became a citizen, my father is a United States Army veteran. My grandfather, who's Filipino, actually received his citizenship because he served in the US Army as an Army veteran, and in my high school years, that's when 9/11 happened, and I became even more politically engaged and active in understanding history. So, from basically a the teenage years, I've been extremely involved in politics, and I think that's how we can affect change, we can right the wrongs, and we can ensure not to repeat the mistakes of the past, so that's why politics and being able to vote is important to me.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Well, thank you so much for that participation, and for re-registering and telling us your story. We really appreciate it.

Charrie Stambaugh  
Thank you so much for having me. I hope this helps other people.

Chris Fitzsimon  
Thanks for listening to Stories From The States. I'm Chris Fitzsimon. Mallory Chang produced and edited the podcast. David Singer produced our theme music. If you liked what you've heard, please share it with somebody you think might enjoy it, and please leave a rating and review. It means a lot to us to know what you think about the podcast, and of course, it helps other people find us. To stay up to date on the latest episodes, subscribe now to Stories From The States, a podcast from States Newsroom available wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll talk to you soon.