Ballard unveils prototype for state-issued, precinct-level voter guides

Lincoln Party Secretary of State candidate Greg Ballard on Tuesday debuted a prototype of what he called the first state-sponsored voter’s guide personalized down to the precinct level. 

“No Hoosier should ever walk into the voting booth feeling unprepared to cast their ballot, and no one should stay home because they didn’t have time to learn who or what would be on that ballot,” said Ballard, a former Republican mayor of Indianapolis.

“When I’m secretary of state, that won’t happen,” he said during a news conference at the Statehouse. “Each registered voter would receive a printed voter’s guide mailed to their home for each general election, with customized information for all of the races on their ballot.”

Ballard’s campaign, under the nascent Lincoln Party banner, has created a unique four-candidate race for the office that oversees statewide election and voting policies.

The voter’s guide would include a sample ballot, candidate information, ballot questions or constitutional amendment guidance, polling locations, calendar reminders for early voting or Election Day and more, according to Ballard.

The prototype, available on his campaign website, uses data from his own precinct in Boone County.

Ballard assured reporters that the guide would be nonpartisan, with brief descriptions of each elected office’s responsibilities and blurbs submitted by candidates themselves. Those would be limited to 150 words and could not include attacks on other candidates.

Voters would also be able to use an app with similar functionalities.

Ballard said his team had completed a “very detailed cost analysis” showing the voter guides would cost an estimated $2.5 million to $3 million.

That’s “a penny for every $100 the state spends,” he said. “It’s also about six, seven, eight days of interest that the state makes on a daily basis. So, you give me six, seven, eight days, it pays for this also.”

Ballard would seek to create and mail the voter guides within the office’s existing budget, but said an additional appropriation “would be helpful.”

“This is going to be given to you,” he said of the voter’s guide. “… You don’t have to go find it. It’ll be pushed out to you. That’s a big change.”

His election opponents, however, panned the plan.

“Greg Ballard is making promises the Secretary of State doesn’t have the budget or authority to keep,” Republican candidate Max Engling’s campaign said. “There is no funding for his proposed voter guide, and instead of partnering with nonprofits already doing this work across the country, Ballard wants to grow state government and stick taxpayers with the bill.”

Democrat Beau Bayh’s campaign manager, Jack Tormoehlen, said Bayh “believes providing information about voting to Hoosiers is important and plans to do just that” — but that “the millions of dollars of taxpayer resources required to mail a 32-page booklet, that many people will discard upon receiving, can be better spent elsewhere.”

Libertarian Lauri Shillings noted the cost as well as technology-based shifts in constituent habits.

IndianaVoters.IN.gov already hosts “most of this information,” she said, and “could easily be updated to provide more information on each candidate, if those candidates wish to submit it.”