INDIANAPOLIS (INDY STAR) -- Hoosiers had to wait longer in line than almost every other state's voters when casting a ballot in 2016.
On average, voters in Indiana had to wait 17 minutes to vote, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology elections data. Only South Carolina had a longer wait time.
MIT included how long voters had to wait to drop off a mail-in ballot as well as the wait time at polling locations when calculating the average wait time.
Valerie Warycha, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Connie Lawson, said Lawson has already pushed for initiatives to decrease long wait times. When she was in the General Assembly, Lawson was the author of legislation that created vote centers so Hoosiers could vote early, and later worked with counties to adapt that model elsewhere in the state.
She also told county elections officials to contact the Bi-Partisan Policy Institute if there were long lines on election day, so the institute could collect data to try to fix the issue.
"There are now more than a third of Indiana counties using vote centers," Warycha said. "We hope to see more counties move to the vote center model, which provides additional early voting locations and the flexibility for voters to vote anywhere in the county."
Jim Harper, the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, criticized Lawson for not pushing back on GOP leaders who he said make it harder for people to vote. For example, Indiana has some of the shortest poll hours in the nation, and the state requires voters to give an excuse if they want to vote by mail.
"It's definitely an issue," Harper said. "It highlights that, for a lot of Hoosiers, voting is not convenient. It should be convenient for everybody to cast a ballot, and we have not done a good job on ensuring that."
Hoosiers have been notorious for their low voter turnout in recent years. In 2016, the turnout was 56 percent, the 12th worst in the nation. Four years earlier, Indiana had the ninth lowest turnout rate. During the May primaries, voter turnout failed to crack 20 percent in Indiana.
Indiana scored high on some other election indicators. For example, Indiana has the highest percentage of returned absentee ballots, allows voters to register online and has a small percentage of unreturned ballots from overseas.
Call IndyStar reporter Kaitlin Lange at 317-432-9270. Follow her on Twitter: @kaitlin_lange.
