Indiana election officials are confident in the security of the state’s upcoming midterm election, even as President Donald Trump warns of election security concerns.
Trump delivered a speech Thursday outlining his concerns, which include vulnerabilities in election equipment and voter registration, noncitizens on state voter rolls and Chinese interference. His administration also released documents it says support the claims.
But Indiana officials told WFYI that they are not worried that those concerns will impact the election’s integrity given existing processes.
"We have a system of checks and balances, and there are checks on the checks, and it’s bipartisan, and I feel very strongly that we have a very good system here in Indiana that makes sure that it’s very secure. I have 100% faith in it,” said Chad Kinsella, a Ball State University professor and co-director of Voting System Technical Oversight Program, or VSTOP.
Indiana performs audits of election results. In 2024, Kinsella said that post-election audits of the general election did not reveal any anomalies. WFYI reported on election security processes leading up to that election.
There are rigorous certification processes for the equipment that involve multiple agencies and public test days to ensure that the machines perform as expected. Ballot marking and scanning devices are not connected to the internet, while the state’s electronic poll books, which access a statewide voter registration system, are on networks secured by passwords and firewalls.
And Indiana's voter identification law requires a voter to provide a state driver’s license, a U.S. passport, Indiana State Identification Card, or military ID before to cast a ballot.
Election officials react
In a statement to WFYI, Secretary of State Diego Morales’ office said that it is focused on election integrity.
“Secretary Morales has spent his tenure ensuring Indiana runs safe and secure elections. From enhancing voter ID laws to passing and implementing Indiana’s first proof of citizenship law, Hoosiers should be able to trust Indiana elections. Every vote has a paper trail and every ballot issued requires proof of identification,” it read in part.
Last year, Morales shared voter registration data with the Trump administration and announced after its review that it had identified 21 noncitizen voters in recent Indiana elections and 165 noncitizens registered to vote. But those numbers are less than 1% of 2.9 million ballots cast and 4.8 million registered voters in the 2024 election.
Elections in the U.S. are decentralized and run locally, and in Indiana, county clerks are the top election officials.
Marion County Clerk Kate Sweeney Bell, a Democrat, rejected the president’s concerns and said that his call to pass the SAVE America Act would result in fewer registered voters and ballots cast.
“What the president did last night will make conducting our elections harder,” she added. “There are some people who are going to believe what he said, and they are going to believe again that elections aren’t secure, and that we have to pass this legislation.”
Bell pledged that the November election will be secure for Marion County and across the state because of local dedicated staff.
Knox County Clerk David Shelton, a Republican, said he’s “cautiously confident” in Indiana’s system.
“I would put the system in Indiana against any state in the nation. But, you know, any system that involves humans can be prone to errors, whether intentional or accidental,” Shelton said. “But I think we have a good system in Indiana. I’m confident in it.”
Shelton said during his time as clerk, he identified an instance of voter fraud in the 2020 election. In that case, a man was found guilty for voting multiple times.
Recently, Trump has worked to reshape two federal agencies that provide election support to states and local governments. He fired commissioners at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and reduced staff at the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency.
Both county clerks said that they haven’t seen any local impacts as a result of those decisions yet.
Secretary of state candidates
Morales was not chosen by party delegates at the Republican convention in June to run again for Secretary of State. Max Engling, who won the nomination, said in a statement that he “applauds” the Trump administration’s effort to draw attention to voter fraud.
“Thank you to President Trump and his administration for focusing on election security,” Engling said in part. “I will continue efforts to crack down on what Beau Bayh and the national Democrats want in the Hoosier State – Washington, D.C. and San Francisco-style elections where non-citizens vote, ballots are harvested, and tallies are delayed by weeks on end.”
Other candidates are in the secretary of state race, including former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard, who is running in a third party. He said he sees Indiana’s clerks as doing a good job.
“They keep the voting machines in order,” he said. “Voting has always been the purview of the states, and I think that should remain so. And I don’t like our data going up to the federal government. I don’t like our federal government telling us how to run our elections in the State of Indiana or in any other state. I don’t think that’s appropriate at all.”
Democratic nominee Beau Bayh said county clerks “work on a bipartisan basis” and thinks they and other election workers do a good job securing Indiana’s elections.
“Look, President Trump is trying to relitigate the 2020 election, which dozens of federal judges have ruled that there was no significant fraud which changed the outcome of that election — judges appointed by President Trump himself,” Bayh said. “I believe this is an effort to distract from the biggest issues in front of Americans today and in front of Hoosiers today. Costs are going up.”
Foreign interference
Around 2022, Kinsella — of the state’s election technology oversight program — said that VSTOP met with the Indiana Department of Homeland Security in a secure room to answer questions about Russian interference in the state’s elections.
“It’s never happened,” Kinsella said.
He acknowledged there are sometimes problems in elections, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t secure.
“We’ve very much minimized the possibilities of nefarious actors getting in and causing problems,” he said.
Contact WFYI data journalist Zak Cassel at zcassel@wfyi.org.
