By Nathan Gotsch

Last month, Independent Indiana, the nonprofit I lead, commissioned a statewide poll of registered voters. Among other things, we found that 41% of Hoosiers now identify as independents—compared to just 29% as Republicans and 21% as Democrats.

That helps explain why 52% of independent candidates on the ballot won their elections in 2023 and 2024, compared with 61% of Republicans and 35% of Democrats.

So why haven’t we sent a single independent to represent us in Washington or the Indiana Statehouse?

It’s simple: As the size of the race increases, the rules unique to independent candidates become nearly impossible to overcome.

I learned that firsthand when I ran for Congress as an independent in 2022.

Under Indiana law, I had to collect handwritten signatures from registered voters—each providing their address and date of birth that matched their voter registration—to appear on the ballot. The number required is 2% of the number of votes cast in that district in the most recent secretary of state election. The Indiana Election Division told us that meant 6,738 valid signatures—slightly more than the requirement for Republican and Democratic candidates for Congress in Indiana, which is zero.

Because about a third of signatures are typically thrown out due to errors or mismatches, we actually needed nearly 9,000 in total. That required hiring a professional firm, and I was fortunate to find a reputable one willing to take on the project—at a cost of $77,139.30, which was nearly my entire life savings.

A week before the deadline to turn in our signatures, we double-checked the required number with the Election Division. That’s when they realized the initial figure they’d given us was wrong. The true threshold for my district was only 4,598—meaning I’d just paid roughly $25,000 for signatures I didn’t need.

That same year, a federal lawsuit challenged Indiana’s signature requirements for independents and minor party candidates as unconstitutionally burdensome. The plaintiffs pointed out that an independent candidate for statewide office must collect 36,944 signatures—an effort that, at current market rates, would cost around $750,000.

During that case, the truth came out about why the requirement is so high. In a sworn affidavit, former Republican legislator Mitch Harper revealed that the number had been quadrupled in 1980 in a bill written by Democratic Rep. Richard Bell, who was angry that his friend, Michigan City Mayor Cliff Arnold, had been unsuccessfully challenged by an independent candidate the previous year.

“At the time, Indiana’s ballot access requirements for independent and minor-party candidates for statewide, congressional, and legislative offices were already onerous,” Harper wrote. “[The legislation] was never intended as anything more than political score-settling in LaPorte County.”

Despite that, federal Judge James Sweeney ultimately ruled that the law was constitutional. More than four decades later, Indiana voters are still paying the price for Bell’s petty quest for revenge.

The Indiana General Assembly could easily fix this by voting to reduce or even eliminate those requirements, which 67% of Hoosier voters—including 56% of Republicans—in our poll say are unfair.

With numbers like that—and the fact that Indiana’s current congressional delegation of seven Republicans and two Democrats clearly doesn’t reflect the 41% independent, 29% Republican and 21% Democratic makeup of Hoosier voters—one could argue that the Legislature should rectify this situation as soon as possible.

Perhaps the governor could even call a special session to do so.