Former Indiana Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann testified Tuesday against a Republican mid-decade redistricting plan, pleading with her former colleagues to refuse a partisan pressure campaign launched by President Donald Trump and his allies.
“Let’s be clear, Hoosiers aren’t asking for this,” said Ellspermann, a Republican who was lieutenant governor under former Indiana governor and Trump’s first vice president Mike Pence.
Ellspermann also warned Republicans on the House elections committee that changing the congressional district lines could come back to bite them down the line.
Marion County Clerk Kate Sweeney Bell also testified, telling lawmakers that if the bill were to pass, it would cause “chaos.” Voters would have to be reassigned to new congressional districts and be sent new voter registration forms, she said. County election boards would then need to update ballots and revise training for poll workers.
“All of this will happen without additional funding,” Sweeney Bell said.
She also cautioned that an error at any stage of the process could cause voters to be issued ballots for the wrong congressional district, adding that the risk was especially high in Marion County, which has more than 600,000 registered voters and would be divided among four districts under the new map Republican House members unveiled Monday. The draft gives the GOP the edge in all nine of the state’s congressional districts.
State Rep. Ben Smaltz, the Republican lawmaker who introduced the redistricting bill, said he knows that redrawing the map “may not be the course everyone prefers,” but maintained that it was still within the state’s legal authority to do so.
“What we are doing here is consistent with what is taking place across the nation,” he said.
The proposed map dilutes Democrats’ strength in deep-blue Indianapolis, which is currently represented by Reps. Frank Mrvan (D-IN) and Andre Carson (D-IN). The new map splits it into four — the 4th, 6th, 7th, and 9th congressional districts — that stretch into rural Republican areas.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) held a conference call with Indiana Republicans on Saturday to speak about redistricting. He purportedly made a plea to pass the map, saying it was necessary to advance the GOP’s national agenda. He also fielded questions on broader matters and policies of the Trump administration, according to FOX59/CBS4.
While the Indiana House is expected to make easy work out of the vote this week, the bigger lift will be in the state Senate, which will meet on Dec. 8.
Republicans hold seven of Indiana’s nine House seats. Trump and his allies want to redraw the map to ensure that Republicans represent all of the state’s congressional districts. Democrats need to gain just three seats to win control of the House next year. If Democrats flip the House, they could render Trump a lame duck during his last two years in office by blocking his legislation and launching congressional investigations. That prospect has led to Trump strong-arming GOP-controlled states.
A coast-to-coast redistricting fight broke out after Trump first publicly called on Texas to redraw its map to give Republicans a five-seat boost heading into the 2026 midterm elections. California countered, passing a ballot measure in November that would redraw its map, giving Democrats the advantage in five GOP-held districts. Republicans in Florida, Ohio, and Missouri followed Texas’s lead and passed maps or indicated that they would pass maps that favor the GOP.
In Indiana, Gov. Mike Braun (R-IN) has been a vocal advocate of mid-decade redistricting for the state. He announced in October that he was scheduling a special session to redraw the map after weeks of pressure from the president.
INDIANA GOP UNVEILS DRAFT OF CONGRESSIONAL MAP THAT CARVES UP INDIANAPOLIS
So far, nearly a dozen Republican lawmakers have been threatened or the victims of swatting in the wake of Indiana’s high-profile redistricting fight. Most have expressed their opposition to redistricting.
In a social media post on Nov. 16, Trump slammed Indiana state Senate Republicans for not getting on board with the fight, calling out two specific members and Braun. Trump also threatened to primary any lawmaker who opposed the maps.