VEVAY — Haley Stang, a 31-year-old mother from Vevay, doesn’t have much interest in elections unless she can vote for a presidential candidate.
On Tuesday, she stayed home as others hit the polls to vote in local and state races in Switzerland County, where Vevay serves as the county seat. The one-stoplight town of around 1,750 residents sits along the Ohio River in southeast Indiana.
“I just try to stay out of politics,” Stang said.
She isn’t alone. Over the last decade, just 49.5% of registered voters in Switzerland County on average cast a ballot. That makes it nearly tied with Elkhart County for the worst voter turnout in the state.
Indiana has struggled with poor voter turnout for years. During the last midterm election in 2022, the state tied with Alabama for the fourth-lowest rate in the nation, with just 37.3% of registered voters casting a ballot. The national turnout was just over 46%.
Switzerland County Clerk Karin Dutkiewicz said she made it a top priority this year to get more residents to vote.
Her office recently received a grant to launch a phone app that pushes out notices with voting information. Workers placed flyers around town and on the office’s website detailing the voting process, how to request mail-in ballots and correcting misinformation.
But this year, only 36% of registered voters in Switzerland County cast a ballot, making it the worst turnout there since at least 2016. The statewide rate won’t be tallied until after Nov. 23, the deadline for counties to certify election results.
A unique combination of issues has made it an especially difficult battle to get residents interested in elections in Switzerland County, according to Mike Jones, chair of the local Democratic Party.
“I think a lot of it is apathy that’s fueled by a lot of different reasons,” he said.
One issue is access — the rural county of just 9,700 residents only had one polling place open on Election Day located in Vevay. That’s more than a 25-minute drive for some residents.
And if they do get to the polls, few races are competitive. Most years, the only person running in a local race is the Republican candidate.
Dutkiewicz, a Republican who was appointed to her seat in 2024 and won her election on Tuesday, had hoped that the five competitive local races, with both a Democrat and Republican running, would have driven residents to the polls this year.
Lack of information is also a problem. The Vevay Reveille-Enterprise, the county’s only local newspaper, closed two years ago. The area is now without any local media to provide coverage of candidates.
That’s a major problem for Ashley Adams, who moved to town earlier this year from Kentucky. She said she won’t vote in races unless she knows the positions of the people running.
Adams said she struggled this year to find any information about the local candidates. The best she could do was join Facebook groups or Google candidates’ names.
“I’m feeling a little unsure about it,” she said outside the local IGA grocery store.
For other residents, misinformation about the voting process has kept them from the polls.
Renee Dixon, a 56-year-old factory worker, said she hasn’t voted since she was 18. This year, however, she cast a ballot after learning residents aren’t required to vote straight ticket. Hoosiers have the option to automatically vote for all the candidates in a political party, but they are not required to do so.
“It makes a big difference,” Dixon said. “As long as I don’t have to do a straight ticket, I’m all about voting now.”
Misconceptions about straight-ticket voting are deep-seated in Switzerland County, according to Vicky Hinman, a Democratic candidate for a county council seat who lost her race on Tuesday.
On Monday, Hinman was at the IGA, the only grocery store in town, handing out pamphlets demonstrating how to bypass the straight-ticket option on the electronic voting machines.
“We’ve really hit this hard this year through our campaign,” Hinman said. “If they know that they can split up the ballot however they want and vote for whoever they want, I think that’s going to make it better.”
But that didn’t matter to Randy Grubbs, a resident from the tiny town of Patriot who on Monday stopped by the Dollar General in Vevay. He said he quit voting three years ago because he thought the election process was rigged to get President Donald Trump elected.
“I don’t trust the system,” he said. “I don’t think all the votes were counted.”
Jones, the local Democratic Party chair, said he talks to many residents who have a similar mindset and feel disenfranchised by the system. Until people regain confidence in the election process, he said, voter turnout will remain low in Switzerland County.
“They don’t vote anymore because they think, ‘My vote doesn’t make a difference,’” Jones said. “I don’t know how you counter that kind of apathy.”
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