Todd Rokita’s Voter ID Reversal Raises Questions About Political Shift and Election Policy in Indiana

Okay, let’s talk about Todd Rokita for a second, shall we? Our old buddy Todd Rokita. It’s been a long time since we’ve ripped on Todd Rokita. We’ve kind of given him a free pass on this show so far. And so I want to talk about this. And by the way, we’re scheduled to have the guy who is Rokita’s comms director, the comms guy, when Rokita was secretary of state, with us tomorrow, because I don’t want you guys to just take my word for this. I want you to hear from somebody who was there at the time. And one of the reasons I’m talking about this is in the era of Trump and in the era of everybody trying to be an internet influencer, including politicians, people are abandoning good public policy for what I call the grift. And in this case, the grift is everyone trying to be Trump or curry favor with Trump, or get the people who support Trump to support them. These career politicians who desperately want to elevate themselves, every choice they make, it seems like, is about how do I get certain people to like me, even if it means abandoning policies that they’ve supported for years. That’s not good, guys. That’s not good government.

How Trump-Era Politics Are Reshaping Republican Policy Positions

And I’ve said this for a long time, it pains me what Todd Rokita has become, because there was a time where Todd, I really looked at Todd Rokita. Look, you guys can find them, they’re all over the internet, Rokita and I used to kind of be buddies, take photos together. I introduced Rokita at an event. I really looked at Todd Rokita when he was a congressman after he had been secretary of state as a guy who actually cared about good government, actually was willing to break away from the party to promote good government. And he was a very good secretary of state. He was passable as a congressman, which is way better than most people are as congressman. You just can’t get anything done in Congress. I have a reasonable expectation for what can be accomplished. And he was a guy that I kind of looked at and said, okay, this is a guy that’s willing to buck the party when it needs to be done. This is a guy that really cares about good government. And this is maybe somebody that we can really unite around as conservatives, as somebody that we should support in the future. And then 2018 happened and he ran for Senate. And as so many of these guys in the era of Trump, something happened to Todd Rokita’s brain. And more importantly, it seems like something happened to Todd Rokita’s soul. Not in a religious sense, but that guy that he was, that I looked at and was like, hey, this is somebody we can really get behind, that person disappeared. And Todd Rokita turned into a guy who desperately wanted to be Trump, tried to be like Trump, and everything he did was about currying favor from people who liked Trump. And he had a complete meltdown during the Senate race. And ever since then, the guy that I kind of knew and looked at and was like, hey, this guy’s pretty on it, that dude has disappeared. And it seems like everything Rokita does is about currying favor with Trump orbit and Trump people and the internet community in order to elevate himself to whatever the next thing is.

The Evolution of Todd Rokita From Reform-Minded Leader to Political Operator

And this is what I’m about to talk about. And tomorrow, we’re scheduled to have somebody who knew Rokita back in the day, that was a part of his orbit, was his comms guy, and will be able to provide more insight into what I’m about to tell you. And you guys know I try to do this. When I go back in history, I try to find the people that are still with us who can verify things, who can speak to things and say, yeah, it’s not just Rob making it up. I was there, here’s what happened. So a federal appeals court has banned college students from using their IDs to vote. And again, the story comes to us from the Capital Chronicle. The story now is a day or two old. It is currently working its way through the appeals courts. And by the way, the fact that we’re on the air right now, it may have been decided. I don’t think it has been, but it could be decided today. And what this is about, we’ve touched on this story before, the story is about college students being able to use their ID in order to vote. A district court struck that law down. The state of Indiana, for years and years and years, college students were able to use their ID in order to vote. A recent Indiana law changed that. It was challenged in court. A lower court struck it down. Now an appeals court has essentially put a stay on this, not overturning the judge’s ruling, I think an injunction is what it’s called, until it can be decided at the appeals court, which I believe was being argued. And they said they’ll have a formal ruling maybe as soon as today. Let’s talk about voter ID for a second. Again, the goal of voter ID should be to ensure that the person’s photo on the ID matches the person you see in front of you. That’s it. That should be the goal, because you have to sign and the signature should somewhat match the signature. I realize people’s signatures change over time, they don’t always match, but the ultimate goal of voter ID, we should look, I am not a person who believes we should be spending money encouraging people to vote. We should not be. It’s not the government’s job to encourage you to vote. It’s the job of the government to make sure when you go to vote, that it is a seamless, easy process. It is your job to go vote. Elections are on these days. I want to go vote. If I do, it should be a fairly easy process. And we need checks and balances, and voter ID is a big part of it. By the way, isn’t it interesting? We have interviewed Blythe Potter, who’s the Democrat running for Secretary of State. And by the way, we’re going to interview Bobby on Friday, we’re scheduled to play that on Monday. But Beau Biden, in a previous interview, told me the same thing. Both Democrat candidates for Secretary of State have said they’re for voter ID. No change is needed. That’s wild. That means our law is pretty good. That means our law is accomplishing what it should be, which is making sure that the person who is in front of you is the person they say they are, and that it’s not infringing on the ease of voting once you make the decision to go vote. That should be the whole goal of voter ID. I’m a hardcore supporter of voter ID, and so was Todd Rokita when that was really controversial. Something that’s so uncontroversial now, both Democrat candidates for Secretary of State are like, no, it’s good. But in the mid-2000s, when Todd Rokita was secretary of state, he was the leader. And it was the first thing that made me figure out who Todd Rokita was. I did not know, this was back before I was paying attention to politics. I used to read the paper every day. I was a voter, but I didn’t know what was going on as a college kid. I remember reading about voter ID and about Todd Rokita, who was leading the charge at the time, and thinking, oh, this makes sense. Yeah, okay, this guy is advocating for this. This seems like a good thing to have. It’s interesting, I was talking with somebody yesterday who has started watching our show, and they’re like, I never watched or listened to political talk before you, I found you, I do it every day now. And I said, watching our show, listening to our show, is like living in the movie They Live. Have you guys ever seen this movie? It’s a great movie. If you are ever looking to kill a couple of hours, it’s kind of a cult classic. Roddy Piper is the star of this movie. He’s actually a really good actor. He’s very good in this movie. I know it sounds hokey, right? It’s not Mr. Nanny. Roddy Piper is actually a pretty good actor. It’s not Suburban Commando. And the plot sounds eh, sounds hokey, but it’s a good movie. It’s entertaining. If you’re looking to, like I said, kill an hour and a half, watch it. The plot of the movie is Roddy Piper is this construction worker who one day discovers these glasses on the street, and he puts them on. And these glasses are a view into another version of the world that actually exists in front of us, in which there are these aliens who have taken over and taken the form of humans. And the only time you can see who the aliens are and who the actual humans are is when you have the glasses on. And the movie is a back and forth of him putting these glasses on and taking them off and doing these other things. Of course, he’s fighting the aliens, trying to save the earth. But the point is, once he put the glasses on, he never sees anything the same ever again. People who he thought were his friends, or bankers, or professional people, they’re aliens. A lot of them are aliens. He can’t unsee it once he’s seen it. That’s what I told this person. I said once you start listening to our show, you never see things the same ever again. Once you spend two hours a day with us, you never look at your government the same ever again. That’s why they hate us. We’re not bound to anyone. We’re not bought and sold by anyone. We have no obligation to anyone. We just tell you whatever’s going on. And so we give you takes you’re not going to hear anywhere else. I’m not concerned about how much money the state of Indiana is going to spend with me. I’m not concerned about what sort of contracts I might get with the state. My advertisers are not beholden to kissing ass with politicians. I’m not concerned about any of that. I just get to tell you the truth. And I remember my moment with that. My moment was when I decided to run for public office and I won. And then I started being a part of this. I had no connection to politics whatsoever other than doing radio and interviewing politicians. I remember the day. In fact, I told Jason I was going to run. I remember where I was, I remember I was driving, I remember calling Jason going, I’m going to run for public office. Why the hell would you want to do that? He responded. And that was the moment for me. I started digging into this stuff. I started reading about local governments. I started reading about the state, about the funding, about the property taxes. That was my moment where the glasses got put on and it was like, holy crap, these Republicans are as bad as the Democrats in some cases. And in the case of reading the paper I was reading, I was learning the property tax stuff was starting to happen at this time. I was reading about Todd Rokita thinking, man, this guy’s really fighting for good voter ID laws, but he’s also kind of bucking the party. Todd Rokita was the first guy to be in favor of nonpartisan redistricting of any prominence. Todd Rokita was severely punished by the Republican Party because 2000s he proposed taking the politics out of redistricting, letting artificial intelligence, or what we knew as artificial intelligence at the time, draw the maps so that they were actually fair, so that they actually represented communities of interest. The maps that we have today, they’ve shifted slightly for population changes, they look pretty similar to the maps Rokita presented when he was secretary of state. And that got him in big trouble with the party. And that Todd Rokita was the guy that I really admired, got to learn about, started to like. He was willing to pay a political price to do what was right.

Indiana’s Voter ID Law Debate Highlights Questions About Access and Integrity

So we come back to voter ID, and this case is being challenged in court by Todd Rokita, by the state of Indiana. He’s the attorney general, and they are trying to keep college kids from being able to use their college ID in order to vote. The only problem with this is Rokita was the architect of the law that allowed college kids to be able to use college IDs in order to vote, which was a good law. It made sense. The goal of the ID should be to ensure the person in front of you is the person who says, I’m Joe Smith. Okay, Joe Smith, may I see your ID? Okay, great, thank you. Joe Smith, will you sign here? Okay. The signature matches. There are zero cases that I’m aware of since the mid-2000s, so going on almost 20 years, of college students committing intentional malicious voter fraud. I’m not talking about they went to the wrong polling place. I’m not talking about, well, I think I was registered here. I’m talking about law enforcement investigations proving any sort of deliberate, malicious intent, certainly not using a college ID in order to pull it off, certainly not on a widespread scale. There was no problem with this issue. We should want people to vote who want to vote, and having them show a piece of ID where you can verify who they are, and the signature does too. That’s what we should want. That’s why Rokita was for it when he was for good policy. Now he says, quote, this common sense protection is needed to close loopholes, prevent potential fraud by out-of-state ineligible voters, ensure every ballot belongs to a verified Hoosier, and preserve public confidence in fair, honest, and transparent elections. Oh, so when you said basically the same thing almost 20 years ago, it wasn’t doing that? This was your baby, Todd Rokita. This was your deal. They don’t want college kids voting because college kids vote Democrat. They don’t want college kids being able to use their college ID because college kids vote Democrat. Now look, an argument can be made, and certainly so, that if you really want to vote, go get a driver’s license, right? Most kids have driver’s licenses. I get it. But it’s the hypocrisy of this. And it shows how politics warp people. They destroy them. They ruin them.

Why Political Incentives Can Change Policy Positions Over Time

It’s why I got out. Guys, all the time you’re like, you should run for governor, you should do this, you should do that. I don’t want to do this or that because I saw it. I left for two reasons, and I’ve been very honest about this. Number one, I physically, after four years, felt my health deteriorating. My body was changing. Four years of every day answering every phone call, responding to every request. At 10:00 some person might call about a crack in their sidewalk, and I would feel an obligation to go see that person. And the frustration and the rage of people who were not doing the right thing, who were maliciously not doing the right thing, and having to deal with that every day, I was going to drop dead of a stroke or a heart attack. I knew it. And the other thing, I started to see the potential that if you want to elevate, sometimes you give in on who you are. And if you give in on the little things, and I won’t go into it because we don’t have time, I need to get to Nikki Kelly here in a minute, but people want stuff from you in order to have their support. And it may seem like a small thing. Well, our position on this policy is blah blah blah, and if you don’t have that, then we’re not going to support you. And it may be a tiny thing. And you say, well, in the broad picture it will help me get property tax reform or this thing or that thing that helps everybody. If I just have these people in my corner. Then you realize, no. You give in on the little things, you let yourself get warped on the little things, then it’s the big things before you know it.