House Vote Patterns on HJR3-Gay Marriage Constitutional Amendment Ban in Indiana

In Indiana there is a current same-sex marriage legislative discussion, specifically regarding House Joint Resolution 3, which is a proposed amendment to the Indiana constitution, almost verbatim of an amendment passed in Wisconsin in 2006, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, and excluding any other legal protections that are similar to marriage (for example, civil unions, domestic partnerships, and city or business protections/benefits). There were multiple readings of this resolution in the lower house. The 2nd reading was to pass a change to the amendment that stripped the 2nd sentence of the proposed amendment, which was the component that included the ban on "other" types of protections similar to marriage, a change that passed, leaving only the definition of marriage between a man and a woman. The 3rd reading was to pass the entire thing, sending it to the state senate, which is the next step before sending it to the citizens of Indiana in the 2016 election.

Analysis of the representatives voting patterns show that 12 voted to strip the 2nd sentence, the ban on protections similar to marriage, indicating a concern about the extreme nature of the language, but voted for the amendment as a whole, indicating a preference to constitutionally define marriage as exclusively male-female--all of these were Republican. There were 11 Republicans who voted both to strip the 2nd sentence and to reject the entire amendment. All Democrats voted to strip the 2nd sentence, and to kill the amendment. Forty-three Republicans voted to keep the 2nd sentence, and to push the amendment forward, while 5 members who were excused from one or both of these votes. Below I post the voting record for selected members, along with the citizen voting percent results from the 2012 election from the representatives' districts: Republicans and Democrats who won their elections with less than 10% margins; all representatives who split their votes (all of whom were Republicans); Republicans who voted both for stripping the 2nd sentence, and against the amendment.

Representative	HJR3-2nd Reading	HJR3-3rd Reading	District	2012 Election Results	Party
Hamm	n	y	56	49.3%	R
Morrison	n	y	42	50.2%	R
Lutz	n	y	35	50.8%	R
Slager	n	y	15	51.0%	R
Carbaugh	n	y	81	51.7%	R
Ubelhor	n	y	62	52.9%	R
Karickhoff	n	y	30	54.0%	R
Mayfield	n	y	60	54.2%	R
Soliday	y	y	4	51.7%	R
Arnold	y	y	74	52.7%	R
Mahan	y	y	31	53.1%	R
McNamara	y	y	76	56.4%	R
Bacon	y	y	75	57.5%	R
Beumer	y	y	33	57.8%	R
Lucas	y	y	69	57.8%	R
Negele	y	y	13	59.0%	R
Cox	y	y	85	64.3%	R
Neese	y	y	48	65.2%	R
Leonard	y	y	50	67.4%	R
Sullivan	y	y	78	100.0%	R
Truitt	y	n	26	53.2%	R
Clere	y	n	72	54.4%	R
Ziemke	y	n	55	60.6%	R
Eberhart	y	n	57	67.1%	R
Heuer	y	n	83	72.1%	R
Saunders	y	n	54	73.1%	R
Kubacki	y	n	22	75.6%	R
Torr	y	n	39	90.2%	R
Braun	y	n	24	100.0%	R
Huston	y	n	37	100.0%	R
Kirchhofer	y	n	89	100.0%	R
Hale	y	n	87	50.1%	D
Battles	y	n	45	50.1%	D
Candelaria	y	n	12	53.8%	D
Macer	y	n	92	54.0%	D
Klinker	y	n	27	54.5%	D
Dvorak	y	n	8	54.8%	D

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ADDENDUM
Indiana Senate Rules Committee Members with Elections Data

2014 ReElection	District	Vote %	Representative	Party
*	26	52.4%	Eckerty,Douglas	R
*	48	100.0%	Hume,Lindel	D
*	14	100.0%	Kruse,Dennis	R
*	25	53.4%	Lanane,Tim	D
*	31	53.8%	Merritt,James	R
*	15	59.9%	Wyss,Thomas	R
	8	58.3%	Arnold,Jim	D
	34	100.0%	Breaux,Jean	D
	5	54.8%	Charbonneau,Ed	R
	7	63.6%	Hershman,Brandt	R
	16	65.1%	Long,David	R
	44	100.0%	Steele,Brent	R