Bio
Lauri Shillings grew up in a small town in western Indiana near the Tippecanoe and Montgomery County border. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Community and Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Indianapolis. Shillings serves as the Chairwoman of the Hamilton County Libertarian Party, is a creative director at the University of Indianapolis and has been a small business owner for over 20 years. Her priorities are to provide greater transparency in the Secretary of State’s office, ensure election integrity and bringing neutral leadership to the office.
Q&A
Why are you running for Indiana Secretary of State?
Primarily, I saw a lot of dissatisfaction in how government offices are being run, and rather than screaming into the wind and just complaining, I decided to be part of the solution. My solution is to step up and run for office and make a difference for the people of Indiana. Secondarily, as a Libertarian, this particular race offers ballot access for the Libertarian Party of Indiana, which we’ve held for more than 32 years since 1994. That requires us to get 2% of the overall vote total in the Indiana Secretary of State’s race, so that’s also very important. The Libertarian party wants to present a good candidate that knows the importance of the office and can educate the public in that regard.
What would be your top priority if elected?
As someone who has been in marketing, advertising and brand strategy my entire life, one of my top priorities is updating the website. It’s pretty outdated and cumbersome to use. I’ve been campaigning for more than a year and every single person that I speak with talks about the frustrations they have with that website: how it interfaces, the links are broken, they can’t find what they need, they’re not sure if they’ve done it correctly. If there’s an error made, they don’t know about it until it might be too late, and then there’s fines incurred. There’s no way to self correct, and as someone who works in a marketing marketing industry, it’s very important to me that people have a good experience with an essential business product that is required by the state if they’re running a business in Indiana.
Indiana ranked 41st in voter turnout nationally in 2024. What do you think can be done to improve turnout?
Voter turnout in Indiana is 100% a policy issue. People feel frustrated with how things are run here, and they’re not very educated about why things are the way they are. A lot of people still ask why Libertarians are not on a primary ballot; It’s because we are not part of the primary process. It is a private party business that you are then forced to pay for as a taxpayer, so educating voters is incredibly important to me. I think one of the best things we can do for the people of Indiana is to help them understand how things function and why, and how they can become more involved. Voter apathy is prevalent when voters think the outcome is predetermined. They think “My vote doesn’t count, because whatever I do, it doesn’t seem to make a difference.” When people start feeling that way, it’s because they’re not informed about how things are actually supposed to function.
What steps would you take to ensure greater transparency within the office?
One of our priorities as Libertarians is to make sure that people understand what their government is doing and why. The Secretary of State’s office could be more transparent about voter outcomes when they certify an election. They go through and find a select number of counties and audit those election results for accuracy to make sure things are good, but they don’t necessarily publish those results or what actions they’ve taken to correct those inaccuracies. I think if they expanded the audits to include more counties and took the time to certify those results in meaningful ways, people would have more confidence in our democratic process and would be more excited to participate in it.
How would you improve the office’s services when it comes to its role in business regulation?
I would remove a lot of the red tape that people have to deal with for business licensing. The role of the office is not to make policy, it’s to enforce laws that are already in place, but we can certainly be an advocate in the state house to make sure that some of this tape is removed. For example, should you be required to have a business license to braid hair? The state currently requires that. There’s just a lot of burden and costs incurred on the taxpayer. To get an LLC is about $100 and renewing it every couple years is another $35. Granted, that is income for the state, but how meaningful is it to make sure people are licensed to do a job when they may not need a physical license anyway? If people want to share or trade their services for a fee, they should be able to do that as long as they’re consenting.
Why should voters support you?
Because I have been in Indiana my entire life. I grew up in a very small town in the western half of the state, waitressed at 14 and detasseled corn to pay for my car insurance as a younger person. I’m very in tune with the people of Indiana and their everyday struggle. I’m not a Washington insider. I’m here because I care about the job and the people who live here. Beyond that, there’s more than one way for Libertarians to win in the state this year. If we get 10% of the vote total, we become a “major minor party”, and that gives us access to primaries forever. So we would basically break election law, and state legislators would have to rewrite the laws to make sure that that is accommodated for.
