(NETWORK INDIANA) Carmel business owner Brian Roth fell about 17-hundred signatures short of the 45-hundred he needed to get on the ballot, but filed his candidacy anyway. He argues that by allowing now-Senator Todd Young on the ballot four years ago, the Indiana Election Commission had effectively changed the signature requirement.
The bipartisan four-member commission unanimously disagreed. The argument in Young’s case wasn’t about how many he submitted, but whether some signatures in northwest Indiana were wrongly allowed or disallowed, and whether a page was missing from the petitions Lake County election officials forwarded to the state. In Roth’s case, everyone, including Roth, acknowledges he was nowhere close to the number of signatures he needed.
Holcomb will face former state health commissioner Woody Myers in November.
The commission also disqualified a challenger to Congressman Jim Baird in the Republican primary. Jeffrey Alberts of Newton County has never voted in a Republican primary, casting Democratic ballots from the time he turned 18 until he stopped voting in primaries in 2012. His removal from the ballot makes Baird one of three Indiana congressmen unopposed until November, joining Republicans Larry Bucshon and Trey Hollingsworth. Four Democrats are competing for the nomination against Baird.
And the panel barred James Peters from seeking the Republican nomination against Yorktown State Representative Melanie Wright because he’s never voted in a primary at all. State law allows candidates with no party voting history to ask county party chairmen to approve their candidacies. Peters contended party officials abused their authority by refusing to let him run, despite a staunchly pro-Trump Facebook page he says proves his party affiliation.
Peters says he’ll ask a judge to overrule the commission. Unless a court intervenes, Wright will face Yorktown School Board member Elizabeth Rowray in the fall election.
