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Scandal in Indiana

BenBurch

Gatekeeper of The Left
BenBurch
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http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9005

Some remarkable news late today. Finding he was not eligible to be a candidate on the ballot in the November 2010 election, a Marion County Circuit judge has ordered Indiana's Republican Sec. of State Charlie White removed from office and replaced by his Democratic challenger Vop Isili, the second highest vote getter in that election.

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Separately, White still faces seven criminal felony charges, including three of them for voter fraud, related to the fact that he did not live at the address where he was registered to vote in the 2010 election. As he was not a properly registered Indiana voter, he was not eligible to be a candidate on the ballot, Rosenberg has ruled. Moreover, at the time of his election, White was a member of the Fishers Town Council --- a town in which he no longer lived since separating from his wife and moving out of her house, where he remained registered to vote, several years earlier. Democrats charge he retained his registration at the house so that he could continue to collect his salary as a Council Member.

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That sounds pretty sad. But it would be funnier if it involved a rent-a-boy.
 
The "remedy" for the ineligibility sounds odd. Perhaps this is how Indiana has codified it, but it seems the more reasonable outcome would be to hold a new election.

If today we discovered Obama was actually 34 years old, would we be swearing in John McCain tomorrow morning? I doubt it.
 
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Travis said:
That sounds pretty sad. But it would be funnier if it involved a rent-a-boy.
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I'm glad it did not, because this shows the hypocrisy; Indiana was where people were whinging about all the Democratic voter fraud and election fraud in 2008.

Nothing was found when those allegations were investigated.

And here we see the GOP doing that very thing.

And paying the price.
 
BenBurch said:
I'm glad it did not, because this shows the hypocrisy; Indiana was where people were whinging about all the Democratic voter fraud and election fraud in 2008.

Nothing was found when those allegations were investigated.

And here we see the GOP doing that very thing.

And paying the price.
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Not quite, Ben. The fraud that was made political with the Voter ID issue was separate from this case. White would have have been just as guilty of fraud without the new rules, and the new rules had no way of preventing this type of fraud.
 
BenBurch said:
I was trying for an ethical comparison, not a legal one. Clearly I missed! :o
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The problem was the 'Nothing was found when those allegations were investigated.' line since the only thing investigated were the specific types of fraud that would be corrected by the voter ID law.

Don't get me wrong, the guy messed up and he deserves what he got. Also there has been a Democrat accused of a similar offence in this election, but he was either not charged (due to insufficient evidence) or exonerated (I don't recall ATM).

There was a huge set of volleys back and forth each side accusing the other of only investigating because of politics. It has been pretty ugly.

The thing is both cases had to with candidates accused of getting on ballots fraudulently, not voters voting fraudulently (In White's case he re-registered in his new district in time to vote correctly, but still ran in his old district- and apparently continued to receive pay for being on a city council for a city he no longer lived in)

However, to give you an idea of how this can happen. I live less than a 5 minute drive from my office. I live in Indianapolis in Marion County, but work in Fishers in Hamilton county. The main E-W street in my area 96th is Marion county on the south side, but Hamilton county on the north).

I am still not certain how intentional this was, but knowledge of such minutia in regards to election laws is something I would expect a candidate for public office to know and not mess up.
 
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