I’ll admit it. Election Law is not my strong suit. Title 3 of the Indiana Code gives me a headache. But, there is a very significant difference between me and Charlie White. He’s running for Secretary of State, and I’m not. As Eric Bradner reports (and a ton of others) for the Evansville Courier Press, White has been violating residency requirements for his current position as a town councilman for Fishers, Indiana. White does not live in the district he represents.
Advance Indiana also makes the point that White is a Republican county chairman and an attorney. If it’s anyone’s job to know the residency requirements necessary to serve in office, it’s White’s. His defense is that “he didn’t know” his residence was outside of his council district.
This matter makes it difficult to believe that, as Secretary of State, White would make an effort to know the laws he is supposed to enforce and, if he did know them, to faithfully enforce those laws.
White has given his Secretary of State opponent, Vop Osili, a major campaign issue in a race that voters typically fail to notice. Osili has responded to this with:
“If these charges are true, this is not only alarming and troubling, but it also raises questions to as whether this individual should be given the public’s trust to oversee elections and the voting process.
As our state’s Chief Administrator of Elections, the Secretary of State should set the standards for integrity, and fairness with regard to voting and the election process, and of course adhere to the letter of the law—not bend or break the rules to suit personal gains.
Update Hoosier Access offers a weak defense:
[U]nless you’re a diehard political junkie such as myself the last thing on your mind when you buy a house or rent an apartment is which voting precinct it is located.
Again, Charlie White is running to be Secretary of State – recognizing election law violations and enforcing them is one of the primary jobs of that office. In addition, he is a county political party chairman and an attorney. Also, White was “too busy” for such niceties.
Other offices and other factual scenarios might make this residency violation incidental, but for this race, it seems like a pretty central issue.
Could be worse?
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100922/NEWS0103/9230343/1055/NEWS/-Lawyer-Fulmer-lacks-license-
Doug–Your’re right about Title 3; it’s a nightmare to read.
But this one’s simple. Indiana law provides that voting in a precinct where you don’t reside and in an unauthorized manner is a Class D felony. IC 3-14-2-9 and 11.
Collecting a salary for which you’re not entitled is also a crime.
Voter fraud and theft from a candidate who’s asking to be Indiana’s watchdog over security fraud and elections? Sorry Charlie…
This development is all of great interest to me, being that I was the Libertarian candidate for Secretary of State in 2006, am the Hamilton County chair for the Libertarian Party and a Fishers resident, and have been making issue about the districts in Fishers for about 5 years now. http://kolehardfacts.blogspot.com/search?q=fishers+town+council+map
The Fishers Town Council is comprised exclusively of Republicans, and they have treated the Council as their birthright. When one of them moves within the Town but outside of their district, no problem, they redesign the map. Check this out, and tell me if this looks ‘geographical’ to you:
http://www.fishers.in.us/egov/docs/1225726463_541015.pdf
Fishers has long needed to redraw the map in Fishers, and change the elections from ‘at-large’ to ‘districted’. A challenging candidate for Town Council could win their district and lose in a landslide as the people who wouldn’t be represented by you simply vote as their tendency leads. (It’s about a 70% Republican base in Fishers.) The Town Council has every self-interest in keeping things as they are (until one member moves again, I guess), so hopefully this issue will cause some civic interest here at home.
My greatest immediate concern for Fishers is that each vote White participated in could be nullified. That would represent a great drain on Town resources, should any ordinances passed have to be scrubbed from the books. It wouldn’t be right to place the burden of legal fees on the taxpayer.
Thanks for reminding me, Doug, how difficult it is to get people to notice a race for SoS. No doubt this will boost Osili, but hopefully also boost Libertarian Mike Wherry. Election law, as no doubt all of the candidates know, pins party ballot access to the outcome of this race. Wherry needs at least 2% to keep the Libertarian Party on the ballot for 4 more years.
Unless the law has changed in the past couple of years, it also bears mentioning that, should there be a tie in the House of Representatives in terms of party representation, the party that wins the Secretary of State election gets to choose the Speaker of the House.
“At-large’ districts are a common tool to disenfranchise a minority population or minority political party.
The last Secretary of State race of high interest I recall was when Evan Bayh returned to Indiana and started his career in that office.
Doug, it isn’t just that Charlie White moved outside of his district, but also that he took steps to conceal the fact by changing his voter registration to his ex-wife’s address and then voting from the ex-wife’s address in the May 2010 primary several months after he moved. Since there are several miles between the two locations, on the opposite sides of Fishers, he knew for a fact when he voted that what he was doing was wrong. He helped DRAW those district maps!
I am appalled at the arrogance and stupidity this represents. Frankly, until this, I thought better of Charlie White even when I disagreed with him.
Yeah, what FishersDemo said – he must have known he was outside the district, because he registered to vote not at his current residence but rather at an address where he no longer resides.
Given that the GOP rained hell down on Patrice Abduallah a few years ago for moving to his mother’s house across the street from his own (his was in his district, his mother’s was not) you’d think they’d be whipping White the same way, but no signs of it yet.
Hmm. Looks fishy to me. Did Charlie resign after being informed, or did he only resign after he was threatened with the information being made public? More importantly, how did he not realize he was moving out of the proper area?
I question either his intelligence or his credibility. I am just not sure which one yet.