A member of the Vigo County Democratic Party committee, Debrah Kirk-Peters, says that seven of her fellow committee members signed a petition to get an independent candidate for Mayor of Terre Haute. Kirk-Peters says she thinks they should resign from the committee. See this story. At least one of the other signers says he won’t resign and that he merely helped a friend get on the ballot.
How many left/right PURGE lists ???
Another reason for SECRET petitions — as with SECRET ballots.
Signing a petition does not indicate they will vote for them, only that they thought he shouldn’t be barred from the ballot. I will sign a petition to get on the ballot for nearly anyone.
NONPARTISAN AppV for all exec/judic offices – pending Condorcet.
The independent is a former city engineer and apparently well known, who said he was running 15 months earlier. The Democratic primary was contested, and the current mayor a Republican is seeking re-election. Kirk-Peters likely supported the winning Democrat and wants everyone to obediently fall in line.
This is illustrative of another evil of partisan nominations, where voters are expected to be blind partisans. The fact that the primary was in May is likely a consequence of having a partisan election.
There is an interesting ballot order case in a Terre Haute council primary race. Indiana statute calls for primary ballot candidates to be listed in alphabetical order.
The two candidates were Tess D. Brooks-Stephens and Cheryl Loudermilk. Brooks-Stephens claims her application said First Name: Tess; Middle Name: (blank); Last Name: Brook Stephens (two words no hyphen).
Somehow there ended up an application that had whiteout and First Name: Tess; Middle Name: D.; Last Name: Brooks-Stephens (with hyphen). The county clerk initially agreed to alphabetize as B for Brooks rather than S for Stephens, but later reversed himself, which was upheld by the county election board. After ballots had been printed with Loudermilk before Stephens, and some absentee ballots returned, a court ordered the ballots reprinted with Brooks-Stephens before Loudermilk. Absentee voters were given an opportunity to cast a new ballot. If they did not their original ballot would be used.
Loudermilk was nominated with about 54% of the vote. It is impossible to know what effect thee bzllot order and kerfuffle had on the result. In Florida it is claimed that voters who are undecided will tend to choose the first name as are voters that are clueless. But voters are probably not so self aware that is what they did. In that part of the Midwest German names are not uncommon so as to be rejected as alien. Some voters may be offput by the double-barrelled name. If they are aware of the change, they may have inferred that Tess Whateverhernameis had muffed her original application, forged a change, and then sued, causing massive election expenses.
In any event the Vigo County prosecutor has now asked for appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate whether a public record was modified and if so, who did it (this is a class 6 felony in Indiana).
This opinion doesn’t surprise me at all from what I’ve seen of them in the past.
So no choice or competition allowed, huh?