Dear Election Division,

There must be some mistake.

Our Vigo County Green Party Coordinator, Sarah Dillon, went to the Vigo County Clerk's Office today to turn in about 300 signatures on Indiana's CAN-19 Petition of Nomination. We have collected over 5000 signatures so far statewide, and the Indiana Green Party Coordinating Committee (election division file #99-4730) met over the weekend and decided to start turning in CAN-19s now in order to avoid overwhelming the county clerks later on when we are right at the deadline.

When she tried to turn in the CAN-19s and collect a receipt, Sarah was told that the Indiana Green Party "was not registered in the State of Indiana," and that the clerk would therefore not be able to certify the signatures on the CAN-19s. The clerk's office contacted the Indiana Election Division to confirm this nonregistered status, and someone there did in fact confirm this.

So . . . There must be some mistake. We have been filing CFA-4s for years now. I filed papers with the election division myself last year and the year before as the Indiana Green Party Treasurer.

Could you please confirm whether we are "registered?" If we are not registered, can you please let us know how to go about getting registered? Also, if we are not yet registered, what are the implications for the signatures we have gathered so far, and what are the implications for those siginatures that we intend to gather between now and the deadline for turning in the signatures?

Thanks for your attention to these urgent questions. I'm looking forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

Bill Stant, Candidate
Secretary of State 2006
Indiana Green Party

Dear Mr. Stant:

Thanks for your message. Yes, what you describe below definitely indicates that there is a mistake or misunderstanding.

I have asked my Co-General Counsel, Dale Simmons, to contact the Vigo County circuit court clerk's office for more information and to respond to you with more detailed analysis shortly. For this purpose, it would be useful for him to know the name of the person your representative spoke to in Vigo County, and the name of the person contacted at the Election Division regarding this matter.

Without knowing anything more about the facts here, I can tell you that there is no requirement under Indiana law for a political party to be "registered in Indiana" for campaign finance reporting, or in any other way, to either begin collecting signatures for ballot access, or to submit signed petitions to a county voter registration office for processing. You are entitled to do so, beginning on January 3, 2006, under Indiana Code 3-8-6-10.

Of course, the Green Party, and any other political party that raises or spends more than $100 must file a statement of organization and then begin filing periodic campaign finance reports. See Indiana Code 3-9-1-1.5, for example.

However, the requirements for campaign finance reporting have nothing to do with the processing of candidate ballot access petitions under Indiana law, and there would be no reason I can imagine for petitions presented in proper form, within the deadline for doing so, to not be accepted for filing by a county voter registration office.

Thank you again for bring this matter to my attention, and please look forward to a prompt response.

Brad King
Co-Director
Indiana Election Division