Ignorance of the law should be no excuse for county clerk
This article was published in the South Bend Tribune as a Michiana Point of View story on March 20, 2007.by Karl Hardy and Kathleen Petitjean
As many people are aware, Bill Stant was the Green Party candidate for Indiana secretary of state in the November 2006 general election. Unfortunately, nearly four months after the election, Greens still are looking for an explanation as to why many votes for Stant were not counted. The context for Stant's decision to run for secretary of state reflects the stifling and unhealthy nature of Indiana politics where substantive public debates and real choices for voters are in very short supply.
The stark reality is that many races across the state are conceded by one of the major parties to the other and vice-versa. Incumbents run unopposed or against token opposition candidates who do not receive the full support of their respective parties. This carving up of the Indiana electorate serves the interests of the dominant parties who prefer to make our democracy more "efficient" by limiting the number of competitive races.
To run for office as a Green Party candidate in Indiana, Stant's campaign was required to gather more than 30,000 signatures of registered voters. Unpaid volunteers collected more than 20,000 signatures, falling short of a ballot access threshold recognized by third parties as one the most regressive in the nation. As a result, Stant chose to declare a write-in candidacy.
According to the certified totals posted on the Indiana Election's Division Web site, Stant received votes in 39 of Indiana's 92 counties but no votes were recorded for Stant in St. Joseph, Marion and Monroe counties.
This is impossible. These counties are home to three of the most well-organized and active local Green chapters in Indiana. Besides, Greens are from these areas and we are sure we voted for him!
The legal counsel of the Indiana Election Commission informed the Greens that the respective county clerks, the elected officials charged with overseeing each county's elections, have repeatedly been instructed to count, record and report the write-in votes for certification by the state. The Election Commission counsel agreed that the county clerks "broke the law" when they failed to report all the votes.
When asked for an explanation, St. Joseph County Clerk Rita Glenn (a Democrat) stated that Stant was not an "official" write-in candidate (he was). She then suggested that he might not have received any votes.
Glenn then blamed the problem on new optical scan ballots. Failing any further substantive explanation, she then invited the Greens to the next St. Joseph County Election Board meeting to pursue the matter further.
At the February meeting of the election board, Glenn repeated her previous implications, suggesting that Stant had not actually received any votes.
Astoundingly, Glenn then stated that she "did not know" whether or not the state required the counties to actually count, record and report write-in votes. When it was suggested that this was surely not a plausible explanation, the board's Democratic chairperson agreed that, no, it was not a plausible explanation. Again, the Greens were invited to return to the next election board meeting in order to give the board time to "conduct the necessary research" to determine an explanation why votes were not counted.
It seems curious that a county clerk in St. Joseph County would claim ignorance of election laws and procedures that nearly 40 other county clerks managed to follow. The disenfranchisement of any citizen is a serious matter worthy of more than platitudes and excuses.
Obviously, this is not a matter of contesting the outcome of the secretary of state's race. It is, however, a matter of protecting the principle of counting all the votes regardless of whether or not they were cast for the dominant parties. It is also important, we believe, to establish a benchmark for the Indiana Greens and to see the efforts of many of Stant's campaign supporters through to an accurate vote count.
If the dominant parties' elected officials are able to ignore or profess ignorance of the laws and procedures designed to protect the integrity of our voting process, the consequences for democracy are enormous.
Regimes in Cuba, Vietnam and China are referred to as one-party dictatorships; depending upon where you are in Indiana, you're likely to experience a similar situation whereby you only have one viable choice. The "free market of ideas" isn't so free when the major parties can legally (or illegally) shut out any possible threats to their dominance.
Democracy and freedom and are intimately related and in times like these it's vitally important that we protect and promote the high ideals our country was founded on.
Karl Hardy and Kathleen Petitjean are members of the St. Joe Valley Greens. They both live in South Bend.St. Joe Valley Greens, South Bend, IN