It will be at least another month before the Indiana Recount Commission weighs in on what is now a three-vote Republican primary win by state Sen. Spencer Deery over his President Donald Trump-endorsed challenger.
A timeline set by the recount director gives lawyers for Fountain County Republican Chair Paula Copenhaver and Deery until July 6 to submit legal arguments and responses in the narrow Senate District 23 race.
Deery was among the Republican legislators targeted by Trump after voting against the congressional redistricting plan pushed last year by the president.
Challenger seeks to question voters
Copenhaver’s recount petition said it has identified 14 people who disclosed in social media posts or to news reporters that they had voted in the May 5 Republican Senate primary despite being Democrats or self-identified “progressives.”
She is seeking to question those voters under oath as to whether they abided by state law requiring primary voters to attest that they intend to support a majority of that party’s candidates in the general election or voted for a majority of the party’s nominees in the last election.
Deery, a first-term senator from West Lafayette, has denounced the request as an attempt to intimidate voters and throw out lawful votes in the race that he leads by a 6,337 to 6,334 margin.
Copenhaver’s lawyers have since filed motions to set aside their requests to question three of those voters as they don’t live in the district. But they’ve also objected to a change by the Parke County clerk giving Deery one additional vote, arguing that change came after the May 18 vote certification deadline.
Recount Director Evan Norris wrote in an order filed Friday that he was taking no action on whether those voters will be questioned and “defers further action on those filings to the Recount Commission for its review and consideration.”
The three-member Recount Commission, by state law, is led by Republican Secretary of State Diego Morales as its chairman. The other members are Republican Paul Mullin and Democrat Michael Claytor.
No date was set for a commission meeting in Friday’s order but Norris wrote that step “does not impact” the ballot review work by State Board of Accounts auditors that is scheduled to start next week in the district that covers all or parts of six counties in the area between Lafayette and Terre Haute.
Timeline set in three recountsThe recount teams are scheduled to work June 16 in Tippecanoe County; June 17 in Vermillion County; June 18 in Parke County; June 22 in Montgomery County; June 23 in Warren County; and June 25-26 in Fountain County.
The Republican primary winner will face Democrat David Sanders in the November election.
In other pending Republican primary recounts, auditors will work:
- June 30 and July 1 in Allen County for the Senate District 15 race between Sen. Liz Brown and challenger Darren Vogt. Certified vote tallies for the district gave Brown a 15-vote lead — 5,241 to 5,226 — over Vogt
- June 29 in Hendricks County for the House District 57 nomination. Greg Knott is seeking a partial recount of the vote where certified tallies show him losing to Wes Bennett by 79 votes in a four-candidate race for an open seat given up by GOP Rep. Craig Haggard.
Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.
