I would like to provide some clarification on the delegate issue.
Under the State law, the Indiana Democratic Party (“IDP”) decides how many delegates to the State Convention will be assigned to each county. IDP assigned 162 delegates to Hamilton County to be elected at the May 5, 2026 Primary. The Hamilton County Election Office then asked the Hamilton County Democratic Party (“HCDP”) how we wanted to split the 162 delegates among our 9 districts. In my response, I mistakenly copied and pasted a breakdown that only totaled 144 delegates (this breakdown was an earlier draft before the number of delegates was finalized).
The Election Office also did not notice this error and uploaded the 144 delegate breakdown into their voting system. Once this error was brought to my attention, I called the Hamilton County Election Administrator, Beth Sheller, and informed her of the error and apologized for my mistake. Ms. Sheller stated that the issue could be corrected because the ballots were not finalized until after the deadline for candidates to withdraw.
An hour later, Ms. Sheller emailed me and stated that the number of delegates could not be corrected because of the voting system. Three hours after that, at an Election Board meeting, Ms. Sheller informed us that the number of delegates could not be corrected because of a deadline interpretation.
Both the Election Office and myself made an error. I provided a breakdown that totaled 144 delegates, and the Election Office used that breakdown of 144 delegates, despite both of us knowing that 162 delegates had been assigned to Hamilton County. (I have to wonder if this issue could be corrected if I mistakenly identified too many delegates.)
I want to make this very clear to our great Democratic voters of Hamilton County: we will not allow anyone who should have been a delegate to lose their chance to be a delegate.
I have been in contact with IDP and Hamilton County will still have 162 delegates at the State Convention. To be clear, all delegate candidates who file will have their names on the ballot, and the 144 delegates elected would have made up 144 of the 162 delegates, anyways. I am working closely with the IDP Rules Committee to make sure that those 18 extra delegate slots are filled in a fair and equitable manner that accounts for this error.
Click here to read The Reporter’s full story on this matter.
Click here to read Elections Administrator Beth Sheller’s response to Lowry’s statement.
