On Thursday, Feb. 5, the Hamilton County Election Board addressed a copy/paste error that could impact the number of Democrat state convention delegates from Hamilton County.
Late last year, the Indiana Democratic Party told the Hamilton County Election Board 162 delegates need to be selected from nine districts. The Hamilton County Democratic Party supplied the election board with a list of 144 delegate seats divided by township based on population. That is 18 fewer than the state party indicated Hamilton County should have.
Lowry
“The state law lets the state party decide the delegates,” Hamilton County Democratic Party Chair Josh Lowry told The Reporter. “They didn’t tell the counties how many there are. They told the counties that we had 162. They also told the county election board and the secretary of state. We then, as the county [party], had to provide a breakdown by district. We get to decide the districts and how many go to each one, and we were looking at the 2024 map. When we sent the breakdown to the election administrator, we just accidentally sent the 2024 numbers, which was 18 delegates less than we actually have assigned. We then realized this and asked the election administrator to add them, and they said no.”
Lowry’s mistake was not noticed in a timely manner by either the Indiana Democratic Party, which was copied on the delegates list he submitted, or by the county election office.
The problem now is one of state law.
Hamilton County Election Administrator Beth Sheller told The Reporter she did not think this would be a difficult error to correct until she looked at Indiana statute and contacted the Indiana Election Division for guidance.
Sheller
“The way that the bipartisan team at the Indian Election Division had interpreted the law, they said that whatever they [the county party] gave us is what had to be, because it was due to us by Dec. 31 of 2025. He [Chairman Lowry] submitted it Dec. 4. It’s a party office. We go with what the party says.”
It would take a great deal of time to correct the delegates list on the ballot this late into the filing process, but Sheller said she and her people would do so if the law allowed.
“We would have had to take out almost 200 candidates, which would take a day,” Sheller said. “Then we would have to have the Indiana Election Division re-put in those offices because they had changed. Then we’d have to put them back in, which would probably take us a week of work. And that would be doable. It would probably delay us getting our ballot ready, but that would be doable – and my office would do that, if it were not for the law. I feel like, with guidance from the Indiana Election Division, that we have to stick by that. That’s what I told them in the election board meeting today.”
The entire bipartisan Hamilton County Election Board, including the Democratic board member, agreed that this was not an error the county was legally allowed to fix.
“My suggestion was maybe they will let you appoint those 18,” Sheller said. “That would be fantastic if they would just let him appoint them. Since I’ve never encountered that situation, I don’t know what they’ll say. I don’t know if there’s anything that would prevent that or not. I hope not because I’d like to see them utilize all of their delegates.”
Filing ends today, Feb. 6, at noon.
On Thursday afternoon, when asked what the solution will be, Lowry said, “Honestly, I don’t know. The law says once they’re told the delegates, that’s the number to be elected. We talked about this and I understand the election administrator’s position. She’s saying this is too time-consuming for us to do. I understand, but also, that’s the law. So, frankly, at this time, I don’t know. I’ll be talking to the state party later today and hopefully we’ll get it sorted out.”
With contested Democrat races where candidates for the general election will be decided at the state convention, rather than at the polls in the May primary, 18 Hamilton County delegates could have a huge impact on who appears on the November ballot.
Hamilton County Democratic Party Chair Josh Lowry’s official statement
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.
Other election confusion
In theory, both the offices of Secretary of State Diego Morales and the Hamilton County Election Administrator compile a daily list of everyone who has filed for office in the upcoming primary, check it for errors, then make those lists available to the public on their respective websites.
In practice, Hamilton County does a great job at that.
The state does not.
The Feb. 5 candidate list from Morales’s office is … interesting.
Fifteen candidates across the state are listed as having filed, but with no filing date. That field is blank for five Democrats and 10 Republicans.
Five candidates are listed as filed, but with dates in the future. Six candidates filed years ago: four in early 2025, one in 2020, and one in 2006.
One is listed as filing today, which was still seven hours in the future when this newspaper pulled the candidates list from the state website. One is listed as having filed on Feb. 9, three days after filing ends at noon today. A fourth is listed with a filing date of Feb. 16. Another shows a filing date of Dec. 30, 2026 – 10 months and 24 days after filing ends.
As late-night infomercials in the ‘80s used to say, “But wait, there’s more.”
One Democratic candidate in Vincennes, Ind. will apparently file for office in just under 7,200 years. The candidate, who filed both for township trustee and precinct committeeman, has filing dates of Jan. 26, 9202. That will be 2,620,969 days after this is published.
None of the candidates with impossible filing dates are local and none are running for state or national offices. The Hamilton County Reporter will publish the final list of candidates on the Hamilton and Tipton County ballots in the May primary in our Tuesday, Feb. 10 edition.
This newspaper hopes Secretary of State Diego Morales, or his designee, has corrected the official candidate list by then.
