Hamilton County Reporter

Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson recently said the Indiana Democratic Party mailed out thousands of “defective” absentee ballot applications to voters.

According to Lawson, the applications did not include a mandatory box with deadlines and instructions on how to apply. Lawson said a lawyer for the Democratic Party contacted her office Thursday to tell her about the mistake.

Locally, Hamilton County Elections Administrator Kathy Richardson said her office received about 300 of the defective ballots that are currently being processed.

“We first received a directive from the Secretary of State to not process the altered and invalid forms. We immediately started contacting the voters who had filed on the altered
forms and sent them a valid form to fill out,” said Richardson. “On Friday, we received a resolution from the co-directors of the Election Division and the Secretary of State indicating they had reached an agreement to accept the altered forms for this election only. Once we received this notice we began processing the original forms.”

Richardson said her staff has been working overtime to get all the ballots processed and should be caught up this week.