Copenhaver takes aim at 14 ‘illegal’ crossover voters, asks for recount in tight Senate Dist. 23 primary
Petition filed Monday afternoon targets voters who ‘boasted’ about pulling Republican ballots to thwart her Trump-backed campaign, giving state Sen. Spencer Deery a 3-vote win.
Paula Copenhaver, a President Donald Trump-backed challenger who finished the May 5 primary down three votes to state Sen. Spencer Deery, filed for a recount Monday in Indiana Senate District 23, alleging illegal participation by voters not qualified to pull a Republican ballot.
Copenhaver’s campaign filed a petition with the Indiana Recount Commission Monday afternoon, putting down a $1,050 deposit toward state-dictated costs, days after the last of six county election boards certified results across the sprawling Indiana Senate District 23.
Copenhaver’s petition asks for a manual recount of all ballots cast, contending that mistakes were made in printing and distributing ballots. It specifically points to questions about a single vote Tippecanoe County counted for Deery the day after the polls closed on May 5.
The meat of Copenhaver’s petition filed with the Recount Commission, though, alleges “election tampering,” saying her campaign had identified 14 voters who boasted about crossing over to pull Republican ballots so they could vote for Deery, despite typically voting for Democrats.
“After carefully reviewing the available information, we have obtained documented evidence of illegal voting by unqualified voters in the Senate District 23 Republican primary,” Copenhaver said in a release Monday afternoon, after filing the petition.
“We are formally pursuing a recount to ensure votes were properly counted and returned in this very close election and that legal votes are counted, while illegal votes are not,” Copenhaver said. “Republicans and Democrats deserve confidence in the integrity of our primary system for choosing each party’s candidates. In this case, participation in the Republican primary by individuals not qualified to vote in the Republican primary violated state law and undermined the will of Hoosier Republicans, undercutting the integrity and fairness of our primary. We must ensure that the Republican primary process is protected, and where illegal votes are identified they must be excluded.”
Deery responded by saying that county clerks and other officials who run and supervise our elections “do tremendous work.”
“I am grateful for all they do to preserve the integrity of our elections and the ability of Hoosiers to choose their leaders,” Deery said in a statement Monday. “Those values formed the basis of my opposition to mid-cycle gerrymandering, and they are values I will always defend. As such, I fully support the right of any candidate to request a review of election results as permitted by Indiana law. With that said, our state and country are ill-served anytime a candidate refuses to accept the will of the voters, or when a losing candidate makes allegations not backed by fact that undermine public trust in our elections.”
The recount came as no surprise, given the slim margin in the election.
The final tally, after a week of election board hearings across six counties to shore up provisional ballots and signature questions on mail-in ballots before final results were certified by a Friday deadline, was 6,337-6,334 in Deery’s favor. Copenhaver won in five of the six counties in Senate District 23.
The race took on a national profile, as one of seven Indiana Senate primaries that featured incumbents targeted by President Donald Trump and his allies for not backing a White House push to redraw Indiana’s congressional maps to boost Republican chances to pick up seats in the U.S. House. Deery had been particularly outspoken in his opposition to mid-decade redistricting. Copenhaver picked up a Trump endorsement and had the support of more than $2 million in estimated dark money advertising the campaigning trying to upend Deery.
At the heart of the petition is Copenhaver’s complaint about crossover voters.
