More than 400 voters in Tippecanoe Township – north of West Lafayette and in and around Battle Ground – cast ballots that didn’t include the name of the Democratic candidate for township trustee for nearly two weeks of early voting.
The mistake was caught early Wednesday afternoon when a candidate for Tippecanoe Township Board noted that the ballot on a voting machine at the County Office Building did not show the name of Holden Mugford, a Democrat who is running against Republican incumbent Bill Jones for the trustee’s office.
Tippecanoe County election officials were working Thursday morning to get letters to voters who live in Tippecanoe Township and voted early, between Oct. 9 and Oct. 21. Mike Smith, a specialist in the county election office, said 424 ballots were affected, in an unaudited count.
Tippecanoe County Clerk Julie Roush said those voters would be allowed to cast a new ballot before the Nov. 3 election day.
Roush said her office was still trying to trace how the problem happened, calling it “an administrative error” when election officials had to make corrections on ballots dealing with unopposed races in another part of the county days after early voting started.
Mugford, who was selected by the county Democratic Party to fill a vacancy when another candidate moved from Tippecanoe Township, was put on the ballot a day before early voting started Oct. 6. Roush said that when corrections were made to ballots in voting machines on Oct. 9, a previous version of the candidate list that didn’t include Mugford’s name was put back into the MicroVote machines.
Smith said voters in Tippecanoe Township were given paper ballots during Wednesday afternoon’s voting for the trustee race. He said the ballots were corrected for early voting that continued Thursday.
What’s next: In a memo to the candidates and their campaigns Wednesday evening, Smith said that once the county had unofficial results on Election Night – including results from Tippecanoe Township residents who come back to vote again – the Election Board would look at the margin between the candidates. If it’s greater than the number of “uncured” ballots affected by the error in the Tippecanoe Township trustee contest, then the winner will stand.
If the winning margin is less than the “uncured” number of impacted voters, Smith said, then the Tippecanoe County Election Board would need to consider what he called “the best remedy.”
That could include a special election, Smith said Thursday morning.
“We’re not to that point yet, so I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves,” Smith said.
By Thursday morning, both candidates were trying to make sense of what happened.
Mugford said he voted Oct. 6, the first day of early, in-person voting, and had been excited to see his name on the ballot.
“When I heard what happened, I was wondering how isolated of an event it was or how widespread,” Mugford said. “I just really had no scope of the thing. I was hoping that it wouldn’t have impacted too many people. It turns out it was pretty significant given the scope of how long the issue lasted. … I don’t think there’s any blame to assign, and I’ve been appreciative of the response from the election board. It’s a human system and there’s stuff that’s going to happen. We just have to do the best we can and just keep thinking forward instead of trying to go back.”
Jones said he was notified Wednesday afternoon about the situation.
“My first impression was, well, some of those people will come back in to vote,” Jones said. “My second impression was, how did they go so many days without somebody trying to vote against me?”
Jones said he already had expected the contest to be a close one. He said he didn’t think it would be possible for him or Mugford to win by 400-plus votes. Jones said a township that once had a 4-percentage point lean toward Republicans had moved toward a tighter split with Democrats, given recent growth north of West Lafayette.
In the most recent Tippecanoe Township trustee election, in 2022, Jones received 2,197 votes in an uncontested race. Given a similar turnout, a 400-vote gap would mean one candidate would need to receive roughly 60% of the vote to win outright.
“That’s not happening,” Jones said. “I’m devastated by trying to have a special election. Just for the cost of the thing.”
Township trustee is a four-year position that oversees emergency township assistance, township cemeteries and fire protection.
Ken Jones, chair of the Tippecanoe County Democratic Party, said he’d been mindful to look for Mugford’s name on ballots during a test of the MicroVote system days before in-person early voting started.
Jones said he heard similar explanations from the Indiana Election Division and was confident that the county election office was following state law about how to handle nearly two weeks of early voting with ballots that omitted one candidate.
“But this shouldn’t happen,” Ken Jones said. “It’s terrible for everyone. This isn’t a Democrat problem or a party problem. It’s terrible because everyone’s doing a lot of work. Bill’s doing work. We’re doing work. And we want to win this thing fair and square. Then to introduce this level of uncertainty, 400 votes in what probably should be a very close township race? Maybe we all recover from it, but are 400 people going to say, ‘Oh yeah, that really sucks, but I’ll go vote again?’ My confidence in 400 or so people wanting to go back and cast another vote is not high.”
Mugford said he had faith that things would work out. He said it would mean one more message he offers to potential voters as he goes door-to-door.
“This doesn’t really derail me at all,” Mugford said. “It highlights why transparency is so important in government, to make sure the citizens remain confident that their vote is counted. … We might be looking at a special election as a possibility, and if that happens that just gives us more opportunity to connect with voters and have more conversations. And that’s not a bad thing.”
EARLY VOTING OPPORTUNITIES THIS WEEK
Here’s a schedule for early voting sites this week in Tippecanoe County:
8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. weekdays, through Oct. 30: Tippecanoe County Office Building, 20 N. Third St. in Lafayette
Thursday, Oct. 22: First United Methodist Church, 1700 Mitch Daniels Blvd., West Lafayette. Hours: Noon-5 p.m.
Saturday, Oct. 24:
West Point Fire Station, 4949 Indiana 25 S., West Point. Hours: 9 a.m.-1 p.m.
Clarks Hill Christian Church, 9510 Pearl St., Clarks Hill. Hours: 9 a.m.-1 p.m.
Eastside Assembly of God, 6121 E. County Road 50 South, Lafayette. Hours: 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Tippecanoe County Office Building, 20 N. Third St. in Lafayette. Hours: 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Tuesday, Oct. 27-Friday, Oct. 30:
Eastside Assembly of God, 6121 E. County Road 50 South, Lafayette. Hours: Noon-6 p.m.
Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds, 1406 Teal Road, Lafayette. Hours: Noon-6 p.m.
Wea Ridge Baptist Church, 1051 E. County Road 430 South, Lafayette. Hours: Noon-6 p.m.
John Dennis Wellness Center, 1101 Kalberer Road, West Lafayette. Hours: Noon-6 p.m.
For a full schedule, through Nov. 2, here’s a list of early voting sites and times.
On your ballot: To see candidates who will be on your ballot, go to the Secretary of State’s portal at www.indianavoters.com.
Candidate Q&As: For Q&As with candidates in contested races in Tippecanoe County, go to www.basedinlafayette.com.
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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
Is it not possible for the Election Board to contact every person that submitted one of the 424 votes, regardless of if they left the race blank or voted for Jones, and explained the situation and offered to drive out with a replacement ballot?
The problem of course will be that there will be some that voted for Jones that only did so because he was the only one on the ballot and they don’t want to bother with a revote and others that will just not be contactable.
And a special election will of course be costly and will draw out less voters anyway.
Thanks, Dave.
"The mistake was caught early Wednesday afternoon when a candidate for Tippecanoe Township Board noted that the ballot on a voting machine at the County Office Building did not show the name of Holden Mugford, a Democrat who is running against Republican incumbent Bill Jones for the trustee’s office."
It's fascinating that it took another candidate to point this out to the people elected, appointed, and salaried to ensure that everything is in tip top shape for our elections.
It takes a village to raise a county.
As Mugford shared, transparency, especially proactive transparency, is absolutely critical in a democratic republic. And we need more of it here in Tippecanoe.
That should be our new Tippecanoe Way. Transparency.