Terry Burns, the Democratic member of the Board of Voter Registration in Marion County, Indiana, informs TPMDC that Tamyra d’Ippolito does not have the required ballot-petition signatures needed to run in the Democratic primary for Senate. In fact, he said, she hardly has any in his area.
In Indiana, petitions are submitted within the county where the signatures upon it were collected. The deadline to do this was noon today. Petitions are then reviewed and certified by the counties, and forwarded on to the state. In order to appear on the primary ballot for Senate, a candidate must have collected 500 signatures within each of the state’s nine Congressional districts. Marion County, the home of Indianapolis, has the 7th District located entirely within its borders — so if d’Ippolito doesn’t have at least 500 signatures in this one county alone, getting on the ballot would be out of the question.
“We received this morning three signatures. And that is all we have received, so she will not qualify to be on the ballot,” said Burns. He also added: “Once the noon deadline passes, that’s it.” In addition, only two of the signatures came from the 7th District — the other was from the 5th District, which is partially located within Marion County.
D’Ippolito’s failure to qualify for the ballot appears to clear the way for the likely plan of Indiana Democrats: That nobody would qualify for the ballot, after the sudden retirement of incumbent Dem Sen. Evan Bayh, and the state party committee would be able to name a new candidate.
When asked for comment, d’Ippolito seemed to believe that petitions could be submitted within individual towns, not just the single county office — contradicting the information I received form Burns.
D’Ippolito also said she had been hearing word form people notifying her by e-mail and Facebook that they were gathering signatures, with 50 from one person and more from another, with the numbers adding up.
“I can’t spend time on the phone with you about this, but basically I’m going to Indianapolis tomorrow to sign the Senate application, and i’m also doing a write-in candidate application. So I’m doing both, I’m doing the ballot application and I’m doing the write in application.”
Late Update: The Northwest Indiana Times called the county clerks in the five counties that make up the 1st District. Only one county reported that they received any signatures for d’Ippolito at all, and there were only 16 of them.
