The Republican nominee for the top job overseeing Indiana’s elections has a bit of a voting problem himself.
For one thing, Republican Secretary of State nominee Charlie White moved out of Fishers, Indiana, six months before stepping down from his post on the town council there. The town attorney has ruled that White’s disputed town council votes from that interim period will still stand.
But according to the Indianapolis Star, White’s troubles don’t end there. He is reportedly being probed for committing voter fraud because he registered to vote with his old address, and voted in the primary in his old district.
White had served on the Fishers Town Council for 10 years, including the time between his move from Fishers last March, until his announcement of the move and resignation in September.
Since then, local Democrats have been putting pressure on him to call off his Secretary of State campaign. And the Dems want a probe to look at White’s failure to report his change of address when registering to vote. State Democratic party chair Dan Parker alleged that this constitutes voter fraud since White voted in his old precinct.
The IndyStar reports:
White said a busy schedule, including his candidacy for secretary of state, kept him from noticing that he no longer lived in the council district and kept him from revising his voter registration to show his new address.
White said he moved to his new address in March, after moving back and forth between a new condominium and his ex-wife’s home, but the resignation didn’t happen until six months later. White said he was willing to return the $7,300 he had been paid for serving on the Town Council since he changed addresses in March.
Democratic attorney and former town council candidate Greg Purvis also called for White to return the $7,300 pay he received for the months he served on the town council while not living in the district. “Mr. White changed his voter registration from his apartment in his district not to his new house but to his ex-wife’s house which he has since said was not his residence. That is a violation of Indiana law,” he alleged.
“I made a couple silly mistakes. I’ll learn from it,” White said of the controversy in September.
Church himself was looking into questions about White’s votes since leaving the district, and whether they should be upheld. “For public policy reasons, several months of work and the many decisions made by the council will not be rendered invalid because a member of the council was not eligible to serve,” he found.
Republicans, meanwhile, have responded with counter-allegations, namely that the Democratic nominee for Secretary of State, Vop Osili, has violated campaign finance laws by accepting anonymous campaign contributions.
