Trump-backed candidate seeks recount over 'illegal votes'

Sen. Spencer Deery, R-West Lafayette, and challenger Paula Copenhaver are candidates for the Republican nomination in Indiana Senate District 23. (Photos by Whitney Downard/Indiana Capital Chronicle, courtesy of Copenhaver campaign)

The President Donald Trump-endorsed challenger to state Sen. Spencer Deery has filed for a recount of their Republican primary race, claiming it was tainted by “illegal votes.”

Fountain County Republican Chair Paula Copenhaver said Monday she was seeking the recount of the certified results that showed her trailing Deery by a three-vote margin — 6,337 to 6,334.

“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 statement. “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.”

Claims of Democrats crossing to GOP primary

Copenhaver’s recount petition said the campaign had identified 14 people who disclosed in social media posts or to news reporters that they had voted in the Republican Senate primary despite being Democrats or self-identified “progressives.”

Deery, a first-term senator from West Lafayette, was among the Republican legislators targeted by Trump after voting against the congressional redistricting plan pushed last year by the president.

Deery said his campaign was reviewing Copenhaver’s recount petition.

“I fully support the right of any candidate to request a review of election results as permitted by Indiana law,” Deery told the Indiana Capital Chronicle. “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 facts that undermine public trust in our elections.”

Copenhaver, a staffer to Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, benefitted from several million dollars in campaign spending by pro-redistricting groups targeting Deery for defeat.

Copenhaver said in a news release that “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.”

Indiana’s open primary system

Indiana has an open primary system under which voters may request either Republican or Democratic ballots. Voters, however, must attest that they are seeking “the ballot of the political party, a majority of whose candidates I voted for at the last general election, or whom I intend to vote for in the next general election.”

Allegations of cross-party primary voting have been rarely investigated, although some Republicans have unsuccessfully pushed in recent years for Indiana to require party registration for primary voting.

Copenhaver’s attorneys, from the Indianapolis law firm Kroger, Gardis & Regas, are seeking to take sworn depositions from the 14 voters, arguing that they had waived their right to ballot secrecy.

“Each of the identified voters not only voluntarily disclosed but voluntarily publicized to a news reporter and/or on social media platforms the illegality of their ballots, admittedly crossing party lines in the Republican primary election for District 23, and stating who they voted for,” the recount petition said.

Copenhaver is seeking a manual recount of all ballots in the heavily Republican Senate District 23, which spans all or parts of six counties in the area between Lafayette and Terre Haute.

The head of the State Board of Accounts, whose field auditors will conduct the recount, said the complicated logistics for a review of ballots in all those counties could extend that work into July.

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