Indiana Green Party

BY PATRICK GUINANE
pguinane@nwitimes.com
Thursday, March 13, 2008
INDIANAPOLIS | Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain's spot on the Indiana ballot is safe.

The bipartisan Indiana Election Commission voted 4-0 Wednesday to reject a challenge by Indiana University student Thomas Cook, a liberal blogger who argued the McCain campaign hadn't secure enough petition signatures.

To get on the ballot, a presidential candidate must secure signatures from 500 voters in each of Indiana's nine congressional districts. Cook said the McCain camp fell at least two signatures short in the 4th District, which covers west central Indiana.

The commission's partisan staff came up with two different petition counts -- 511 and 514. But Cook asked the commission to throw out 14 additional petitions the McCain campaign filed just before last month's deadline.

But Sarah Steele Riordan, a Democratic commission member, said the important thing was that the campaign filed enough signatures by the deadline, and that Hoosiers deserve the chance to vote for the GOP nominee.

"If there are 514 (signatures), if there are 511, if there are 501 -- that's enough," she said.

Thomas Wheeler II, the commission's Republican chairman, said the dispute shows that state lawmakers need to overhaul the state's "arcane" ballot access laws, which he called "fraught with error" and "confusion."