Al Manns – The B Square

On Friday morning, Indiana’s four-member bi-partisan election commission voted unanimously to take Al Manns off November’s general election list of certified candidates for Monroe County circuit court judge.

cropped crossley paul manns IMG_3953 — From left: Jennifer Crossley, chair of the Monroe County Democratic Party; Al Manns, currently a write-in Green Party candidate for the Division 1 circuit court race; Randy Paul, co-chair of the Monroe County Greens.

Manns had filed as a Green Party write-in candidate for the Division 1 seat, after losing the Democratic Party’s June 2 primary to Geoff Bradley.

It was his loss in the Democratic Primary that led the party to challenge Manns as a certified write-in candidate, because he had failed to win the party’s nomination for that same seat in June.

For its challenge, the Democratic Party was relying on a state law commonly known as the “sore loser” law. [IC-3-8-1-5.5] The statute says that if someone loses a primary election, they’re not able to be a candidate for the same office in the next general election.

So a week ago, Monroe County Democratic Party chair Jennifer Crossley challenged the write-in candidacy that Manns wanted to mount. Continue reading “Indiana’s election commission de-certifies write-in Green Party candidate for Monroe County judge after Democratic Party challenge” →

Corrected R Map Election June 2 2020PCTPLURYODEROVERZODYcountywide

Corrected R Map Election June 2 2020PCTPLURKEHROVERKROTHEcountywide

FINAL CORRECT INPERSON MCKIM R Map Election June 2

Much of the media coverage of 2020 primary elections focused on the mechanics of voting methods, instead of the campaigns.

That’s because the COVID-19 pandemic led the state election commission to postpone the primaries four weeks, from May 5 to June 2, and to make no-excuse absentee voting available for any voter. That meant every voter could vote by mail, instead of showing up in person to vote on any of the six days before Election Day or the day itself.

In Monroe County, a lot more people voted by mail, ahead of Election Day, than they did in 2016. Of the 26,791 voters who cast a ballot for this year’s primary, 17,785 (66 percent) did it by mail.

The 66 percent who voted by mail this year was more than twice the percentage who voted before Primary Election Day in 2016. The 2016 figure also includes mail-in ballots and in-person ballots cast during the early voting period.

Did the increased percentage of mail-in votes this year affect the outcome of any races? Maybe. Continue reading “Margins, flipped results for mail-in versus in-person make Monroe County election stories” →