The Indiana Recount Commission on Monday moved to overturn the results of the May Republican primary election by throwing out three votes, handing the victory to a challenger backed by President Donald Trump in that state’s west-central Senate district.
Paula Copenhaver had originally fallen to incumbent state Sen. Spencer Deery, who was one of several state legislators being challenged by a Trump-supported candidate for voting against redistricting the state. Copenhaver finished the primary just three votes behind Deery and later filed a recount petition alleging voter fraud and claimed to have identified a handful of voters who voted in the Republican primary despite being Democrats.
But on Monday, the recount commission threw out several votes, which flipped the primary results in Copenhaver’s favor. The board rejected eight ballots cast for Deery and two for Copenhaver, just enough to turn the 3-point lead initially held by the incumbent to the challenger’s favor.
The ballots were thrown out because they lacked the county clerk’s signature or one or both sets of initials from election judges. Indiana law requires absentee ballots to be initialed by both a Republican and a Democratic election judge and include the signature and the seal of the county clerk.
Following the commission’s decision, Deery took to social media to call the recount an effort to “undermine the will of voters” and said it was politically motivated.
“This was not a meeting intended to find fairness; it was designed to find votes,” Deery said. “Indiana law makes clear that valid votes should not be silenced simply because of minor errors made by clerks — clerks who were supposed to be trained by the chairman of this very commission.”
Deery said he plans to appeal the recount commission’s decision in the Indiana Court of Appeals.
In challenging the initial primary results, Copenhaver claimed to have identified roughly a dozen people who identified themselves as Democrats or “progressives” on social media and voted in the May 5 Republican primary. During the recount process, Copenhaver requested subpoenas for testimony and documents from Tippecanoe County election officials about the processing of absentee ballots after the primary that added to Deery’s total. Additionally, she asked for access to the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program to verify the citizenship status of voters. Both of those requests were denied by the recount commission.
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The revised results on Monday make Deery the seventh of eight Republicans to fall to Trump-backed challengers in the Indiana primaries.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Copenhaver for comment.