The Indiana Recount Commission on Tuesday denied nearly every request in front of it in the disputed Republican primary for State Senate District 23, refusing to let either side take depositions or compel testimony from voters, while leaving the underlying election contest intact.
The omnibus order, signed by Commission Chair and Secretary of State Diego Morales, disposed of ten motions, requests and objections argued at a July 28 hearing in the case of Paula K. Copenhaver v. Spencer R. Deery, the district’s incumbent senator. The three-member bipartisan commission also includes Paul Mullin and Michael A. Claytor. Two matters survived. Everything else was denied.
Copenhaver lost the most. She had sought subpoenas to depose Tippecanoe County Clerk Julie Roush, to obtain records from Roush and the county’s Elections and Voter Registration Board, to access the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, and to depose and later compel testimony from individual voters whose ballots she has challenged. All of it was denied.
Those denials close off the theory Copenhaver built the case around. Her petition identified 14 people who indicated on social media or to reporters that they had pulled a Republican ballot to vote against her. She argued that crossing over violated Indiana Code 3-10-1-6, invalidating their votes, and that by disclosing how they voted they had waived their ballot secrecy. Deery called it a fishing expedition and argued the statute defines who may vote in a party’s primary without making a crossover ballot invalid. Without subpoena power, she has no way to put any of them under oath.
The SAVE request went further. Copenhaver sought poll books, poll lists, absentee applications and affidavits to compile the names of everyone who voted in the primary, then run them through the federal database to test their eligibility. Deery argued the database exists for voter list maintenance, not as a discovery tool for a losing candidate, and that she had identified no specific voter as ineligible.
Deery did not escape either. His motion to dismiss the election contest portion of Copenhaver’s verified petition was denied, meaning the contest proceeds alongside the recount. His own request to depose Copenhaver was denied as well.
The dispute turns on a handful of votes. Election-night returns showed Deery with 6,334 to Copenhaver’s 6,331. Deery was certified the winner by three votes, 6,337 to 6,334. Copenhaver’s filings contend the results as certified at noon on May 18 showed 6,336 to 6,334, and that a later change traced to Parke County was an untimely and unauthorized alteration of certified results.
That objection, along with her request for emergency provisional relief, is the one substantive matter the Commission preserved, continuing it for further hearing at the final recount hearing. The handling of the certified count, not the eligibility of individual voters, is now the central live question.
The clock is short. The Commission has to finish by Aug. 21, the deadline for certifying candidates for the November ballot, and the order sets no date for the final hearing. It takes under advising Copenhaver’s oral motion to hold that hearing in Tippecanoe County and authorizes Recount Director Evan Norris to coordinate locations with the parties. Copenhaver had asked that the recount and contest be tried jointly beginning Aug. 18.
The State Board of Accounts finished its recount of ballots across the six counties that make up the district on June 26. On July 21, the Commission certified the results of the other two contested Republican primaries, in Senate District 15 and House District 57, leaving Senate District 23 as the last unresolved race from the May primary.
Copenhaver is represented by William Bock III and Mark Colucci of Kroger Gardis & Regas. Deery is represented by Samantha DeWester of DeWester Law.
The race grew out of last year’s redistricting fight. Deery, a first-term senator from West Lafayette, was one of 21 Senate Republicans who voted in December to reject House Bill 1032, which would have redrawn Indiana’s congressional map mid-decade at President Trump’s urging. Trump’s allies promised retribution, and he endorsed Copenhaver, the Fountain County Republican chair, a former county clerk and government affairs director for Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith. Of the seven Senate Republicans who drew challenges over that vote, five lost. Deery’s survival is the one still in litigation.
Democrat David Sanders, a Purdue University professor, is unopposed for his party’s nomination. Joshua Brant, a Marine veteran and business consultant, announced on July 22 that he had secured ballot access as an independent and will appear on the November ballot regardless of how the Commission resolves the Republican side.
