by Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, Esq.
In a year with no President, Governor, or U.S. Senate race at the top of the ticket, Indiana’s most visible Republican on the ballot will likely be the Secretary of State.
Which is… not great news for Diego Morales.
If there were a trophy for “Most Avoidable, Self-Inflicted Political Disaster,” Morales would need a bigger shelf.
First, a word to the people who actually had skin in this game.
If you are a Congressman, State Representative, State Senator, county prosecutor, judge — or the friend, family member, staffer, or volunteer of any of the above — you’re welcome.
You’re welcome because, thanks to “yours truly,” many of you were alerted to a Secretary of State “mistake” that could have jeopardized your ballot access. In some cases, it might have forced you to drop everything and refile paperwork in person at the Indiana Election Board — where it should have been handled correctly in the first place instead of bouncing around the Secretary of State’s office like a loose screw in a blender.
Had this error gone undiscovered, the consequences would have been ugly: candidates knocked off the ballot, primaries scrambled, emergency hearings, last-minute lawsuits, and races decided not by voters, but by a filing problem created inside Morales’ own shop.
Careers, campaigns, and in some cases millions of dollars of political investment were hanging on a technical issue most people didn’t even know existed. That’s not a clerical hiccup — that’s a failure in the office that is supposed to be Indiana’s elections referee.
Some will say the Indiana Election Board could have waved a magic wand and fixed everything. Maybe. But anyone who practices election law knows “maybe” is a dangerous word. This could just as easily have turned into a legal thicket that lasted past Primary Day.
Chaos was very much on the table.
And yes — in the interest of honesty — I briefly entertained a mischievous thought. For about 30 seconds, I imagined myself as Thanos from The Avengers, Infinity Gauntlet gleaming, waiting until after the February 5 deadline to snap this story into existence. That would have produced pure Mad Max: Thunderdome political anarchy.
Tempting? Absolutely. Responsible? No.
Indy Politics doesn’t play that way. We break stories to inform the public — even when it saves politicians who might wish we’d shut up.
So while Diego was telling everyone that his office had handled filings properly “for decades,” it was our reporting that quietly kept more than a few careers from ending on a technicality of his own making.
But the filing fiasco was only Act I.
Act II was the curious case of the “special deputies.” Only after Indy Politics asked pointed questions did the Secretary of State’s office suddenly produce a list of people it claimed had been “swearing in” candidates. The problem? They weren’t actually administering an oath in any meaningful legal sense — and many forms weren’t even time-stamped.
That matters. Time stamps aren’t decorative. They are proof of when a document was filed, and in election law, timing is everything. Without them, ballot access becomes a matter of trust rather than documentation — and “trust us” is not a legal standard.
Then came Act III: the campaign video.
After reviewing footage that appeared to show Morales inside the Marion County Election Service Center while acting in his official capacity — footage later used in his reelection campaign — the Marion County Election Board unanimously moved to formally notify him of its concerns and give him a chance to respond before possible referrals to oversight agencies.
This wasn’t a partisan ambush. It was a bipartisan board doing exactly what it’s supposed to do when the state’s top elections official blurs the line between public office and political campaigning.
Morales’ response? Mostly defensiveness, a dash of denial, and a press release accusing Indy Politics of being “false” and “uninformed” — an interesting strategy when the documents and video speak for themselves.
Add to that the cold reality of the latest polling: nearly 60 percent of Hoosiers still say they don’t even know who Diego Morales is — and among those who do, only about 9 percent approve of his performance. In other words, anonymity hasn’t saved him, and familiarity hasn’t helped him.
To sum things up, if we were reaching for Shakespeare instead of Hollywood, the line that fits Diego’s week isn’t heroic tragedy — it’s Macbeth: “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” This wasn’t high drama; it was avoidable disorder in the very office that is supposed to prevent it. If Indiana wants less chaos and fewer self-owns, it might help to take the whistle away from the guy who keeps tripping over it — and let him tip-toe back to his office, gently close the door, and sit with his thoughts for a while.
Abdul-Hakim is the editor and publisher of Indy Politics. He is also an attorney licensed in Indiana and Illinois.
