INDIANAPOLIS (WRTV) — Independent Indiana Secretary of State candidate Greg Ballard announced his campaign has submitted well above the petition signatures needed to secure a spot on the November ballot.
His campaign launched an initiative to obtain the 36,943 verified signatures required to be an official candidate and said Tuesday they submitted at least 64,183 signatures to county clerks across the state.
“We are sprinting to the end of the month when all signatures must be turned into the counties,” Ballard said. “I'm still getting requests from Hoosiers asking, 'Where can I sign?'”
The campaign is planning a “Signature Saturday” this weekend, with volunteers stationed at numerous locations across Indiana for voters to sign petitions in person.
A full list of times and locations will be released later this week. Those interested in hosting a location are asked to email info@gregballard.com.
Verified signatures from county clerks will be returned to the campaign and officially filed with the state in July.
The announcement comes amid controversy surrounding the campaign's signature gathering effort.
The chairman of the Hamilton County Republican Party, Mario Massillamany, called for a police investigation after election officials discovered a page containing 10 allegedly fraudulent signatures submitted by a campaign volunteer.
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“The irony cannot be overstated,” Massillamany said in a Thursday press release. “Greg Ballard is running for the very office charged with protecting Indiana's elections, and a volunteer on his campaign has been caught committing election fraud. If you cannot run an honest petition drive, you have no business running the office that safeguards our elections.”
Massillamany called on the Indiana State Police and the Hamilton County Prosecutor to investigate, and urged all 92 Indiana county election officials to review the Ballard campaign's petition pages.
The Ballard campaign responded to the allegations, saying the situation shows the system is working as intended.
“This is the system working exactly the way it's supposed to,” the campaign said in a statement. “As soon as we learned of this issue, we ended this rogue individual's association with the campaign. The ten signatures in question represent 0.02% of the more than 35,000 signatures our team has already turned in.”
Election officials identified the volunteer involved and reported the incident to law enforcement.
