In theory, both the offices of Secretary of State Diego Morales and the Hamilton County Election Administrator compile a daily list of everyone who has filed for office in the upcoming primary, check it for errors, then make those lists available to the public on their respective websites.
In practice, Hamilton County does a great job at that.
The state does not.
The Feb. 5 candidate list from Morales’s office is … interesting.
Fifteen candidates across the state are listed as having filed, but with no filing date. That field is blank for five Democrats and 10 Republicans.
Five candidates are listed as filed, but with dates in the future. Six candidates filed years ago: four in early 2025, one in 2020, and one in 2006.
One is listed as filing today, which was still seven hours in the future when this newspaper pulled the candidates list from the state website. One is listed as having filed on Feb. 9, three days after filing ends at noon today. Another is listed with a filing date of Feb. 16. A third shows a filing date of Dec. 30, 2026 – 10 months and 24 days after filing ends.
As late-night infomercials in the ‘80s used to say, “But wait, there’s more.”
One Democratic candidate in Vincennes, Ind. will apparently file for office in just under 7,200 years. The candidate, who filed both for township trustee and precinct committeeman, has filing dates of Jan. 26, 9202. That will be 2,620,969 days after this is published.
None of the candidates with impossible filing dates are local and none are running for state or national offices. The Hamilton County Reporter will publish the final list of candidates on the Hamilton and Tipton County ballots in the May primary in our Tuesday, Feb. 10 edition.
This newspaper hopes Secretary of State Diego Morales, or his designee, has corrected the official candidate list by then.