What Else is Potentially at Stake in the Charlie White Matter

Daily Kos:

To close, let me reclarify what Rosenberg’s ruling and a subsequent agreement from the Indiana Supreme Court could have in store for our state.  Democrats could get the top ballot line for every single race in the state (no matter how down in the weeds) for the next three years. Democrats could get inspectors in all precincts, meaning that we control every precinct board in the state.  Furthermore, the Indiana Election Commission and all precinct boards would consist of Democrats and Libertarians.  With Osili as Secretary of State, we could gain a majority control over the Indiana Recount Commission.  The Republican Party could lose major party status in the state, while the Libertarian Party could take their place as a major party.  The Libertarian Party could then gain access to primaries, whereas the Republican Party would lose their access to primaries.  It would force Republicans into conventions to nominate their candidates, and that would certainly favor state Treasurer Richard Mourdock in his primary challenge against sitting US Senator Richard Lugar.  Because the GOP would lose their line on the ballot for the next three years, it would mean that the GOP would have to petition each time they want to get a candidate on the ballot (ballot line access requires signatures equal to 2% of the number of voters in the Secretary of State race; with Charlie White’s votes invalidated in the total, this equates to 14,659 signatures per candidate).  With this lowered number of necessary signatures, a wide array of upstart Independent and third-party candidacies could theoretically sprout up.  It could have a massive, massive effect on the crucial sets of elections we’ve got next year: Governor/Lt. Governor, US Senate, Attorney General, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and three competitive US House races.  It’s worth noting that Republicans, the people that could be demolished by this ruling, hold all of those offices aside from Joe Donnelly’s US House seat.

I wonder if these implications will (1) affect how the State Supreme Court decides this case; and (2) motivate the Indiana legislature to change these laws.

UPDATE:  Richard Winger says the law already has been changed.

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