Secretary of State Charlie White is kind of flailing around in his efforts to defend himself against charges he committed voter fraud by using his ex-wife's address to vote in the May 2010 primary. He seems to have settled on a strategy of "Everybody's doing it, so why are you picking on me?" First, he tried unsuccessfully to get Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards to investigate Dan Sigler, one of the two special prosecutors in White's case, for vote fraud. Now he's going after a well-known ex-senator:
Former U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh is calling voter-fraud allegations against him and his wife, Susan, "baseless."
But whether the allegations, made in a criminal complaint filed by Secretary of State Charlie White on Tuesday, will lead to charges is difficult to say.
The law is open to interpretation, according to one legal expert.
"(It depends) on how rigidly or flexibly you follow the law," said Dianne Pinderhughes, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame.
The Marion County prosecutor's office is reviewing White's complaint, which alleges that the Bayhs shouldn't have voted absentee in the Indianapolis municipal primary in May. They own a condo in Indianapolis, but their main residence is a multimillion-dollar home in Washington, D.C., White contended.
This "So's your old man!" tu quoque nonsense is not likely to quiet Democrats or make Republicans feel less embarrassed by the White case. But it does raise an issue that warrants a lot of discussion in another time and place. What Evan Bayh did -- which a lot of politicians of both parties do, in Washington and Indianapolis alike -- is become so fond of the powerful circles they move in that they mostly forget about where they came from. Bet most of you can name at least one state legislator who doesn't really live around here.
