Kyle Bell

Over at Blue Indiana, they are reporting that John McCain has more reasons to be concerned than his alleged affair with a female 40 year old lobbyist. Everyone knows that the Democrats have had huge turnout advantages over Republicans this year. In Wisconsin, Barack Obama alone had over 240,000 more votes than every Republican on the ballot.  In the majority of states, Democrats have had twice (or more) of the vote than the Republicans. Now there’s news that John McCain failed to even make the Indiana primary ballot.

“To my surprise, I noticed that John McCain — the presumptive front-runner for the GOP nomination — was just a little short in a few districts, including my precious 4th, despite the fact that Attorney General Steve Carter had already turned in their petitions. I made a few phone calls, and one by one I found out that the McCain camp had got the job done across the state.

Except in the 4th District.

In the 4th District, they are short.

By my latest count, they turned in 496 signatures for the 4th, and the latest IED report for this morning shows them with only 491.”

What does this mean? In Indiana, a candidate needs 500 signatures in each of Indiana’s 9 Congressional Districts to get his or her name on the ballot.  McCain failed to do that in Indiana-4, where he apparently fell 9 signatures short. In a state that has voted for every Republican presidential candidate since 1968 (Lyndon Johnson being the last Democrat to win the state in 1964), John McCain being unable to secure enough signatures in Indiana is STUNNING. Not only does it show how weak Republicans are this year in even the reddest of red states, it also shows how inept Republicans are. Generally Republicans have been good at winning elections and God awful at governing. In this case, they failed to do the most basic campaign function: getting on the ballot.

Thomas Cook of Blue Indiana has filed a challenge to keep John McCain’s name off of the May 6 primary ballot in Indiana for failing to meet the necessary requirements. Unfortunately, the Secretary of State,  Todd Rokita, is a partisan Republican who endorsed John McCain just weeks ago. If he hopes for any political future in the Republican Party in the state, expect him to do whatever it takes to get McCain’s name on the ballot. E-mail Secretary of State Rokita at http://www.in.gov/sos/ask/email.html (as well as your local paper) and tell him to keep McCain’s name off the ballot.