Greg Ballard’s name will be on the November election ballot as the Lincoln Party candidate for Indiana secretary of state.
The Indiana Election Division staff determined Wednesday Ballard’s campaign had submitted 40,361 verified petition signatures of registered voters, according to Matthew Kochevar, the division’s co-general counsel.
The campaign needed to submit at least 36,943 under state law for Ballard to qualify for the ballot — a number totaling 2% of the votes cast for secretary of state in 2022.
Ballard, who was elected as a Republican to be Indianapolis mayor in 2007 and 2011, attached his campaign to the Lincoln Party label shortly after launching his bid in March.
“It’s good to officially be on the ballot,” Ballard said in a statement from his campaign. “It took a lot of hard work from people across Indiana to reach this historic moment.”
Ballard’s candidacy creates a unique four-candidate race for the office that oversees statewide election and voting policies and is currently held by Republican Diego Morales.
Morales, however, lost the Republican nomination in last month’s state party convention to Max Engling, a staffer for U.S. Sen. Jim Banks.
That set up a likely high-spending race against Democrat Beau Bayh, a son of former Gov. Evan Bayh, with Libertarian Lauri Shillings also on the ballot.
Ballard joined campaign supporters last week in filing the ballot petitions gathered from across the state.
If Ballard tops the 2% mark in November’s election, the new Lincoln Party’s candidates would automatically be on the general election ballot for the next four years. Libertarians have topped 2% since the 1994 secretary of state race.
Clearing the petition signature hurdle was an expensive step for Ballard.
His campaign reported paying $780,000 to the North Carolina-based firm Ballot Access Marketing for signature collection. That represents more than 90% of the campaign’s nearly $850,000 in total spending through the end of June.
Originally published on indianacapitalchronicle.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.
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