Indiana Senate Race Between Spencer Deery and Paula Copenhaver Narrows to Two Votes as Provisional Ballots Decide Outcome

The Spencer Deery Paula Copenhaver race is fascinating. It’s down to two votes with three votes remaining. So let me explain to you a little bit about how this works. And, you know, our goal here is we want to entertain you. We also want to educate you, make you more informed citizens so you can go out and explain things to people and hopefully get more people to want to be involved. And so this is an opportunity for us to do just that. So Spencer Deery is an incumbent senator. He’s from Lafayette. His district stretches about six counties, and he’s got parts of six counties in his district. He was up for re-election this year. He was challenged in a primary by a woman by the name of Paula Copenhaver. She worked for Todd Rokita and then left abruptly. She doesn’t really want to talk about why she left abruptly. You should ask her if you ever see her out. Why did you leave Todd’s office so quickly? And then she went to work for Micah Beckwith.

Spencer Deery and Paula Copenhaver Locked in One of Indiana’s Closest Senate Races

She is endorsed by the Trump/Turning Point USA group, and they made Spencer Deery a top target because they hate Mitch Daniels. Spencer Deery is a Mitch Daniels guy. This is one of the things that really frustrates me because Spencer Deery is actually pretty darn conservative. And he’s somewhat independent. He is fiercely pro-life. He voted against the property tax bill. I’m not endorsing Spencer Deery or telling anybody you should have voted for Spencer Deery, but it is pretty frustrating when you see the top three targets that the Turning Point/Trump people went after. It was about people they hate. They hate Rod Bray, so they went after Holdman. They hate Mitch Daniels, so they went after Spencer Deery. And a lot of the stuff going after Deery was because Banks, Jim Banks, hates Mitch Daniels. And the third one was Greg Goode because they hate Todd Young.

Trump-Aligned Groups Targeted Spencer Deery Over Political Alliances and Redistricting

And we’ve talked about at length there were two very different results between Greg Goode and Travis Holdman. Holdman lost miserably, Good won easily, because the election had nothing to do with redistricting. And in the middle is Spencer Deery. Spencer Deery, as of right now, is winning his election against Paula Copenhaver by two votes. Two votes. He was winning by four at the end of the election. Now they’re counting what they call provisional ballots. And with the first set of provisional ballots being counted, his lead is down to two votes. There are three provisional ballots that remain in other counties that are yet to be calculated. Let’s talk a little bit about, by the way, the total to 6331 at the start. It’s now down to two. That’s how close this election is. When people tell you your vote doesn’t count, point them to this race. Well, there’s no point in voting. Point them to this.

How Indiana Provisional Ballots Work and Why They Matter in Close Elections

So District 23 is this district. As I said, District 23 is six counties, parts of six counties, and a provisional ballot, by the way, the Indiana Capital Chronicle has a big article about this if you want to read it. They do a nice job going into detail about the provisional ballots. A provisional ballot is where a person is allowed to cast their ballot, even if it’s unclear they’re qualified to vote in the precinct. So like there’s some speculation about your address. Do you live there? Are you registered to vote there? Well, we don’t know. Okay, go ahead and let them cast the ballot. We’ll set it aside. We’ll deal with it later if it matters. Normally, it never gets challenged because the races aren’t close enough, right? Any race that’s 100 votes or more for something like Senate or House, probably not going to get called into question because it’s not going to change the change. There’s not enough provisional ballots to change the outcome of the election. In this case, obviously, every vote matters. So they’re under scrutiny. And the voter after the election has ten days to give the county election board any required documentation or complete an affidavit about legal expectations, exceptions, combined with the mail in ballot. So with the mail in ballots, there are also a couple mail in ballots that needed to be counted, like military people who sent their ballots in overseas. They had been sent at the correct time. They hadn’t been received as of Election Day, so they needed to be counted.

Remaining Ballots Could Decide Final Outcome in High-Profile Indiana Primary Contest

So all in yesterday, Deery gained one vote in Fountain County, which is where Copenhaver is from. Copenhaver got two, so she picked up one there. Copenhaver then picked up one more vote in Morgan County. So she got two collectively, three total. Deery got one. She net two. There are two ballots out in Tippecanoe County that were provisional ballots that remain to be unsealed. Deery won Tippecanoe County by a 2 to 1 margin. So one would think, although you have no idea, that there’s a good chance those provisional ballots, if they’re counted, might favor him or they could ultimately get tossed out and not favor anyone. But if they did get counted, there’s a good chance you might think they would favor him. That election board is going to meet at 1 p.m. on Friday to review those provisional ballots, and then Parke County has one provisional ballot, and that is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Wednesday.