Recount questions loom in southern Indiana.

Hamilton County goes purple, and Indiana has a new political party.

From the television studios at WFYI Public media.

It's Indiana Week in Review for the week ending November 13th, 2026.

Indiana Week Weekend Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by ParrRichey.

Democrats and Indiana's Southern Senate District 45 are calling for a recount, pointing to ballot irregularities, but the likely Republican Senate president from the district, Chris Garten, questions the accusations.

Ben Thorpe has more.

A review of election data Tuesday found more ballots cast than voters recorded in the electronic poll book, according to a press statement from Republican incumbent Chris Garten.

Garten noted that the difference of 28 votes wasn't enough to change his nearly 300 vote lead in the race.

Adam Dickey is Democratic Party chair in Floyd County, which is part of Garten's district.

He says due diligence was not done.

You know, we're getting press statements that, you know, we're confident and the discrepancy doesn't matter.

Well, wait a minute here.

Discrepancies like this do matter.

Democratic challenger Nick Marshall said in a statement that they're reviewing all options to, quote, allow the democracy to play out.

So when is a recount needed?

It's the first question for our Indiana Weekend Review panel.

Democrat Kip Tew, Republican Chris Mitchem, Jon Schwantes, host of Indiana Lawmakers.

And Barb Anguiano, reporter and newscaster at WFYI.

I'm Jill Sheridan, managing editor at WFYI.

So what can we expect now, do you think, with this recount planned in district 45?

Well, I think that what we're probably going to see is, a lot of back and forth.

it's not a good sign when you have more ballots, in the counter than you do people who checked in to the polls.

That's that that's something that if it happened in a different county, let's just say Marion County.

And it was, Republican legislator, they'd be screaming from the rooftops that we needed to do a recount.

So I think it's a legitimate inquiry as to what happened in Clark County.

There is, precedent that Clark counties mess these things up.

It's the third cycle in a row.

You might recall in the 22 cycle that, that the wrong person was, made the victor on the night of.

And they had to go back.

They had they were missing some, some tapes, and they had to go back and read, redo that and she and then the incumbent actually won.

And last, last cycle there was a more problem.

So this this county has had some significant problems.

State statute does allow for a procedural audit, by the Secretary of State's office, as long as both co-directors of the election, division agree to those things so that may be an avenue that can possibly be pursued.

It is not likely that the actual election will get turned over because 300 votes is pretty high.

Yeah, but there's no doubt that Democrats, I think, deserve, to seek the inquiry as to what went on Election Day.

There was at least ten precincts where the I poll book didn't didn't work, correctly.

And we had some scanners that broke down.

The numbers are not corresponding.

They're not they're not correct to this day.

And I think the Democrats this week were really trying to get to the bottom of why the numbers didn't match.

And unfortunately, the local party or whoever it was brought in, Jim Bopp, which created more sort of suspicion that you bring in a national, lawyer here to try to shut something down.

And they didn't do what they put on the agenda to do that night, which was open up the ballots to count them, to see if they if they match the number of the what was on the iPad.

So, so I think there's, there's legitimate questions and, and everybody ought to want to know what's going on in Clark County.

I mean, Chris, we are hearing, you know, that this past week, the board decided yet there was an irregularity, 28 votes.

but the number of votes, is still, really large.

And Senator Garten pointed to that, and he's also expected to be the leader.

Yeah.

as we move into the new legislative session.

Yeah, I think that certainly makes the story a little bigger than what it should already be.

Is that you have, you know, a prominent, Senate leader like Chris Garten at the center of it.

But, where I agree with Kip is I think we absolutely should get to the bottom of this and figure out what went wrong, make sure we don't do it again in the future.

But I think the Clark County Election Commission actually deserves a lot of credit, because I think they did exactly what they should have when it comes to if you do not have authorization from the state or from the Secretary of State to go and unseal ballots, actually unseal the box where the ballots are and start counting through them and messing with them.

Then I absolutely think that you should practice caution and allow the recount commission to do what they're assigned to do, which I'm sure what they will eventually do.

The Democrat Party already came out and said that they are going to likely file for a recount in that race.

So any time that you go and start messing around with ballots that have been sealed previously, you open up an entirely different set of rules of you have to start tracking in that local county, who handled them, who's supervising.

If you want to talk about, you know, a recount being expensive and time consuming, an entire revote.

If something were to go wrong in that process of the local folks, going through sealed ballots would be even more expensive and be even more time consuming.

And you have to bring in all the staff to do a revote.

So I think they did correct and fighting against some of the some of the Democrat talking points of we need you know, a resolution right now and we need to make sure democracy plays out.

I think they're absolutely doing the right thing of practicing caution, listening to what, you know, the state and, some of those folks up there saying and allowing the actual recount commission to come in and do its job, which I'm sure they will.

And, well, John, are you surprised at all that some of these races weren't even closer?

And have we learned anything from, we talked a lot on the show about district 23 and how close that race was.

And the process can be very long and and consuming, and the process can be long.

It can be consuming.

Before the election, though, we sat around this table and many of us said one thing Hoosiers can be sure about is that their votes will count.

We have a system that has a lot of checks and balances.

It's been time tested, has been stress tested.

It will work.

So it's incumbent, I think, on on Clark County and the state commission to make sure that this they run this to ground especially now because in this cycle in the last 1 or 2 we've seen.

So much hubbub about the integrity of the electoral system.

whether that was part of a strategy on the part of some candidates to sort of get everybody thinking it just doesn't matter.

And, and, and if I lose, be sure I'm going to come after you because it can't possibly be reality that I would lose.

I think in that atmosphere, in that climate, it's it's more important than ever to make sure that that there is every question answered about why the number of people who apparently showed up at the polls that day in that county did not match the number of votes that were ultimately rendered.

That's problematic.

I don't know about the the the commission.

It does seem that if the this county election boards what why did they meet or exist if they don't have the opportunity or the legal authority to initiate a recount?

I there's a difference of opinion.

Chris said it was the state made the decision.

You've got to to both sides there.

Democrats told folks that they had the authority to do it.

And the Republicans.

But it's happened before.

I think there is precedent.

Is there not for county boards doing.

I mean, I it's called a recanvass and people do it.

Yeah.

I think my point is if you have two separate opinions, why go through the risk of doing the vote count when you open up an entirely different set of rules, when you know the Democrats are already going to file for a recount?

That was not even a bad time.

I mean, I mean, it's all if there is a routine especially can stipulate the way that they want it, if it's if they still get a recount and all the votes are explained and counted, then I think we could all be happy and voters in Clark County can be happy then, regardless of the outcome.

Barb, what do you think that says about, you know, this very close race in this district and in southern Indiana overall, in the scheme of the election that we just went through?

Well, I think as a from a reporter newscaster standpoint, it's just been so fascinating to see recount after recount this election cycle.

like we said in the primaries.

And now and just overall, you know, the Mississippi race was just called, I think overall we're seeing, maybe the votes are just not in the bag for Republicans the way they used to be.

And, you know, I think the message here is sort of let's reassess.

Let's see where we're at.

Reconvene.

because it really just is, is now, you know, people aren't quite voting the way they're expected to vote.

And I think we saw that, you know, in this district, we're talking about Hamilton County being purple.

So there's a lot up in the air right now.

And I think there's some re messaging that parties need to come back and and reassess.

Yeah.

Well it's time now for viewer feedback.

Every week we pose an unscientific online poll question.

This week's question, will Senator Chris Garten's lead stand in Southern Senate District 45 vote yes or no?

The last question posed to viewers were you surprised by the results in U.S.

Congressional District five starts and forward 49% saying yes and 51% say no.

If you would like to take part in the poll, go to WFYI.org/IWIR and look for the poll north of Indianapolis.

Hamilton County has historically been a Republican stronghold, but midterm elections change that.

WFYI analyzed county midterm results for 21 competitive offices, comparing them with previous elections.

Zak Cassel has more on the findings.

The shift is significant.

Democrats flipped at least 13 seats in Hamilton County and held two, according to the analysis, including statewide legislative and county offices.

In contested races, Democratic candidates won 15 seats by an average of almost nine percentage points.

Voters shifted toward Democrats by an average of about 47 points since the last election.

University of Indianapolis professor Laura merrifield Wilson studies Indiana politics.

Democrats had started to recruit high quality candidates, started to really mobilize voters.

And I think you see the rewards for that effort, really, in Tuesday's election results, Hamilton County voters preferred Democrats bill by for secretary of state and former Indiana Senator Judy Ford to represent them in the U.S.

House.

Both won.

So, Chris, were you surprised by the results out of Hamilton County?

Looks like 49% of viewers agree with me when I say, yeah, you have to be surprised by the results, but not necessarily just in Marion County, but around Indiana when it comes to the losses that Republicans suffered.

I think Hamilton County sometimes gets a tough a tough deal of getting such national attention.

One of my favorite, traditions every election night is Indiana's polls are one of the first to close in the country.

So like clockwork, the national commentators, you know, the Steve Kornacki is will be like, all right, polls close in Indiana.

Let's click on Hamilton County and see how it goes.

Because for so long that district has been turning into but also has been a semblance of battleground areas across the nation like that little Hamilton County has just been such a bellwether for, you know, a lot of other races across the country.

So I think they do get a lot of attention.

But I think when you start even looking, Nate, next to its neighboring counties, you know, Boone County, you know, suffered a lot of Republican losses.

People didn't expect.

I know in Hendricks County, there was a state House race that nobody really expected to be competitive, that Republicans lost a seat.

They weren't expecting to end up in Allen County.

I think they elected a county commissioner for the first, a Democrat county commissioner for the first time since the 1970s.

So I do think Hamilton County, deservedly so, has a lot of eyes on it.

You have a lot of economic development.

It continues to boom.

But I think, you know, that could easily be extrapolated to the rest of the state when you're surprised by just the amount of losses that Republicans suffered.

I mean, on election night, national news did lead with Indiana, but was for a different reason than usual with the Sparks Ford race.

But I think across the board we saw so many of these seats and down ballot races also change.

for the Democrats in Hamilton County is Hamilton County finally purple?

I say that because I know there are still many Republicans in the county.

I think it's finally purple, but it remains to be seen.

I mean, we can go back and look through history.

In 2010, we were questioning whether southern Indiana was an anomaly or was a trend.

And we found out that it was it was a trend and we lost the whole we Democrats lost all the seats that we had in southern Indiana in that 2010 election.

And we were hoping it wasn't a, you know, it wasn't a trend, but it was.

And Hamilton County, as Chris pointed out, has been has been building as as as are the other suburbs for us.

the demographics are changing.

The, the, the folks, the there's probably a realignment, but we're not going to know, until there's a couple of elections away.

But we've been chipping away, and not been able to get over the get over the hump.

But we got over the hump in a huge way this election cycle, much like the Republicans did in 2010, in southern Indiana.

So my anticipation is that Hamilton County now is going to be a very competitive county, going forward.

you know, lots of people deserve credit for that.

Certainly JD Ford deserves a lot of credit.

He he sort of led sort of led the way when he ran for state Senate up in there.

you've got the county chairman, Josh Lowery, Raleigh Brown, the executive director.

You've got a whole bunch of people up there who've been working very hard.

And it takes recruiting good candidates.

it takes it takes a very good ground game, and, it takes a wave sometimes to get you over the hump.

But once you get over the hump, if you've if you have surfed well, then perhaps you can continue on into shore.

I mean, we have seen, you know, maybe people did vote straight ticket because of all these down ballot races.

Many of them went to Democrats as well.

I'm thinking of the sheriff, a new sheriff there in Hamilton County who has said he will not agree now with an Ice agreement, possibly, that that Hamilton County had previously b been included in.

Are we going to see changes quickly?

I guess that stance, you know, down ballot has been down.

And if you look at Allen County, they had a massive drop in the number of down ballot, votes that they had.

So I think, I think, like I've said, it'll take a couple election cycles before you're able to see what that trend is.

Yeah.

I mean, we've been talking about Hamilton County for a long time.

John.

You called it last time.

Hey, I'm I'm wrong so often.

I'll, I'll one on those rare occasions when I'm right there myself on the back.

I did say I wouldn't be surprised to see a victory by JD Ford, the week before the election.

And and I'm not surprised.

that district, as I had pointed out, is in undergoing a lot of change.

You at one point, the county, Hamilton County, had been described as historically red, and I pointed out, well, Marion County at one point, I remember when it was historically red.

I mean, it was like Orange County, California, who if you were a Republican on the ballot in Indianapolis, all right, don't even need to campaign.

You're good to go.

Things change now.

Maybe they want change in rural communities where it's fairly static from generation to generation.

But when you have metropolitan areas and I'm talking nationally, these are the things you see with a transient sort of, economic ebb and flow with, with job growth, with employers setting up shop in our in, in Indianapolis and in the donut counties, that has a way of changing the demographics.

And I think that so two things happened that this, one was a bit of a surprise.

One wasn't the fact that Hamilton County is increasingly purple.

I didn't see that as a surprise.

I think you look at the demographic data, we could have seen that coming just explosive growth.

If.

Nope, for no other reason.

You look at fishers, you look at Carmel, Westfield.

That's that's going to change things when that many people come in.

The other one was the so-called blue wave.

I think we can all be surprised by how high that surf.

I won't try the surf metaphor that you you I can now do.

Yeah, it was pretty good.

It was pretty good.

hang, hang ten.

well, that's interesting, but, but that's that's I think, took a situation that was ripe for change and, and exacerbated or hastened the change.

Yeah.

I mean, Hamilton County had one of the highest vote turnouts as well.

Do you think lots of Republicans, though, didn't show up?

Actually, I from what I've heard, it's actually the opposite.

It's my understanding that a lot of Republicans did show up.

But you just like I said, it reflected the rest of the country and you had a lot of ticked off Republicans that were upset that gas prices were still high and we were in a war.

So, a lot of people said it was a lot of innocent, innocent casualties in a lot of those because of the national trend.

The wave certainly did finally reach Indiana.

I guess Indiana also has a brand new political party after Election Day, the Lincoln Party, championed by Secretary of State candidate Greg Ballard, won nearly 4% of the vote, granting them ballot access for the next four years.

Ben Thorpe has more party leadership, says they will run high quality candidates in races they feel can be competitive.

Nathan Gotsch is the Lincoln party chair.

He says he's already hearing from people in other states interested in seeing if they can create their own third parties.

What we're doing is going to change Indiana politics going forward and potentially American politics, Gotsch says.

They are also hearing from potential candidates hoping to run in 2027 as part of the Lincoln Party.

He says the party is expecting to announce informational sessions across the state sometime in January.

So, John, do you think people will embrace Indiana's newest?

Well, on paper, the party makes a decent argument.

It talks about the analysis, and it's hard to say what the breakdown is of voters in the state because we don't register it as by party.

But their analysis shows that 44% of Hoosiers are considered themselves or generally act like independents.

So that's that's a good chunk of the population bigger than either party, designation.

So that's one thing you have going there.

You look then at some of the empirical data, and the party looked at what happened in the state across the state in 2023, 2024.

And you had, I think, close to 250 independent candidates who got on the ballot in races.

And these are town council.

These are these are not necessarily marquee races we've all heard about.

But according to them, 52% of those independents were successful.

So that that argues for, success.

However.

And there's a big however there is such an uphill a structural, imbalance, for better or worse.

And others can decide that that, yes, don't have automatic ballot access, but that doesn't necessarily necessarily ensure long term success.

Look at the Libertarian Party in the state, which very may very well we won't know again until next week for sure, but it looks like they came up several hundred votes short of retaining ballot access.

And the Libertarian Party has enjoyed that status for a long period of time.

So I think the deck is definitely stacked against independents.

Again, whether that's good or bad, it's just the structure.

It is the reality.

And it's hard to sustain something when you don't have a grassroots organization across the state where you can call on chairs and you can call on precinct committee people to help do your bidding.

Right.

Barb, do you think there is room then for an independent, real independent, party in Indiana?

I mean, as as John mentioned, a lot of that vote that traditionally had gone to libertarians might have gone down to the Lincoln Party.

Well, it's been a long journey with Greg Ballard.

but, you know, the entire time that we've been covering this, he's gone.

He's never hidden the fact that he was a Republican mayor of Indianapolis and that he used to be a Republican.

And the reasons for even starting the Lincoln Party, and that's going into right up into the end of the election, right into his wanting to not be by and not be partisan wanting the, the party to not have a label attached to it.

And I think, I think that also kind of send a mixed message because it's kind of like, well, are you like a nouveau Republican or are you sort of really going for the independence?

Because on the one hand, you want to, you know, make this shiny new thing that's clear of all these problems that have plagued other parties, like the Libertarian Party.

But at the same time, you are placing yourself in a position of like, these are the values that I hold, and those are of the Republican Party.

I mean, how important is it to have a clear message, you know, when you are launching a new political party?

Well, I think the dilemma, I mean, that's part of it.

But the dilemma is most of the people that gave money to that party, most of the people that stood it up were disenfranchized or disgruntled Republicans.

and so they were appealing votes, but and, and they did an amazing job of getting the petitions to get him on the ballot.

That was something that was pretty unexpected, that they'd be able to cross that hurdle.

And so they deserve enormous credit for that.

But then they kind of ran out of money.

And so it was difficult for them to compete.

And in the end, I think the only people they really hurt in this election cycle were the libertarians, because they took away votes from them.

And so, I don't even think we know for certain yet whether or not the libertarians are going to have ballot access or not.

And so that's that's a problem that's problematic for them.

And I think going forward, they're going to have to figure out what their message is.

I know that they said that they're planning on running a mayor in Indianapolis.

Well, what what what's going to be their platform.

What what is their reason d'etre, if you will, to exist.

And I think that if it's two, if it's two, very tenuous, then it isn't.

It doesn't have a good chance of surviving.

Do you think that we'll see Greg Ballard back?

sort of, supporting this party because, he said he would, you know, take a take a back seat.

I think he has to, because he's now kind of the spearhead or he's on the top, the tip of the spear of the Lincoln party.

and I think, you know, one of the challenges that they're going to encounter is Greg Ballard was the perfect candidate for.

Yes, getting to this threshold of getting on the ballot.

Right.

I think he got around 70,000 votes in the general election to get to that 4%.

Almost half of those came from Marion County and surrounding counties.

Right.

So when you go to, you know, Steuben County or Pulaski County or Ohio County, how are you going to bring that message, which again, I agree with the rest of the panel needs to be defined a little more, because if you're an independent, it's tough that, you know, the idea of an independent is you think independently.

I don't identify with the party, but unless that person knows you, how is a voter going to go to the ballot?

They see a Lincoln Party candidate.

They may not know you, but what is your platform that about that a voter can go and say, I know what the Lincoln Party stands for.

I'm going to vote for that.

That's kind of where the rubber meets the road a lot with independent candidates of, you know, what is your, party's platform moving forward?

I just want I one thing that Greg Ballard is no longer the most famous graduate of Cathedral High School in the political arena.

It's now Andy Andrews, newly elected senator from South Carolina, who beat Lindsey Graham's sister there.

Got to get the plug in for the alma mater.

The state of Indiana also could look to withdraw offer to help build a new Chicago Bears stadium in Hamden.

If the team does not make a decision soon.

Barb Bongino has more.

The bears say they're finishing due diligence details for two Hammond Stadium sites, but they acknowledge that they're still talking to Illinois lawmakers.

In a statement to media outlets, team leadership said they, quote, appreciate the recent engagement from Illinois leadership to explore legislation and quote, that could be discussed when Illinois lawmakers convene in November and December.

The ongoing discussions may be drawing frustration from Indiana leaders who finalized the stadium package back in March.

In a statement to the Northwest Indiana Times, governor Mike Braun urged the bears quote to fully commit to a stadium in Indiana because it is nearly time for the state to shift its energy and resources to the next opportunity.

So, Barb, does the bears move to Indiana seem less likely every day?

Listen, at this point, I don't care about that.

All I know is they're winning the Super Bowl tear down.

But, no, I think there's so much love in the air.

Right.

So it started with Hammond.

Sorry.

It started with Arlington Heights into Hammond, and now we're talking about Bronzeville.

That, everybody's putting in names and hats, everybody's giving renderings.

So it really stands up to say, I think there's a lot of skepticism in, you know, Hammond residents like whether or not it's happening, being a Hammond resident or former Hammond resident myself, I think the people that I've talked to are excited by the prospect, but also have really those attachments to Chicago that they're like, they can stay in Chicago.

It doesn't really matter.

But, it just, you know, the way talks are going, it seems less likely.

Well, that is Indiana Week in review for this week.

Our panel has been Democrat Kip Tew, Republican Chris Mitchem, Jon Schwantes host of Indiana Lawmakers.

And Barb Anguiano, reporter and newscaster at WFYI.

You can find Indiana Weekend Reviews podcast and episodes at WFYI.

Mortgage I air or on the PBS app.

I'm Jill Sheridan, managing editor at WFYI.

Join us next time because a lot can happen in Indiana week.

The views expressed are solely those of the panelists.

Indiana Week in Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by ParrRichey