By Abdul-Hakim Shabazz
IndyPolitics.org
September 16, 2026
In 1935, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger came up with a thought experiment. Put a cat in a sealed box with a vial of poison that may or may not break. Until you open the box, the cat is technically both alive and dead. It was meant to show how absurd some quantum physics sounds. It has since been used to explain everything from college admissions to what’s in your fridge.
Indiana has its own version this fall, except we have 92 boxes, the cats are political parties, and the box opens on Nov. 3.
Most Hoosiers think the Secretary of State race is about four people. Democrat Beau Bayh. Republican Max Engling. Libertarian Lauri Shillings. And former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard on the Lincoln Party line, because apparently 2026 decided Indiana politics needed a plot twist. You pick one, move down the ballot, grab your sticker and go get a breakfast sandwich.
That’s cute. But the real prize is who runs elections in your county for the next four years. If you’re a county party chair, you may want to sit down.
Indiana Code 3-5-2-30 defines a “major political party” as the two parties whose Secretary of State nominees get the most votes. Statewide, that’s counted statewide. In a county, it’s counted in that county. So a party can be a big deal in one county and a rumor in the next. It’s like being a Fox 59 panelist: famous in one place, and three exits down I-70 nobody knows who you are.
Being “major” comes with the good stuff. Under IC 3-6-5-2, every county election board is the circuit court clerk plus one member from each of the county’s two major parties. The county chair names the member, and the clerk has to appoint whoever the chair picks. The clerk doesn’t get a vote. The clerk gets a letter. Lake, Porter and Tippecanoe counties run under their own statutes, where the chairs appoint directly, because of course they do.
Major status also lets chairs nominate the inspectors, judges, poll clerks and election sheriffs who staff your precinct. And it sets ballot order. Win the county and you get the top line. Finish second and you’re right behind. Finish third and it’s the kids’ table for four years.
For a long time, nobody worried about this, because the Libertarians have been at the kids’ table so long they’ve carved their initials in it. In 2022, Republican Diego Morales won with 54.1 percent, Democrat Destiny Wells got 40.2 percent and Libertarian Jeff Maurer got 5.7 percent. Maurer didn’t finish second in any of the 92 counties. His best showings were Morgan at 11.9 percent, Hancock at 11.8 and Rush at 11.3. His closest call was Decatur County, where he trailed Wells by about 10.7 points. He could smell the grown-up table but couldn’t reach a chair.
Meanwhile, the big two already swap seats. Morales finished second in Marion, Monroe, Lake, St. Joseph and Tippecanoe counties. In Marion, he got 29.6 percent to Wells’ 63.6. Indianapolis Republicans have gotten very comfortable in the passenger seat.
Now enter Ballard, who spent eight years as the Republican mayor of Indianapolis. His campaign says he turned in 41,299 verified signatures, well past the 36,943 required, from 71 counties. It says no non-major party had petitioned onto a statewide ballot since 1994. For context, that’s when Beau Bayh’s dad was governor.
Here’s where the political class spits out its coffee. In Marion County, the Republican nominee pulled under 30 percent four years ago. What happens if the guy who ran City Hall for two terms takes a healthy bite out of that? The Marion County GOP could wake up Nov. 4 without a seat on the election board in the state’s largest county.
Now take it all the way. The law doesn’t care whether the top two in a county are Democrats and Republicans. It only cares who finished first and second. If Ballard wins a county and Shillings comes in second, that county’s election board becomes the clerk, a Lincoln Party appointee and a Libertarian appointee.
No Democratic appointee. No Republican appointee. The two parties that have run Indiana elections since before most of us were born would learn that their poll workers are being picked by a party making its first statewide run and another whose last Secretary of State nominee topped out at 11.9 percent in Morgan County.
Somewhere a county chair just dropped his phone.
It gets better, and by better I mean billable. IC 3-6-5-5 gives the nominating power to the party’s county chair. The election code doesn’t say what happens if a party finishes first or second in a county and has no county chair to make the nomination. The clerk appoints the chair’s nominee and isn’t authorized to fill the seat alone. So picture a county where the top two finishers have nobody to nominate. Your election board is the clerk sitting at a conference table by himself, and we all remember how well talking to an empty chair went for Clint Eastwood.
Does the Lincoln Party have a chair in every county? Do the Libertarians? I’d like to know before Nov. 3, and I suspect a few county clerks would too.
One more wrinkle. County status is separate from statewide ballot access. Under IC 3-8-4-10, a party whose Secretary of State nominee gets at least 2 percent but less than 10 percent statewide can nominate candidates by convention. So a party could help run a county election board while still being minor everywhere else.
Am I predicting any of this? Not even close. Four years ago the Libertarian didn’t come within 10 points of second place anywhere, and a double upset in a single county belongs in a wrestling storyline, not an Indiana election night. But the law allows it, and nobody at the Statehouse wrote a backup plan.
Which brings us back to the cat. Right now, in all 92 counties, the Democrats and Republicans are both major and minor, both running the election board and locked out of it. Nobody knows until the box gets opened.
On Nov. 3, it will. Most party chairs will find the cat alive and purring. But a few might lift the lid, look inside and start calling their lawyers.
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is the editor and publisher of IndyPolitics.org and an attorney licensed in Indiana and Illinois. He finished second in the 2023 Republican mayoral primary, so he knows exactly what second place is worth.
