By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
February 28, 2025
The Marion County Election Board voted unanimously Wednesday to refer to the local prosecutor the case of the voter who became agitated, yelled profanities and took off his T-shirt, exposing two guns and a knife tucked into his waistband, at a vote center during the November 2024 election.
Board members passed four separate motions finding Michael John Palombi, 34, violated four Indiana election laws. Among the four laws cited was the poll worker intimidation statute, Indiana Code 3-14-3-18, which was passed by the legislature in 2024 and made threatening an election worker a Level 6 felony. That offense is punishable by a sentence ranging from six months to two-and-a-half years and a fine of up to $10,000.
The other laws the board determined Palombi had violated were the prohibition against intimidation of a person trying to vote, I.C. 3-14-3-21.5; the ban on obstructing, interfering, or injuring an election worker or a voter, I.C. 3-14-3-4; and the restriction on electioneering, I. C. 3-14-3-16. While the intimidation and obstructing laws are both Level 6 felonies, the electioneering law is a Class A misdemeanor.
Ultimately Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears will make the decision whether to charge Palombi with violating any or all of the four election laws. In addition, the prosecutor will conduct his own investigation and could bring other, possibly criminal charges, according to Marion County Circuit Court Clerk and election board secretary Kate Sweeney Bell.
“I would have to imagine that Prosecutor Mears will take a good, bold look and make a determination based on what is provided to him and take the appropriate steps to ensure that voting is safe, elections are safe and that behavior like this will not, and cannot, be tolerated, not here and, hopefully, not anywhere,” Sweeney Bell said during the board meeting.
This was the third meeting the election board held to review the incident and take testimony. The board’s staff coordinated the date with Palombi to ensure he could appear and give his version of the event, but his attorney, Edward Krause, informed the board’s outside counsel at 11:30 a.m. on the same day as the hearing that Palombi would not be attending because he had an emergency out of state. Also, Palombi declined to let his attorney speak on his behalf.
Krause did not respond to The Indiana Citizen’s request for comment.
Sweeney Bell was angry that Palombi did not appear. She noted that the board had delayed making a determination in order to give him the opportunity to tell his side of the story, which forced the poll workers and First Friends Quaker Church, which has served as a vote center in Marion County for decades and was the location where the Election Day incident occurred, to wait nearly four months for a resolution.
Following the meeting, Sweeney Bell was still irritated at Palombi’s absence.
“I think he has been thumbing his nose to the poll workers and his neighbors and voters who were there,” Sweeney Bell said, while flicking her nose with her thumb. “He’s just been saying, ‘The rules and the laws that apply to you, only apply to you. I am special and different and I should, therefore, be treated specially and differently.’ That’s not how we operate.”
The board did not take any additional testimony and did not show the cellphone video of the incident. Present at the meeting were several members of First Friends, including Associate Pastor Beth Henricks. Also in attendance was Margo Kelly, who was working as the polling site inspector at First Friends when the incident occurred and kept the situation from escalating by remaining calm and ushering Palombi through the voting process quickly.
After the meeting ended, Kelly said she hopes the prosecutor pursues charges, but she is concerned the matter will be dropped because, she said, “there’s no desire to prosecute people that are intimidating” others. If the prosecutor does not take action, she said, that will send a “big message,” especially to the people who work at the polls every election.
“If these laws are not prosecuted,” Kelly said of the four laws the election board alleges Palombi violated, “that’s a message that goes out to all of the poll workers, not just the poll workers at First Friends, but all of them, that it’s not taken seriously.”
A video taken on a cellphone captured what happened at the First Friends voting center.
Palombi entered the facility wearing a red MAGA baseball cap and a T-shirt with Donald Trump’s likeness printed on the front. When a poll worker asked him to remove his cap and turn his shirt inside out, because state law forbids the display of political attire inside a polling place, Palombi can be seen becoming visibly agitated. He put his cap on the head of the poll worker and took off his shirt, revealing the weapons he was carrying.
Kelly then got Palombi through the voting process quickly. She escorted him to the front of the line so he could sign the poll book and then she directed him to a voting booth, where she allowed him to put his shirt back on. After he cast his ballot, she walked him to the exit.
At the election board meeting, Kelly held in her lap a manila file folder stuffed with documents related to the incident. Included were printed handouts from the pre-election training the poll workers had received, a list of Indiana’s election laws, and a copy of the incident report she filed out on Election Day.
Kelly also had a copy of an email from the poll worker who first encountered Palombi. The poll worker wrote that when he asked the voter to remove his political attire, Palombi replied, “I’ll show you (expletive) people,” and then he took his shirt off, exposing his guns.
“Now, if that isn’t threatening and intimidating, I don’t know what is,” Kelly said.
When Palombi exited the building, he remained on the church grounds and walked into the meditative woods. Police officers arrived shortly afterward and talked to Palombi, but they did not make an arrest or escort him from the property.
Kelly said she called 911 when Palombi started yelling at the poll worker and a voter, who knew Palombi, had called the police as soon as he walked into the voting center. She pulled out a copy of the police incident report from her file folder. It was one page, did not include any description of what had happened or what the officers did, and it stated that Palombi did not have any weapons.
“It’s pathetic,” Kelly said of the report.
Sweeney Bell was hesitant to criticize the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, saying she was not at the scene and does not know who the officers talked with or what they did.
However, she did credit the poll workers for doing the “right thing” and letting Palombi vote, despite his belligerent behavior and weaponry. He was registered and had the required identification, she said, adding that she believes if the poll workers had not allowed him to vote, the situation could have turned tragic.
“If they had forced him to leave, I think things could have gone very differently,” Sweeney Bell said. “I think he could have taken one of those guns out or both of those guns and we’d be telling a very different story.”
During the board meeting, Jennifer Ping, vice chair, asked outside counsel, Brad Boswell of Faegre Drinker, for clarification about the law regarding firearms in polling places. Indiana does allow voters to carry guns when casting a ballot.
Boswell responded that the Indiana Election Division has taken the position that a location serving as a polling place is not required to relax or eliminate on Election Day any prohibitions it may have against guns. First Friends, which has a school and a day-care center, does not allow firearms on its premises.
Also, Boswell noted that the election board was not considering whether Palombi was permitted to have the weapons at the First Friends’ polling location. Rather, he said, the board should focus on the alleged violations of the election laws and consider whether the way Palombi possessed and showed off the guns and the knife obstructed or interfered with the voting process and threatened or intimidated the poll workers and other voters.
Sweeney Bell was concerned about the potential fallout from the incident. Talking after the meeting, she said Indiana already has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country and this event could make some voters too scared to cast a ballot. Also, she is worried some poll workers may decide to quit and some organizations, including First Friends, may choose to stop serving as a voting site.
She said she hopes the election board’s careful attention to the incident would provide some assurance.
“I am concerned that had we not done anything, that would be the case,” Sweeney Bell said of poll workers and voting sites deciding to no longer serve. “We used every tool available in our kit to address this matter. Do I wish we had a bigger tool kit? Sure. We did everything we could under the law and I am proud of it.”
Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.
