Indiana's 2014 elections U.S. House • Secretary of State • Other executive offices • State Senate • State House • School boards • Judicial • Candidate ballot access

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Indiana Secretary of State Election

Primary Date: May 6, 2014

General Election Date: November 4, 2014

November 4 Election Winner: Connie Lawson

Incumbent prior to election: Connie Lawson

Indiana State Executive ElectionsTop Ballot Secretary of State Down Ballot Treasurer, Auditor

TheIndiana Secretary of State election took place onNovember 4, 2014. IncumbentConnie Lawson (R) was first appointed in 2012 and was running for re-election in2014. Shedefeated Democratic candidateBeth White andLibertarian Party candidateKarl Tatgenhorst in the election. Lawson won election to her first full four-year term.^[1]

Aprimary election is an election in which registered voters select a candidate that they believe should be a political party's candidate for elected office to run in the general election. They are also used to choose convention delegates and party leaders. Primaries are state-level and local-level elections that take place prior to a general election. Indiana law requires aclosed primary, where a voter must be affiliated with a party to vote in that party's primary. This includes if they voted for a majority of that party’s candidates in the last general election or plan to in the upcoming election. However, it is possible for any voter to vote in any party's primary so long as they meet this criteria.^[2]

For information about which offices are nominated via primary election, seethis article.

Candidates

General election

Connie Lawson-Incumbent^[3]
Beth White - Marion County Clerk^[4]
Karl Tatgenhorst - Army veteran, IT Director^[5]

Results

General election

Secretary of state of Indiana, 2014
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Republican	Connie LawsonIncumbent	57.1%	762,223
	Democratic	Beth White	39.5%	527,379
	Libertarian	Karl Tatgenhorst	3.4%	45,393
Total Votes				1,334,995
Election results viaIndiana Secretary of State

Race background

Accusations of election law violations

Connie Lawson (R) andBeth White (D) accused each other of election law violations. White said that Lawson was challenging absentee ballots by voters on the inactive list in two counties.^[6] The inactive list kept track of voters who may not have updated information or voted in recent elections. The secretary's office listed 696,407 registered voters as inactive in August and an outreach effort to update addresses only yielded 47,493 responses.^[7] White claimed that Lawson used the lists as a pretense for disenfranchising voters.^[6]

State Republican Party chairman Tim Berry countered that there had not been official challenges to inactive voter ballots as of October 23. Lawson supporters also leveled criticism at White for distributing campaign mailers without disclaimers required by state law. White stated that the printer made an error with the original document and the campaign subsequently stopped distributions of the mailers.^[8]

Past elections

2010

2010 Race for Secretary of State - General Election[9]
Party		Candidate	Vote Percentage
	Republican Party	aCharlie White	57.1%
	Democratic Party	Vop Osili	37.0%
	Libertarian Party	Mike Wherry	5.9%
Total Votes			1,709,679

Voter turnout

Political scientist Michael McDonald's United States Elections Project studied voter turnout in the 2014 election by looking at the percentage of eligible voters who headed to the polls. McDonald used voting-eligible population (VEP), or the number of eligible voters independent of their current registration status, to calculate turnout rates in each state on November 4. He also incorporated ballots cast for the highest office in each state into his calculation. He estimated that 81,687,059 ballots were cast in the 50 states plus theDistrict of Columbia, representing 35.9 percent of the VEP.^[10] By comparison, 61.6 percent of VEP voted in the 2008 presidential election and 58.2 percent of VEP voted in the 2012 presidential election.^[11]

Quick facts

• According toPBS Newshour, voter turnout in the 2014 midterms was the lowest since the 1942 midterms, which took place during the nation's involvement in World War II.^[12]

• Forty-three states and the District of Columbia did not surpass 50 percent turnout in McDonald's analysis.

• The three states with the lowest turnout according to McDonald's analysis wereTexas (28.3 percent),Tennessee (28.6 percent), andIndiana (28.8 percent).

• Maine (58.5 percent),Wisconsin (56.5 percent), andColorado (54.5 percent) were the three states with the highest turnout.

• Twelve states increased voter turnout in 2014 compared to the 2010 midterm elections.^[13]

Note: Information from the United States Elections Project was last updated on December 16, 2014.

Campaign finance

Comprehensive donor information for this election has been collected by Follow the Money. Based on available campaign finance records, the candidates raised a total of$1,336,390 during the election. This information was last updated on May 13, 2015.^[14]

Campaign Contribution Totals
Candidate	Office	Result	Contributions
Connie Lawson	Indiana Secretary of State		$918,386
Beth White	Indiana Secretary of State		$412,624
Karl Tatgenhorst	Indiana Secretary of State		$5,380
Grand Total Raised			$1,336,390

Key deadlines

Recent news

This section links to a Google news search for the term "Indiana + Secretary + State + Election + 2014"

See also

• Indiana Secretary of State
• Indiana state executive official elections, 2014
• State executive official elections, 2014

External links

Suggest a link

• Office of the Secretary of State of Indiana

Footnotes

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