VP Pence, wife requested absentee ballots before planning to visit Indy to vote in-person
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, requested mail-in absentee ballots on Sept. 22, and sometime later planned a trip to Indianapolis to vote in person on Friday.
Those travel plans were canceled Thursday.
Had the former Indiana governor voted in Indianapolis as he was scheduled to do, he would have had to answer questions from the Marion County Clerk’s Office about the mail-in ballot he had already requested.
I-Team 8 was told by the Clerk’s Office it’s not common for people to change their minds after receiving a mail-in absentee ballot but it happens. The application the vice president sent to the Marion County Clerk’s Office called for their absentee ballots to be mailed to a post office box in Washington D.C.
Prior to this election, Indiana voters were allowed to drop off the ballots at their county’s clerk’s offices, but that is no longer allowed, according to Russell Hollis of the Marion County Clerk’s Office.
“He would have to complete an ABS-5 form just like other voters who are coming to vote early in-person, but their ballots would have had to have been lost, defective or they spoiled their ballot,” Hollis said.
Earlier this week, advance teams for the vice president and federal law-enforcement authorities spent the better part of two days preparing for the Pences’ visit. Had the vice president voted in person, there would have been a slight delay for the people waiting in line.
If the vice president actually comes to Indianapolis to vote in the future, he will need to have his absentee ballot in hand.
I-Team 8 reached out to the vice president’s office, but they did not respond to I-Team 8’s questions by Friday afternoon. In a Thursday news release, the office said it hopes to rescheduled the vice president’s visit to Indiana in the near future.