The Lugar Lawsuit
Opponents of U.S. Senator Richard Lugar are going to court to attempt to do what they couldn’t at the Indiana Election Commission, get him off the ballot.
Indianapolis attorney Eric Bohnet has filed suit in Marion County Court asking the Court to overturn the Election Commission’s ruling that was Lugar was qualified to be on the ballot. The Election Commission voted unanimously to keep the Senator on the ballot. In addition, the Lugar campaign has presented the opinions of three Indiana Attorneys General saying he is not in violation of any law.
The plaintiffs argue that Lugar isn’t qualified to be on the ballot because he is not an inhabitant of Indiana because he keeps a home in Virginia. The lawsuit also goes on to state that by allowing Lugar on the ballot, the Election Commission violated Article 1, Section 3, clause 3 of the Constitution.
No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state for which he shall be chosen.
Citing the case of Jones v. Texas (2000), Bohnet says an inhabitant is defined as someone who has a physical presence in the state and it intends to be his place of habitation.
However the law also says that individual must be an inhabitant of that state when elected, so even if a Court were to find that Lugar was not an inhabitant when he filed, that situation could easily be corrected.
No court date has been set. A copy of the complaint can be found here. It is saved in Slideshare, which may be incompatible with some Apple products.
