The Marshall County Election Board is investigating complaints of three municipal candidates who failed to include a disclaimer on their literature indicating who’s paying for the advertising during a campaign.
The first complaint came in on Friday to Deb VanDeMark, County Clerk and Secretary of the Election Board. The complaint was lodged against Josh Walker, one of the democratic candidates for the Plymouth City Council At-Large seats. The complainant received the political advertisement in the mail from Walker and it is alleged to have no disclaimer on it.
One Walker’s mailers was presented during the Election Board meeting Monday and both the Republican representative, Sean Surrisi and the Democratic representative Rich Huff agreed that the disclaimer was missing from the advertisement.
The second complaint came Monday morning by phone and was lodged against Libertarian Joel Samuelson and Republican Robert Cooper both seeking seats on the Culver Town Council. It is alleged that their yard signs failed to have the disclaimer on them.
Indiana Code states that a disclaimer must be on promotional material such as newspaper ads, billboards, sign, flyers, circulars, letterheads, and mailed pieces sent to more than 100 persons. State code also states that the penalty for circulating or publishing literature without the disclaimer can be a charge of a misdemeanor.
Being the day before the election the Marshall County Election Board felt they had no recourse and decided to have all three candidates; Josh Walker, Robert Cooper and Joel Samuelson and have them attend the next election board meeting on Friday, November 13th to discuss the complaints.
