INDIANAPOLIS — Charlie White was ousted as Indiana's top elections official after a jury found he registered to vote where he didn't live.
But White said if he's guilty, so are a number of other high-profile Indiana politicians — including former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, longtime Republican Sen. Richard Lugar and Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels.
A tea party group that is challenging Lugar's bid for a seventh Senate term seemed to think White has a point and is seeking to have his candidacy disqualified because he doesn't have a home in Indiana.
But state law, political scientists and a 30-year-old opinion by the state's attorney general all said White's circumstances are different from the others, and treated differently under Indiana law.
"I don't put much stock into Charlie White's suggestion that he is the victim of unfair treatment," Robert Dion, a political science professor at the University of Evansville, told The Associated Press in an email. "His situation doesn't strike me as being comparable to the others he mentions."
Jurors in Hamilton County on Feb. 4 found White guilty of six felony charges, including voter fraud, for lying about his residence by using his ex-wife's Fishers address on voter registration forms. White, who faces sentencing Thursday, said he stayed at his ex-wife's house when he wasn't on the road campaigning and did not live in the condo until after he remarried.
One of the counts against White specifically cited him for voting in a precinct where he didn't live. White, a Republican, claims Bayh, Daniels and Lugar have done the same thing for years.
White declined an interview request from The Associated Press. But he raised the issue during a Feb. 5 interview with Fox News.
"You're going to hear a lot more from me about the equal application of law, whether that's been applied to me versus those that are rich and famous," he said.
The crux of White's argument regarding Bayh and Lugar is that they live in the Washington, D.C., metro area but vote in Indiana. Lugar doesn't own a home in Indiana — he sold his Marion County home in 1977. His residency has prompted Hoosiers for Conservative Senate, which is backing Lugar challenger Richard Mourdock, to ask the Indiana Election Commission to rule Lugar's candidacy invalid.
White maintained that is essentially the same thing he was convicted of doing.
But the Indiana Constitution provides that "no person shall be deemed to have lost his residence in the state by reason of his absence either on business of this state or of the United States."
In 1982, then-Indiana Attorney General Linley Pearson cited that law in a legal opinion upholding Lugar's state residency despite the sale of his home.
"If such a person was entitled to vote in this state prior to departing for service in Congress, whatever residence that person possessed for voting purposes prior to such departure remains his or her residence," Pearson wrote. "There is no requirement that a person maintain a house, apartment or any fixed physical location."
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Attorney General Greg Zoeller issued a statement last week saying that his office concurred with the 1982 opinion.
William Kubik, a professor of political science at Hanover College, said White's argument that senators who vote in their home state while serving in Washington commit voter fraud is "completely specious."
"White's argument would mean that active duty military personnel would be ineligible for absentee ballots in Indiana," Kubik said.
The Marion County prosecutor in October turned down White's request for an independent investigation of his vote fraud allegations against Bayh, saying White provided no evidence showing that Bayh and his wife have given up their Indianapolis residence despite continuing to live in Washington since Bayh's Senate term ended last year.
White also claims Daniels "has voted incorrectly, according to the standards put on me, the last 10 straight elections."
White said Daniels was wrongly registered at the governor's residence on the north side of Indianapolis rather than at the home he and his wife have in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel.
"He votes down at the governor's mansion, where everyone knows that he does not live," White said.
Daniels spokeswoman Jane Jankowski said the governor's office was confident that he was following the law. She told The Associated Press that Daniels "stays at the residence occasionally and conducts meetings and other events there."
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