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The Marion County Election Board voted unanimously on Friday to ask state investigators to look into what they suspect is a state law violation by Secretary of State Diego Morales.
The Marion County Election Board is a three-member panel that includes Marion County Clerk Kate Sweeney Bell. In May 2025, the board authorized staff and outside attorneys to investigate Morales after he released a nearly five-minute video advertisement showing him on an official visit to Indianapolis’ election facilities in 2024.
Attorneys working on behalf of the election board determined that Morales’ actions likely violated Indiana Code 4-2-6-17, which forbids the use of state funds, property, personnel, facilities or equipment for purposes that aren’t state business.
The board voted unanimously to refer those findings to the State Inspector General and the State Ethics Commission. Sweeney Bell, a Democrat, said she hopes those bodies take swift action on what she called “criminal behavior” from the state’s top election official. She said that Morales hadn’t responded to requests from the board to remove videos that include Marion County election workers.
“To ignore it and hope that it’ll go away is something that seems pretty childish to me and not befitting a state officeholder,” Sweeney Bell told reporters.
Morales’ campaign, however, called the moves by the Marion County Election Board “meritless” and “transparently political,” in a letter Ray Volpe of Indianapolis-based public relations firm The Englehart Group says was sent to the election board on March 5. A spokesperson for the Marion County Election Board said it did not receive the document.
“The notice rests on a legally defective premise, exceeds the statutory authority of the Marion County Election Board, and attempts to manufacture an ethics allegation where none exists,” the letter, which Volpe shared with IBJ, read.
Election board member Jennifer Ping, who formerly chaired the Marion County Republican Party, said prior to her vote, “This is not politics, this is not personal. I believe a law was violated.”
Attorneys from Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath reviewed security footage, campaign materials and interviewed people present during Morales’ visit to the Marion County Elections Service Center in 2024. The attorneys also requested to speak with Morales himself, but he declined through his office.
“Our findings show that the secretary used state property, the video equipment, the microphones that were used at the visit to the Election Service Center, to generate what ended up becoming part of the campaign footage,” attorney Daniel Pulliam told the board last month. “This activity can be a Title 4 violation.”
The letter from Morales’ campaign says that official secretary of state staffers followed standard protocol of filming their boss on an official visit to the Marion County Election Service Center, and these clips were initially posted on social media as recaps of the office’s work. Footage or photos posted to government agencies’ public platforms are subject to public use.
Visits to multiple counties are shown in the ad Morales released. His campaign wrote that Marion County was the only to “manufacture a grievance” and called the recent actions a “taxpayer-funded political fishing expedition.”
A spokesperson for the Indiana Inspector General’s Office told IBJ in an email that the office cannot comment on complaints or pending investigations.
Morales is running for reelection. Party insiders select secretary of state candidates in Indiana at state conventions over the summer, rather than in a primary election. Republican Jamie Reitenour, who ran for governor in 2004, and Knox County Clerk David Shelton have announced plans to challenge Morales at the GOP convention in June.
Democrats have a field that includes Beau Bayh, Destiny Wells and Blythe Potter. In the general election, former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard has announced that he intends to run as an independent.
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