October 18, 2015-Corruption in Lake County doesn’t happen by accident. This week we had a sitting East Chicago Council Member charged with homicide and drug trafficking at the very same time two former high ranking Lake County Police officers were testifying that they sold machine guns out of OUR county building in broad daylight. The question must be who knew what, when, and how did this happen. Where was our Sheriff/Democratic Party Chair? Where was our County Prosecutor? Where was the Election Board?
In 2014, reputed Imperial Gangster Eddie “Macho” Torres tesitified that East Chicago Councilman Robert “Coop” Battle had been involved in the drug trade in the past. Add that to the multiple arrests for possession of marijuana and you get a picture of a candidate most political parties would want to dump. Not so with the Lake County Democratic Party. Battle could have been easily removed from the ballot in several ways, but no one ever challenged him.
Election Board records show that Robert Battle filed a pre-primary report in 2011 showing that Battle neither received nor spent money in the campaign. While that alone should be enough for a challenge, he never filed a single report after that. Candidates are required to file 3 reports in an election year and an annual report in non-election years. Despite that, Battle appeared on the 2015 ballot unchallenged.
What is most telling, however, is who the Lake County Election Board was challenging. At the very same time Robert Battle was laughing at the Lake County Election Board by not filing reports, the Board was busy paving the way for another victory for their favored candidates. You see, 2011 was the year that the Election Board was busy removing George Janiec from the ballot. Janiec was a candidate for Hammond Mayor running against Democratic Party Chair Thomas McDermott, Jr. The Indiana Supreme Court ultimately slapped the hand of the Election Board finding “no basis in statute or law for removing Janiec’s name from the ballot.” (See http://www.ai.org/judiciary/op...s/pdf/04111101ad.pdf )
In addition to removing Janiec without “basis in statute or law”, the Election Board cleared the path for now convicted Mayor Keith Soderquist to run. Independent candidate Brian Cretton was removed from the ballot for not checking a box on a form. Cretton did not appeal the Board’s ruling and has not run for office since.
So clearly, the Election Board, working together with the LC Democratic Machine, knows how to remove candidates from the ballot. So why did no one ever challenge Robert Battle when he failed to file any report at all?
Up next, where was our Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Robert Battle has been charged with Murder in Lake Superior Court and with Possession with Intent to Distribute Marijuana in Federal Court. All criminal defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law. A charge is not evidence of guilt.
