Poor baby:

Arizona Sen. John McCain is set to appear on Indiana’s May 6 primary ballot after the Indiana Election Commission on Wednesday unanimously denied a challenge to the GOP presidential candidate’s status.

Indiana University student Thomas Cook, who runs the political blog www.BlueIndiana.net, filed a challenge with the commission last month. He alleged that McCain’s campaign fell a few signatures short of the 500 needed in Indiana’s 4th Congressional District to place McCain on the primary ballot.

State law requires presidential candidates submit 500 signatures of registered voters from each of the state’s nine congressional districts.

After questioning by the bipartisan commission, Republican officials said they tallied 514 signatures in the 4th Congressional District; Democrat officials came up with a total of 511. The discrepancy came because the Democratic official did not count three signatures from Monroe County because the form did not list the congressional district.

The commission also denied a separate challenge from Cook. McCain’s campaign filed two requests for placement on the May 6 primary ballot — one on Feb. 12 and another Feb. 22. Cook argued that each request should be handled separately, requiring McCain to submit the required signatures for each filing.

The commission denied that challenge and agreed to lump the two filings together.

And let’s be clear about the claims by the challenger that this was some sort of partisan ram-through, made necessary by the supposed incompetence of the Indiana Republican Party and McCain’s Indiana organization.

The commission contains two Republicans and two Democrats.

If the challenge had any merit to it at all, the Democrats would have forced it to be deadlocked.

The ensuing press and media attention, nationally and locally, would have accrued to their party’s benefit and it would have given McCain some bad press in a time when he is trying to show he can bring the party together (few states would damage the image of that case more than Indiana; this is at the heart of the challenger’s obfuscation and spin), along with other benefits.

This sort of deadlock on the Election Commission very clearly did not happen.

Which, in turn, begs the question:

What’s more likely?

The Republican Party screwing up, McCain’s campaign screwing up, and the Democrats on the Indiana Election Commission looking the other way in response to let such a golden opportunity slide past them?

Or the guy making the challenge being mistaken?

Yeah, Occam’s razor kind of makes one lean toward the latter.

Lex parsimoniae: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

This post is also available at Hoosierpundit.