After earlier reports revealed that Bayh listed his D.C. home as his official residence on multiple documents and moved his charitable foundation from Indiana to the offices of his Washington lobbying firm, a new report confirms that Bayh ditched Indiana so he could profit from the revolving door in Washington, D.C.
Per CNN, Bayh’s Indiana voting status has been listed as inactive after state officials were unable to confirm that Bayh lived at the Indianapolis address he listed on his voter registration form.
Election officials in Indiana have concluded that former Sen. Evan Bayh is an "inactive" voter in their state after they failed to confirm he lives in Indianapolis, creating a new problem for the Democrat as he mounts a late effort to win back his old Senate seat.
According to records obtained by CNN, Bayh has been listed as an inactive voter twice since leaving office — once in July 2014 and the second time last week.In both instances, election officials had sent multiple postcards to Bayh’s Indianapolis address to determine that he lives there. Both times the post office could not reach Bayh at the condo he owns in Indianapolis despite multiple attempts, prompting the Indiana Election Division to list him as inactive, according to copies of the mailers and state voting records…
Bayh has voted by absentee ballots in Indiana elections since leaving office, requesting those ballots be sent to his home and office addresses in Washington, the records show.
Perhaps more significantly, the inactive designation is only bound to intensify GOP accusations that the former senator had swiftly abandoned his state for Washington in his nearly six years since leaving office, only to come back to Indiana last month in a last-ditch effort to return to power.
The new revelations come just days after a CNN report showed Bayh consistently listing his two multi-million-dollar homes in Washington as his main places of residence, not his $53,000 condo in Indianapolis, contradicting his public claims that he "never left" the state after giving up his seat in 2011.
It is similar to the problems that dogged former Sen. Richard Lugar, the veteran Indiana Republican who lost his 2012 primary after he was sharply criticized for not owning a home in Indiana and for living in the Washington suburbs instead. (Manu Raju, “Bayh’s Indiana Voting Status: Inactive,” CNN, 8/18/16)