MUNCIE JUDGE LEFT THE CITY — AND KEPT THE GAVEL

“She registered to vote outside Muncie. The law says the job ends. She kept the robe, the paycheck, and a promotion bid. Then she answered — and told voters a constitutional change that is still on the ballot is already the law.”

By the Hoosier Enquirer

MUNCIE — Rules are for the people who shuffle into Amanda Dunnuck’s courtroom. Not, apparently, for Amanda Dunnuck.

The Democrat who wants Delaware County to hand her Circuit Court 5 spent part of this year registered to vote at an address outside the city she is paid to judge. That is not a rumor from a comment thread. It is the charge in a complaint now sitting with the Muncie Ethics Commission, blasted out this week by the Delaware County Republican Party, with the voter paperwork attached.

Read it slowly. After winning re-election in 2023, the complaint says, Dunnuck and her mother moved to 3901 W. Heath Drive — outside the Muncie city limits. On January 7, 2026, she officially changed her voter registration to that address. On the form, she swore under penalty of perjury that she lived at Heath Drive, and in that precinct, for at least 30 days before the next election.

Indiana does not do wink-and-a-nod residency for city judges.

Article 6, Section 6 of the state constitution says county, township, and town officers shall reside within the place they serve. Indiana Code 33-35-1-4 is even colder: to hold the office of city court judge, the judge must be a resident of the city during the term “or the office becomes vacant.” The complaint’s theory is simple enough for a bumper sticker. She left. The seat vacated. The governor was supposed to appoint a replacement under Indiana Code 3-13-6-1. Nobody did.

She stayed. She kept hearing cases. Public pay records still list her as Muncie City Court judge, pulling about $149,803 in 2024 — roughly triple what the average city employee makes. Her own campaign site still brags that she is finishing a third elected term after a 2015 appointment and wins in 2019 and 2023. More than 8,000 cases a year, she says. Due process. Integrity. The usual brochure.

Then, on May 11, 2026, the complaint says she filed a fresh voter registration claiming she had moved back inside the city. The old in-city address is blacked out on the paperwork circulating with the GOP post. Heath Drive is not. Convenient timing. Primary season was already underway.

She is now the Democratic nominee for Delaware Circuit Court 5. Ballotpedia has her against Republican Ben Freeman on the November 3 ballot, after she beat fellow Democrat Maricel E. Driscoll in the May 5 primary. Three weeks. That is all that stands between this residency mess and a six-year circuit robe.

Her campaign site, paid for by the Committee to Elect Amanda Dunnuck for Judge, is asking voters for “experience,” “integrity,” and “impartiality.” The committee lists 100 E. Washington Street in Muncie. That is a campaign address. It is not a bed.

This is the second time she has reached for a circuit bench. In 2022 she lost Circuit Court 1 to Republican Judi Calhoun and went right back to city court. Circuit Court 5 is the promotion she announced in July 2025, once longtime Democrat Thomas Cannon Jr. was not expected to run again. Experience matters, the website says. So does a zip code.

The Delaware County GOP said the quiet part out loud: a community deserves judges who know the law, respect the law, and follow the law. Dunnuck’s record raises serious questions about whether she is willing to do any of the three. Following the law is not optional for the person holding the gavel. It is the job.

No published finding from the ethics commission, the governor, or the Commission on Judicial Qualifications has landed as of this writing. Rule 25 of the Indiana Court Rules still lets the Supreme Court remove, suspend, or censure a judge on a qualifications-commission recommendation.

Then the judge answered.

About an hour after the Republican post, Dunnuck took to social media and called it a “one-sided political smear.” She said voters deserve the full picture. Here it is.

She says her home is in Muncie. She says she bought it in May 2009, has paid the mortgage and utilities without interruption, and still keeps her furniture and belongings there. What changed, she wrote, “was my family, not my home.” She says she was staying with her mother at the Heath Drive house to help care for her, asked the judges’ association for city and town courts and the Delaware County Clerk’s office for guidance, and was advised to list her mother’s address — including on her voter registration. She says she did it in January 2026 because she had filed to run for Circuit Court 5 and “wanted to be completely open about it.”

She says her mother’s address sits in the Muncie city school district, gets city services, Muncie police, and Muncie fire protection, and is surrounded by city property on three sides — but is outside the corporate limits. When her mother could manage with limited help, Dunnuck says, she changed the registration back. She says she still stays with her mother and always intended to return to the Muncie house.

That is her defense. Voters can weigh the caregiving claim. They should not swallow the legal one.

Dunnuck wrote that the Indiana Legislature “had passed a bill through two different sessions allowing city and town court judges to reside in the County.” That is not how this works. Lawmakers did pass a proposed constitutional amendment in two separate sessions — the process required to put a change on the ballot. They did not rewrite the rule she was already under.

The question voters will see on November 3, the same day they see her name, asks whether the constitution should be amended so a city or town court judge may reside in the county where the court sits, or in the nearest bordering county. A yes vote would loosen the residency rule. A no vote leaves it alone. Ballotpedia and the Indiana Lawyer both describe the current requirement the same way: city and town court judges must live in the city or town where the court is located. The amendment is pending. It is not the law. It was not the law in January, when she swore to the Heath Drive address.

She also quoted the election-code definition of residence: a true, fixed, and permanent home, and the place a person intends to return to when absent. Fine. That definition does not repeal Article 6 or Indiana Code 33-35-1-4. And it collides with the form she signed. A voter registration is a sworn statement about where you live, not a press release about where you hope to live later.

She closed by saying she has always been transparent, has never treated the public trust lightly, and will keep making herself available to voters. Availability is not the same as an answer. She has not said the January registration was a mistake. She has said clerks and a judges’ association told her to list an address outside the city, then told voters a constitutional change still waiting on their ballots had already let her do it.

The law on the books is not subtle. A city judge who stops being a city resident does not get to finish the term as a favor. November 3 is the favor she is actually requesting — and, conveniently, the day Indiana voters are also being asked to legalize the arrangement she already used.

Delaware County can decline both.

This is written by Hoosiers for Hoosiers.