I spend a lot of time combing through St. Joseph County’s court records. It is where a certain kind of story lives, the kind that does not make the news but tells you something true about the people asking for our votes.
Here is one I found.
In January 2024, a debt buyer called Midland Credit Management sued a South Bend woman named Stephanie D. Ball over an unpaid Citibank credit card. She was served. She did not respond to the lawsuit. On March 20, 2024, a St. Joseph County magistrate entered a default judgment against Stephanie D. Ball for $5,628.05. As of this month, that judgment is still open on the Mycase.in.gov website, unpaid.
The Stephanie D. Ball named in that file lives at 1607 College Street in South Bend. So does the Stephanie D. Ball who filed this year to run for clerk of the St. Joseph Circuit Court. They are the same person. She is asking to run the office that maintains the default judgment with her name on it.
I want to be careful about what that does and does not mean, because it would be easy to be unfair here.
The clerk of the circuit court is not a judge. The clerk keeps the records, handles the money that moves through the courts, and runs the county’s elections. It is administrative work, and its entire value is accuracy. A debt, even one that ends in a judgment, is not a crime, and plenty of decent people have carried one. If the story were only that Stephanie Ball once fell behind on a credit card, I would not be writing this.
But it is not only that.
The card was opened in January 2019. Her last payment, $150, posted in March 2022. By early April the account was past due. On April 2, a charge from a Marriott in San Diego, CA posted to it. Nine days later came the late fee for the payment she had missed. The account defaulted, was charged off that October at $5,628.05, and was sold to Midland, which took her to court. She filed nothing in response, and so she lost by default.
I dwell on the “filed nothing” because of who Ball says she is. On her campaign website, she boasts she’s a “Certified Credit Counselor” and describes years of counseling homeowners through foreclosure at the South Bend Heritage Foundation, helping them file with the courts so they could be heard. She lists a certification as a financial counselor. She writes of neighbors “one bad day away from small claims court or an eviction or foreclosure notice.” She offers herself as the person who understands how the system works. The person who claims to have taught others to answer the court did not answer her own case.
Then I looked at the paperwork she filed to run for office, and it did not reassure me. Her campaign finance report names her committee the “Committee to Ellect Stephanie Ball.” It lists her county as “St. Josepah.” Some contributors are itemized with no addresses where the form asks for them. The entire form is sloppy and unprofessional. This is the report she filed to run the office where accuracy is paramount.
There is more, and it is not about her wallet.
Ball sat on the South Bend school board from 2019, when she was appointed, until 2024, when voters declined to keep her. She ran that last campaign promising to ask hard questions about money, to review the budget, to be, she wrote, “wise with the resources.” During her years on that board, a renovation of Brown Intermediate School that the board was told would cost $2.8 million ballooned to roughly $7.5 million, by the district’s own mismanagement. State auditors found the district skipped the bidding the law requires, and that the board’s minutes did not even document approval of the contracts. The project cost nearly tripled while Ball sat on the board promising vigilance.
She also went on camera in 2020 to campaign for the school referendum, introducing herself as the district’s representative and walking voters through the absentee ballot. It passed on June 2, 2020, and it raised property taxes throughout the district to fund $20.8 million a year for eight years and $54 million in bonds.
Ball persuaded her neighbors to vote for the SBCSC Referendum.
Her neighbors’ tax bills went up as a result.
Now in 2026 she wants a different office entirely. In 2024, she lost her campaign for school board. This year she is a candidate for county clerk. The jobs have little in common except that she receives a taxpayer funded salary.
I am not telling you how to vote. Ball may have answers for the default judgment, the errors, and the sudden change of office. Ask her for them. That is what a campaign is for.
I am telling you what Ball isn’t telling you. Stephanie Ball wants the job of maintaining St. Joseph County’s court records accurate and complete. One of those records is a judgment against her, unanswered and unpaid, two years and counting.
Logan Foster
Logan Foster is the founder and editor of Redress South Bend, an independent news outlet covering local government, courts, and public institutions in South Bend and St. Joseph County, Indiana. He reports from primary documents: public records requests, court filings, state audit reports, and campaign finance disclosures. His reporting has examined city and school district payments made without competitive bidding, school board spending, and the records of candidates in county races. Redress South Bend obtained the South Bend Police Department's ShotSpotter coverage map after the department initially denied public access. The outlet is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Online News Association. Reach him at info@redresssouthbend.com
