In a special meeting July 9, 2012, the Lucas County Board of Elections (BOE ) announced that the initiative to change the Lucas County form of government to a new county charter did not produce enough valid signatures in its petition drive to appear onthe Nov. 6 ballot.
The group of five co-leaders driving the initiative, which is titled “Better Lucas County,” submitted signatures to the board on June 29, Bob Reinbolt said in an email on June 29. Reinbolt is one of the co-leaders of the initiative, which formed after a study was produced in June 2011.
The board announced July 9 that 8,764 signatures were deemed valid and 13,685 were invalid.
Even though there were not enough valid signatures to certify the movement to the Lucas County Board of Commissioners, the BOE said the petition itself was deemed valid.
Per state law, the group will have until Aug. 28, 2012, 70 days prior to the election, to collect the remaining 5,719 valid signatures necessary to put the issue on the ballot.
A total of 14,483 valid signatures is required to place the initiative on the ballot. This number represents 10 percent of the total number of Lucas County citizens that voted in the 2010governor’s race, said Daniel DeAngelis, deputy director of the BOE . The group turned in 270 part-petitions and each part-petition could have various numbers of signatures on it, said Meghan Gallagher, director of the Lucas County BOE. Petition circulators could circulatemultiple part-petitions.
At the July 9 meeting, the board was presented with two specific partpetitions that came under question.
“For part-petitions 69 and 70, many of the signatures did not appear to be genuine and the addresses listed on the petition were for street segments thatdid not exist,” Gallagher said.
The board consulted its legal counsel for guidance on what to doabout those part-petitions, since notall of the signatures on them were invalid. It was confirmed that the entire part-petition must be thrown out if even a few of the signaturesare invalid.
Gallagher said it’s not uncommon for many signatures to be deemed invalid in large petition drives.
“A lot of times when you turn in a large number (of signatures) you have a percentage that’s going to be invalid. It’s not out of the ordinary,” Gallagher said. “If the group workshard enough they will be able to collect more signatures and repeat the process, and we will check the signatures and present it to the board like we did last time.”
Reinbolt said he thought they were going to have 12,000 or 13,000 valid signatures. Upon hearing that only 8,764 were deemed valid, the groupmet July 10 and decided to approach the BOE the next morning, July 11, toinquire about the invalidated signatures, Reinbolt said.
“We knew we were going to be a little short,” Reinbolt said. “But … we just want to give the voters the option to change or not to change (the government structure).”
Reinbolt said the board was helpful in informing the group why certain signatures were invalidated and it has agreed to take another look at at least one of the invalid part petitions.
He said one reason why many of the signatures were invalid is because citizens listed an incorrect address with their signature.
“Just over 5,000 people had signed it but didn’t have right address listed,” Reinbolt said.“Theymoved or got married and changed addresses … There’s not much we can do about that.”
On some of the part-petitions, the circulator wrote their name in the spot where the number of signatures on the part-petition was supposed to go. On others, the circulator wrote a lower number than how many signatures actually appeared on the part-petition.
Reinbolt said this was because in many cases, the circulator saw that a person had listed an invalid address with their signature, so the circulator left them out of the tally. At the group’s meeting with the BOE , Reinbolt learned the circulator must put a line through an invalid signature for it not to count.
Reinbolt said a circulator may write a greater number than the actual number of signatures they received, but if they record a lesser number, the board does not know which signatures to count and not to count.
“We’re going to go back and make sure our petitions are numbered,” Reinbolt said. “We will put a process in place to ensure that everything is double-checked.”
The group will have to collect about 2,000 signatures a week until Aug. 28, assuming some will be rejected, Reinbolt said. Reinbolt said the group will utilize a registered voters list and volunteers and paid circulators will go door to door seeking signatures.
“We need to work hard to go out there and get enough valid signatures,” Reinbolt said. “We have our work cut out for us, that’s for sure.”
For more information on the initiative and volunteering, visit the web site betterlucascounty.com.
