On February 19, the Franklin County, Ohio, Board of Elections determined that two incumbent members of the Columbus School Board are off the November 2009 ballot because they failed to get at least 300 valid signatures. Although Ohio permits write-ins, another law says that someone who submitted a petition to be on the ballot, and whose petition was deficient, may not qualify as a declared write-in candidate. See this story. Thanks to Steve Linnabary for the link.
Columbus School Board is the ONLY school board in Ohio that uses the early filing deadline in February. ALL the others use the late August filing deadline.
This is because in 1999 there were 16 candidates for four seats (I was one of those candidates). It was thought that this was too many, so the school board asked the OH legislature to allow an early filing deadline and have a nonpartisan primary in May, along with the city council.
The school board told the legislature that the top vote getter (olympic runner Stephanie Hightower) only got 20% of the votes, because of the high number of candidates. This is sort of true, but every voter gets four votes. So in reality, she actually got 80% of the available votes. Even if she got EVERY vote available to her, she could only get 25%.
PEACE
Perhaps if a lot of incumbents were obstructed by petition problems, the various legislative bodies might make some positive changes to the process.
Ideally, petition signature numbers could be low enough that each candidate, for whatever seat, could be required to acquire the signatures himself.
We have military and civilian personnel being killed with sickening frequency in Iraq and elsewhere, allegedly in the name of democracy, but governments continue to put roadblocks and obstacles in the way here.
When one considers there is a special election and a general election, couldn’t the incumbents flip races and run for the seat they didn’t petition for as a write-in?
They went to the primary to try and limit choice, not because of the number of candidates running. Until Stephanie Groce and the Democratic Party parted ways, Bill Moss is the only candidate in the last 25 years elected to the non-partisan board without the endorsement of the Democratic or Republican Party.
Plain and simple, the primary was set up to try and prevent people like Moss from winning. That only primary so far cost the central Ohio taxpayers over $100,000. What did it accomplish? It knocked the race down from 7 to 6 candidates and Al Warner didn’t continue on to the generasl election.
What I find hilarious is that Columbus has had races in the past with 17 candidates for School Board when the signature requirements were five times what they are now.
Looks like Bill Buckel, who has run over a dozen times missed his chance by not filing this year. Hopefully he or Ruth Moss will file to run as a write-in this year.
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