When the Summit County Board of Elections couldn’t verify enough of the signatures on a charter amendment petition to get it on November’s ballot, it shut down any chance, for now, of expanding the pool of candidates for Akron’s police and fire department leadership positions.
In July, Akron City Council rejected legislation Mayor Shammas Malik proposed the addition of a city law to explicitly allow external candidates to be considered for chief and deputy chief positions in the city’s safety forces. The Committee to Improve Police-Community Relations then rushed to gather enough signatures – 4,862 – from registered Akron voters in time to place a charter amendment on November’s ballot.
Despite the 8,442 signers that the BOE counted (the signature-gathering campaign previously announced it had turned in 7,595), more than half of them were rejected. The petition fell 675 valid signatures below the necessary threshold to place it in front of Akron voters. The BOE counted 4,187 valid signatures and 4,255 invalid signatures.
Signal Akron obtained the letter the BOE sent City Council on Thursday that explains why the petition failed.
The single biggest reason, according to the BOE’s count, is that 1,751 of the signers were not registered Akron voters.
“They did turn in a lot, but they just had bad signatures,” Akron City Council President Margo Sommerville told Signal Akron on Thursday. “It’s really important — really, really important — when people are out collecting signatures that you have a good team of people on the streets that are not just grabbing every and anybody to sign.”
The board also rejected 873 signatures because the address the signer provided is not the address on file with the board of elections.
Below are the statistics from the signature verification process for the charter amendment petition drive from the Summit County Board of Elections.
Total valid signatures – 4,187
Total invalid signatures – 4,255
1,751 – Not registered
873 – Not registered address
470 – Lined out
359 – Not genuine – Signature does not match
334 – Duplicate – Signed before
324 – Jurisdiction – Signer is out of area
54 – Other county
53 – No address
13 – Date precedes collection
9 – Blank line
6 – Circulator is signer
5 – Date follows collection
4 – No date
