November election ballot finalized, over 20 local petitions denied across all categories

By Jessica Johnston, Assistant News Director
September 4, 2019

The ballots for the upcoming November election have been finalized, but they may seem a little lighter than anticipated.

Signed petitions were filed until Aug. 7 for local community members to get their names on the November ballot for city offices, school boards, villages and townships.

With many positions up for grabs across the county, 147 petitions, excluding write-ins and withdrawn petitions, were submitted for certification to the Muskingum County Board of Elections.

The board met to certify submitted petitions nearly two weeks after the filing date on Aug. 19.

Just over 16 percent of those 147 petitions were not certified, totaling 24 denied petitions. One additional petition for Sunday beer sales at All Seasons Golf Course was also denied.

“With this number of petitions, it’s not normal to have that many, no,” Tim Thompson, Director of the Muskingum County Board of Elections, said.

He said about 10 to 12 petitions that do not get certified would be normal.

Thompson elaborated stating that there are a variety of different reasons for a petition not getting certified including the petition not receiving enough signatures, wrong signature counts, incomplete or blank nominating petition portions, no candidate signature and incomplete or blank circulator statement.

“We give pretty good instructions when … people pick up their petitions there’s an instruction sheet (of) what to do before you circulate,” Thompson said. “And then when the candidate files the petition we give them another checklist to make sure they’ve got everything on that and the candidate signs off on it and so at that point if it’s complete it is, if not; can’t certify it.”

All prospective candidates whose petitions were denied received a certified letter from the Board of Elections stating why their petition was not certified.

There is no recall on petitions, so once a petition is denied, potential candidates cannot correct their mistakes.

While Thompson deemed it an irrelevant point, in his four years with the Muskingum County Board of Elections those 25 denied petitions were the most he had seen during a single upcoming election.

Due to his short span with the Board of Elections, Thompson said he’s unsure of the last time there were that many petitions that did not get certified.

The following filed petitions were denied, according to the Muskingum County Board of Elections: