Board of elections decides mayor recall question will be on Nov. ballot
6/9/2009The issue of whether Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner should be recalled from office will indeed be on the November ballot.
Members of the Lucas County Board of Elections decided Tuesday morning that the language of the petitions circulated by a group called Take Back Toledo was indeed correct and that volunteers had gathered enough valid signatures to put the issue before voters.
A lawyer with the Columbus firm Vorys Sater Seymour and Pease LLP, hired by the mayor, had argued that all of the petitions failed to include a sentence warning petition signers that election falsification is a fifth-degree felony.
He said the Supreme Court has ruled that all petitions on the ballot must have an election falsification statement spelled out in capitalized, bold-faced type that election fraud is a crime.
The warning is not required by the Toledo city charter.
Take Back Toledo collected 45,500 signatures to meet the required minimum of 19,753 signatures of registered Toledo voters. The elections board validated 20,444 signatures and threw out 19,550, leaving about 5,000 unchecked.