The outcome on the test case on petitions for Independents

Last June, I reported on a lawsuit you didn’t hear about in the Dayton Daily News.  Unfortunately- I didn’t follow up and post the outcome of the suit either, which I’m about to rectify.

Here’s a bit of what I wrote then:

C. Ralph Wilcoxson, II may be one of my new personal heroes. A magistrate working under Tony Capizzi, (who has no problem employing his family) who chose to challenge the boss for his job found out the following things:

1. Independents have to file a ton more signatures than Dems or Reps to run

2. You lose your job

3. The partisan board of elections will crawl through your signatures to disqualify as many as possible- until you end up 1 short.

So he does what a lawyer does, he sues the Board of Elections. Of course, this is kept quiet from the public- but here is the writ of mandamus Wilcoxson VS Board of Elections PDF that is on the expedited docket. Case #CA24095 on the PRO system.

via News the DDN fails to Cover: Test case on petitions for Independents.

I posted Mr. Wilcoxson’s complete filing for you to read in the above-linked post.

Here are the responses to the motion to dismiss filed by Mr. Wilcoxson that got him into court- and the rulings by the judges.

If you can wade past all the cases cited- you’ll generally find that the judges agreed with almost every point that Wilcoxson made- but still ruled against him.

The amount of law involved in these ballot-access issues is large- yet, the one thing that seems to elude me is if the petitions aren’t good- and signatures aren’t correct- why isn’t anyone ever charged with the threatened 5th degree felony?

The suit I’m about to file is different in many ways- due to the additional requirement for a notarized signature for the circulator, the forms format and fields, and the discrepancies between the number of voters on the rolls and the number of people living in the city of voting age.

The Charter’s requirements for petitions when it comes to charter changes, recalls and the process of getting on the ballot are all constructed to exclude candidates and issues from reaching the ballot.

Enjoy the read- and watch for more news this week.

Response to Motion To Dismiss PDF

Wilcoxson Appeal Final Decision PDF

In the meantime- please considering a donation to help fund this suit:

http://electesrati.com/index.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/contribute/transact&reset=1&id=5&widgetID=1

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