Friday, August 27, 2010
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Jennifer Brunner
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Ex-U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr.
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Thomas McCabe
‘Justice for Jim’ rally set today in Uptown
Staff report
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County Board of Elections will have a special hearing at 6 p.m. Monday at its offices to consider the concerns of the Jim Traficant campaign committee.
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner on Wednesday said the Mahoning elections board needed to have the hearing by Monday and report its findings by Tuesday.
Brunner said late Wednesday that the Trumbull County Board of Elections will then be required to make a final determination by Wednesday on whether Traficant makes the ballot.
Meanwhile, the Traficant committee is planning a “Rally for Justice for Jim” at the elections board in the Uptown on Market Street at noon today.
Brunner said Traficant is now 20 signatures short of having enough to make the ballot.
Tom McCabe, Mahoning elections board director, said he has received guidance from the secretary of state’s office on how to conduct the hearing and says everything will be done to demonstrate that the board has “gone the extra mile to make sure everything was considered.”
McCabe said he thinks it’s likely that the hearing will cause Mahoning County’s four elections board members to change some of the invalidated signatures to valid, but he doesn’t know whether it will change 20 of them.
“The four board members will make that determination,” he said.
Traficant committee member Werner Lange of Newton Falls wrote a letter to the Trumbull elections board Thursday, asking that board to re-examine 16 signatures that the board invalidated earlier but which Lange thinks should now be ruled valid.