Trumbull elections board keeps one candidate off ballot, splits on other

Staff report

WARREN

Pierson Butcher Jr. presented numerous documents to the Trumbull County Board of Elections on Friday, attempting to show that he has lived continuously on Adelaide Avenue Southeast since 2008.

He gave them a letter from his landlord and bills from his dentist and a department store. He said he was planning to move to Hazelwood, but he never did.

In the end, the documents that mattered more to the elections board were ones Butcher signed in connection to voting over the past year showing him having an address on Hazelwood Avenue.

The address matters in this case because Butcher decided recently to run for councilman for Warren’s 4th Ward after James Bluedorn vacated the position to take a job in Florida.

Butcher’s Adelaide address is in the 4th Ward; the Hazelwood address is not.

Before the elections board voted 3-1 to uphold its earlier decision to remove Butcher from the ballot, board member Mark Alberini said Butcher had not proved that he met the requirement that he lived in the ward for a year leading up to next fall’s election.

Alberini said elections documents showed that Butcher changed his voting address to the Hazelwood home in June 2016, and he voted from that address last fall.

In the other appeal hearing Friday, the board split 2-2 on whether Ron Book should be allowed back on the ballot in the Democratic primary for 4th Ward councilman.

The board voted to remove him last week because his nominating petitions said he was running for “Council,” when it should have said 4th Ward council.

Before the board voted, Alberini said the county prosecutor’s office indicated that state law doesn’t specifically address the defect in Book’s petitions.

The matter goes to the Ohio Secretary of State’s office to break the tie.