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YOUNGSTOWN -- The Mahoning County Board of Elections voted to reinstate four candidates, including Goshen Township Fiscal Officer Michele Barratt, it previously invalidated over petition issues.
The board voted Monday to reinstate Barratt along with Milton Township Trustee David Allen Tomaino, Craig Beach Councilman Robert Andrea, and Jill DeRamo, a Canfield school board candidate, to the Nov. 7 ballot. The board voted Aug. 16 not to certify the four because of problems with their nominating petitions.
In the cases of Tomaino, Andrea and Barratt, they failed to fill in the number of signatures collected on the backs of nominating petitions.
But Tomaino and Barratt pointed to a September 2021 Ohio Supreme Court decision involving Mark Ferrara, a Brookfield Township trustee candidate. The court sided with Ferrara to reinstate him to the ballot after the Trumbull County Board of Elections refused to certify him because of a counting error on one of his nominating petitions.
Ferrara, who was elected after being reinstated, wasn't initially certified by the board because he submitted a nominating petition with 17 signatures, but wrote 16 on the document.
In its decision, the court determined that the entire petition shouldn't be invalidated for a "minor, inadvertent mistake in recording the count of signatures on the ballot."
The decision, written by Justice Pat DeWine, stated: "There is nothing in the statutory text that requires a part-petition to be invalidated for such a mistake" and the law "requires the circulator to 'indicate' the number of signatures, but it does not state that a petition should be invalidated if the indication is incorrect."
Board Chairman David Betras, an attorney, said after reading the court's Ferrara decision, he determined that if no number is included -- as was the case with Tomaino, Andrea and Barratt -- it's the same thing as having the wrong number and not certifying was a mistake.
"I think that it's important to the body politic that as many people get involved in government," he said. "It makes our area that we call home better, not worse."
The board voted 3-1 to reinstate the three, with board Vice Chairwoman Sandra Barger voting against it.
At Monday's meeting, four other candidates who weren't certified Aug. 16 spoke about the board's decisions and how no guidance was provided to them.
Some said assistance was offered by a board employee in the past, but board member Joyce Kale-Pesta, a former board director, said the Secretary of State's Office since has changed the policy and employees aren't permitted to help candidates.
Overall, 22 candidates and a liquor option weren't certified to the Nov. 7 ballot at the Aug. 16 meeting because of petition issues.
Betras said: "We have a problem. This is the largest amount of petitions we ever invalidated in my 10 years on the board at one time. Obviously, people want to get involved and they're stubbing their toe. The bar is kind of low, but they're tripping over that bar."
Betras wanted board employees to put together a video using the secretary of state's candidate handbook to provide information to those seeking to fill out nominating petitions so these problems would be reduced.
But none of the three other board members agreed with him, and the idea failed for a lack of a motion by anyone on the board.
Barger said that work was the job of the Secretary of State's Office and not the local board.