Madison County electoral board hears challenge to board candidate’s petition

Madison County will once again be checking election petition signatures against the voter registration rolls, but this time the list is much shorter.

Donald Moore of Troy defeated County Board member Roger Alons in the spring primary and is now the Republican candidate to represent District 2. Alons continues to serve until the November election.

Moore’s opponent is independent Tyler Oberkfell of Troy, who filed his petition to run in the November election with 273 signatures. A minimum of 232 are required. Moore filed an objection to Oberkfell’s petition, alleging that 55 of the 232 signatures were from people who were not properly registered. His attorney, James Craney, also alleged that some signatures appear to have common authorship or other problems.

The electoral board on Tuesday opted to conduct a binder check of Oberkfell’s petition against the voter registration rolls. The board consists of County Clerk Debbie Ming-Mendoza, Circuit Clerk Mark Von Nida and State’s Attorney Tom Gibbons, advised by assistant state’s attorney John McGuire.

Craney previously represented Treasurer Kurt Prenzler and Mike Firsching, both Republicans, in the contentious challenge to their petition calling for a referendum to reduce the maximum property tax rate in Madison County by 5 cents.

That petition was challenged by two former police officers, alleging that many of the people who signed it were not registered to vote or were not legal residents, as well as a pattern of fraud. While more than 1,500 signatures were found invalid, the remaining 8,302 were sufficient to keep the referendum on the ballot.

As before, the Oberkfell review will be conducted in the county clerk’s office and each side is permitted to have one observer present. Ming-Mendoza said it would likely take much less time with only a few hundred signatures.

During the hearing, Von Nida asked Craney whether he felt the binder check would be a violation of Oberkfell’s rights. “Do you feel that the clerk’s office is biased in this matter?” he asked. Craney indicated no.

The issue of the clerk’s office’s involvement rose in the last objection, when Prenzler, Firsching and Craney filed objections to the binder check itself and to the county clerk staff conducting it. They alleged that because the staffers are members of the AFSCME union for county workers, they might be biased. Those objections were noted, but in the end, the verdict came out for the petitioners after all.

Moore said he filed the objection after observing that a number of the people who signed it don’t appear to be registered to vote in the district. “I’m not sure it’s enough to state that his petition does not meet the minimum standard, but I think it’s worthy to look at that,” he said.

Oberkfell said that his signatures were collected by himself, his wife, his father and two friends by knocking on doors, and he is prepared to defend his petition. “I’m here to defend myself and my signatures,” he said.

The binder review will begin Wednesday, and the electoral board will meet again on Friday morning to discuss the results. If sufficient signatures remain after the binder review, they will then consider arguments on the other issues alleged by Moore and Craney, Ming-Mendoza said.

This story was originally published July 12, 2016 at 1:43 PM with the headline "Madison County electoral board hears challenge to board candidate’s petition."