Politics & Government

Troy Mayor Challenges Recall Petition Signatures Just Before Deadline

Janice Daniels sent a letter to the Oakland County Elections Division challenging some of the signatures just 10 minutes before the 4:30 p.m. deadline.

The Oakland County Elections Division confirmed Thursday afternoon that embattled Troy Mayor Janice Daniels filed a last-minute letter challenging some of the the signatures by the political action group Recall Jancie Daniels.

“It was filed at 4:20 today," Elections Director Joe Rozell said. "It was dropped off by Mr. (Ray) Watts, but it was signed by Janice Daniels.”

Daniels had until 4:30 p.m. Thursday to challenge any of the 8,882 signatures already verified by the Elections Division. Rozell, however, said many of the signatures Daniels is challenging were already thrown out by the Elections Division.

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“We’ve only done a cursory review of it because we just received it, but it appears they’re challenging signatures that we already disqualified," Rozell said. "We provided them a list showing which were counted and which weren’t, but they challenged the ones we didn’t count."

Rozell said Daniels also challenged the validity of the signatures where the date of signing was crossed off and corrected without the voter's initials.

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"They’re saying that because the voter failed to initial it, it’s not valid, but we’re not aware of anything that requires voters to initial it," Rozell said.

"The other thing they’re alleging is that the voter signed their name, printed their name and printed their address, and then somebody else wrote the date," Rozell said. "We’ve not found a single instance where the way the petition was dated appears different, or that it looks like it was done by a single individual.”

Rozell said he and his team will likeley spend part of the weekend reviewing Daniels' challenge request and may have a determination as early as Monday.

“The law permits challenging based on genuineness of signatures or genuineness of validity of registration," Rozell added. "If any of these things are outside of that scope, we aren’t allowed to consider them.”

The issue, which Troy City Attorney Lori Grigg Bluhm said "would basically be ," will be on the Nov. 6 ballot in Troy if at least 7,985 signatures are still valid after Daniels' challenge.

The issue on the ballot "would be a yes or no question," Troy City Clerk Aileen Bittner said in a previous interview with Troy Patch. “The law says that if there are more yes votes than no votes, that’s it.”

Bittner said what would happen next, if the mayor is recalled, is tricky.

“According to the charter, in the absence of the mayor, the mayor pro tem assumes responsibilities. Beyond that, the city attorney and I would need to do an analysis to determine what would happen next.”

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Daniels first came under fire in December for her  and has remained the center of controversy after  (a  was later approved), telling the  Gay-Straight Alliance she would bring in an expert to tell them  and writing a lengthy position paper some viewed as .

For comprehensive coverage of the recall effort, visit the Troy Mayor Janice Daniels topic page. For the latest Troy news and information, follow Troy Patch on Facebook and Twitter.


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