VERIFIED: Group Has More Than Enough Signatures to Trigger Recall Election of Troy Mayor

The Oakland County Elections Division has finished verifying the by the political action group Recall Jancie Daniels to recall embattled Troy Mayor Janice Daniels.

"In accordance with MCL 168.961(4), our office has concluded our review of the recall petitions demanding your recall from the office of Mayor – City of Troy, County of Oakland," Elections Director Joe Rozell wrote in a letter to Daniels on Thursday. "We have determined that the petitions contain 8,882 valid signatures from City of Troy electors which exceed the requirement of 7,985."

Daniels may challenge the signatures until 4:30 p.m. on July 12. If her challenges are unsuccessful, she will face a recall election on Nov. 6.

"We're checking the petitions," Daniels confirmed Thursday afternoon, though she declined further comment on the issue.

"The verification done by the Elections Division is very much in line with what our internal verification process found," said Matt Binkowski, co-founder of Recall Janice Daniels. "We thought we had about 400 or so invalid signatures, and it looks like we were not too far off that mark."

Binkowski invited Daniels to "go through the petitions with a fine-toothed comb," saying, "We don't think any challenge by Mayor Daniels would be able to overcome the 900 excess signatures that we have."

He added, "We're happy that this process can now move forward."

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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 .

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