Bevin Cormack, a Republican candidate for the 14th Congressional District seat — which includes all of Trumbull County — is seeking to have Patrick Gene Awtrey, another Republican running for that position, disqualified contending “election falsification.”

The Lake County Board of Elections has a protest hearing scheduled for 9 a.m. today.

In her complaint, Cormack wrote that during a Feb. 1 Geauga County Tea Party meeting at the Metzenbaum Center in Chesterland, Awtrey left nominating petitions on a table unmonitored for two hours and collected signatures he did not witness.

“Awtrey additionally signed a statement made under penalty of election falsification that he, the circulator, witnessed the affixing of every signature and verified qualifications to sign,” Cormack wrote in the complaint. “In addition to Awtrey not following petition rules, I also feel he was taking advantage of the audience by having them sign papers they didn’t understand or verifying that they were qualified to sign.”

Awtrey’s petitions were on a table in between Geauga County Tea Party handouts while he spoke to the audience and asked those in attendance to sign his petition, according to Cormack. He then sat in the front row listening to other speakers and didn’t pay attention to those who signed the document, which is an election violation, she wrote.

Awtrey said of the complaint: “It’s 100 percent false. She’s a little desperate. We’ll have no problem” getting the board to support him.

Awtrey added: “I witnesses all of the signatures.”

Cormack of Chesterland and Awtrey of Parma Heights both filed in the Republican primary to challenge U.S. Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Bainbridge, who was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012.

The district includes all of Trumbull, Ashtabula, Lake and Geauga counties and all but two communities in Portage County. Trumbull is the district’s second-most populous county behind Lake.

Matt Kilboy of Deerfield is the lone Democrat in the race.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled late Friday that two appeals to the constitutionality of a new congressional map that was approved March 2 by the Ohio Redistricting Commission were “procedurally improper.”

The court “did not retain jurisdiction to review” the congressional map after it ruled Jan. 14 in a 4-3 decision that an initial congressional redistricting plan was unconstitutional because of gerrymandering issues that unfairly favored Republicans, the ruling states.

But the court wrote that nothing in its latest order should restrict challengers to the map from filing a new original court action challenging the validity of the second map.

A new lawsuit by the National Redistricting Action Fund in opposition to the second map was filed Monday.

That map gives Republicans a 10-3 advantage with two tossup seats that slightly lean Democratic.

Among the safe Republican districts is the 14th, which favors that political party 54.83 percent to 45.17 percent for Democrats, according to partisan statewide voting information for the past decade provided by the redistricting commission.