YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown law director has determined John White is ineligible to run for mayor under the city charter.

The Mahoning County Board of Elections will meet Tuesday to vote on the eligibility of independent candidates and is expected to not certify White to the ballot based on the legal opinion of Youngstown Law Director Lori Shells Simmons.

The charter reads: “The mayor shall be an elector and resident of the city for the five years immediately preceding the mayor’s election, and not less than 30 years of age.”

White registered to vote Feb. 5, 2021, and first voted May 4, 2021. Shortly after that, he said he hadn’t voted in about 30 years.

The 2021 registration means White hasn’t been an elector of Youngstown for the five years immediately before this year’s election, Shells Simmons determined.

Shells Simmons wrote in a letter to Tom McCabe, board director, “Since it is undisputed White registered to vote 5 February 2021, and has not the requisite five years as an elector, he is disqualified from being an eligible mayoral candidate in the November 2025 election.”

White said Tuesday: “Her opinion is wrong, and I believe I have the legal standing to run.”

The board voted on July 6, 2021, that White wasn’t eligible to be a Youngstown mayoral candidate based on a June 12, 2021, legal opinion from Jeff Limbian, then the city’s law director, based on his interpretation of the charter provision.

At the time, Kenneth D. Myers, White’s attorney, objected and threatened legal action. But the matter was dropped when it was discovered White had voted in the Democratic primary after filing as an independent for mayor. Voting in a partisan primary after filing as an independent in Ohio disqualifies a candidate from running.

After The Vindicator reported May 2 that the elections board and Shells Simmons would again question his eligibility, White was arrested by Liberty police that day on two felony counts for an alleged domestic disturbance with his wife, Youngstown Councilwoman Amber White, I-7th Ward, as a result of the article. A Trumbull County grand jury declined to indict him on June 13. At the time, White was in the county jail for violating the terms of his bond by allegedly harassing his wife.

As he did in 2021, Myers argued in a May 5 letter to Shells Simmons that “a common-sense reading of that section is that a person has to be 1) an elector for five years and 2) a resident of the city for five years. If the framers of the charter had intended for the requirements to be 1) an elector of the city for five years and 2) a resident of the city for five years, they would have written it that way.”

Myers added the “charter cannot be read in a vacuum. The charter itself acknowledges that it shares authority with the state’s Constitution and statutes.”

In her letter to McCabe, Shells Simmons disagreed, writing: “The city determines the five year requirement applies to both elector and resident based upon well-established statutory construction principles. The Writing Center, Georgetown University Law Center, has a Guide to Reading, Interpreting and Applying Statutes, which reads ‘(a)nd’ typically signifies a conjunctive list, meaning each condition in the list must be satisfied. Therefore, hypothetically, the drafters of the charter should have written ‘a resident for five years and an elector’ if the intent was to apply the time limit to only residency.”

Shells Simmons added: “Finally, the city can only use the date of registration with the board to determine eligibility as an elector. The state of Ohio has clearly intended to have the county board of elections have exclusive jurisdiction to determine elections and qualifications of electors. Therefore, the city has to rely on the board records to determine the date any citizen registers to become an elector. Moreover, this opinion is not a full determination of White’s eligibility as a candidate. The city defers to the board jurisdiction on all other matters such as residency, citizenship, felony disenfranchisement, party affiliation, etc.”

White has more than 35 criminal convictions, according to various court documents, with felony convictions including receiving stolen property, aggravated assault, breaking and entering, and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

He was sentenced to prison for the latter three convictions.

In his May 5 letter to Shells Simmons, Myers wrote: “If the charter provision is interpreted to mean that Mr. White must live in Youngstown for five years and be an elector for five years, that provision would be in direct conflict with the Ohio Constitution and the state statutes … and would be open to legal challenge on constitutional grounds.”

Myers added: “There is no real evidence that he lacked the qualifications provided by law to entitle him to vote. He has been legally eligible to vote for five years, he has merely not actually registered to vote.”

Also filing as independents to face Mayor Jamael Tito Brown, who won the Democratic primary, in the Nov. 4 general election are Aleesha Foster and Derrick McDowell. Foster’s eligibility could be in question because of a lack of valid signatures.