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The crop of candidates in this year's general election in the Mahoning Valley makes for very slim pickings.
Sadly, many races feature no real choices for voters at all because only the minimum number of candidates to fill the required number of open seats will be on the ballot. In some would-be competitive races, not enough candidates to fill the required number of seats or, worse yet, no candidates at all for them will be on the ballot.
For example, no one officially is running for fiscal officer in Smith and Green townships; Smith and Milton townships lack any trustee candidates; voters have no choices for school boards in the Western Reserve and South Range districts or for mayor of West Farmington or for clerk-treasurer in Orangeville.
A robust participatory democracy clearly this is not.
Part of the problem boils down to age-old voter apathy, a tough nut to crack. But part of the problem also stems from burdensome and overly technical requirements for would-be candidates to gain ballot access. That impediment to maximum candidate participation can be cracked by loosening some complicated, tedious requirements for nominating petitions.
After all, those fussy requirements took a sledgehammer to this year's local elections. In Mahoning County, 22 candidates and a liquor option were ruled ineligible for the ballot because of petition deficiencies. In Trumbull County, 12 candidates and two liquor options have been yanked from the ballot for metaphorically not dotting all i's and crossing all t's on nominating documents.
Of course, some will argue this month's mass candidate-booting serves to rid the ballot and electorate of individuals who lack ability to pay attention to detail. To an extent, that argument has merit. Candidates for any local public office -- from a township officer to a city mayor -- should be expected to follow clear, reasonable instructions.
But the extremely high number of candidate disqualified locally and elsewhere in Ohio illustrates the real problem might lie in burdensome rules governing proper petition presentation to the board.
How burdensome? Just consider some of the pickles some would-be candidates found themselves in:
• Jill DeRamo, a Canfield school board candidate, collected some signatures on dates before the date shown on her candidacy declaration;
• Craig Beach Councilman Robert Andrea and Michele Barrett, seeking to run for Goshen fiscal officer, failed to mark down a total number of signatures per page atop each page of their petitions;
• Beth Russell wasn't certified for the Liberty Board of Education because she submitted a single front page with her required circulator statement and nominating section as well as two back pages with signatures. Instead, each page with signatures needs its own separate front page, as decreed by the Trumbull Board of Elections and the Ohio Secretary of State.
And God help the newbie candidate who seeks assistance with his or her petitions from a member of a county board of elections staff. Ohio election law prohibits county election workers from prechecking a candidate's filing or warn him or her about a potential fatal flaw. That head scratcher ostensibly is designed to ensure no candidate gets one iota of preferential treatment.
Collectively, the crushing of this season's candidate slates raises some serious questions about the nominating process in general and petition rules in particular. Is it really necessary to have separate cover pages for each page of signatures? Is it really necessary to rule a full page of signatures invalid if only one of the signatures on that page is determined to be invalid, as is the practice with some petition faux pas in Ohio. Is it really necessary to require so many signatures to be nominated? In Youngstown, Desate Burkley, who wanted to run for a city school board seat, needed 150 valid signatures to qualify. She submitted petitions with 189 signatures, but the board ruled only 107 were valid.
Of course the pat response to all these questions is yes; such requirements are mandated by state law. Perhaps then it is time for state lawmakers to take a good hard look at some of the onerous rules and regulations of petition handling and loosen them, as well as leaving the door open a crack for candidates to fix their errors within a given time period once they're discovered.
Candidates who must gather all signatures and election board employees who must check them would benefit greatly.
If nothing is done, more potentially strong public servants will spare themselves the nominating grief, and full participatory democracy will continue to crumble in our community.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This editorial has been corrected. Beth Russell’s candidacy for Liberty Board of Education was rejected. The editorial originally incorrectly stated she filed petitions for a different board of education.