Troy Mayor Janice Daniels challenges recall petition

Troy Mayor Janice Daniels, facing a possible recall in the Nov. 6 election, says she felt she owed it to her backers to challenge the petition that would put the issue on the ballot.

Daniels filed an 11th-hour challenge to the petition at 4:20 p.m. Thursday ? just 10 minutes before the deadline, according to the Oakland County Elections Division.

"I have an obligation to my many supporters to challenge the validity of this unwarranted political attack," she said Friday.

Joe Rozell, Oakland County's director of elections, said Daniels' challenge focuses on dates that accompany the signatures on the petition. Those signing a petition are required to write in their names, signatures and the date, but the Daniels camp is suggesting someone besides the signee added the dates.

"The challenges are based upon dates that have been altered or dates that have been entered in, apparently it appears, by someone other than the person who signed the petition," said Daniels. "It looks like some of the dates might have been filled in by the same person, whomever that person might have been."

Daniels said she is challenging 1,055 signatures because "we believe either the date was altered or the date was not put in by the petition signer." An additional 150 signatures are being challenged based on the person not being registered to vote.

Rozell said the elections division looked for any signs of fraud when doing its original review ? examining the dates, addresses, registration status and names of the signers ? and found nothing to indicate a problem.

"We did not identify any obvious signs where a single individual or numerous individuals completed the date section on the petition," said Rozell. "We of course will examine it again, but we don't see any case where it appears there is any kind of instances where a single individual completed all the dates."

Rozell said some of the signatures being questioned were already disqualified in their original review.

Daniels acknowledged that some of the signatures she is challenging may be ones that have already been thrown out by the elections office. She said she had never received a list of discounted signatures.

Matthew Binkowski, treasurer of Recall Janice Daniels, said he is not worried about the challenge and expects the recall petition to be upheld.

"Our signature-gatherers did this in a professional manner and we feel that at the end of Mr. Rozell and his staff's review, they'll find that very few additional signatures will have to be thrown out," he said.

Binkowski, who said his group has not had a chance to review Daniels' challenge, said he can understand why she would make the move.

"She's challenging because it's part of the process and if I was an elected official, I would probably challenge them, too," he said. "But I don't think she is going to be successful in this regard."

Daniels has been criticized for her December vote to reject $8.4 million in federal grant money for construction of a transit center. The City Council later approved a scaled-down version of the project over her opposition.

Since that time, she has also been criticized for a Facebook posting using the word "queers" as well as telling a group of high school students that "the homosexual lifestyle is dangerous."

Members of Recall Janice Daniels submitted 9,370 signatures to the elections division in June ? roughly 1,400 more than necessary for the recall question to be placed on the ballot. Of those, the elections division determined 8,882 were valid signatures, almost 900 more than required.

Rozell said he expects a final determination on the challenge to be issued next week.

On her website, Daniels has asked supporters for donations to help her fight the recall effort.

"You may have read that there is a small group of citizens who have filed a petition attempting to remove me from office after only four months into my first four-year term," she says in a message posted on the site. "Although this is a legal option within the American system, we believe that if we could all work together we could achieve great outcomes in Troy."

jlynch@detnews.com

(313) 222-2034

Source: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120713/METRO02/207130397/1408/LOCAL

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