Candidates running for office this year in Onondaga County await their fate as their petition signatures are scrutinized over the next few weeks. It is the beginning of the objection process which determines if candidates earn their spot on the ballot.
The county board of elections has already done the preliminary work of processing 141 petitions representing more than 420 candidates. Commissioner Dustin Czarny said they assume the validity of all signatures, but expect objections to come in this week.
“What we're looking at now is either the witness is wrong, where a whole sheet can be thrown out, or the individual lines are wrong, and that's where 90% of the objections are going to come in. And we're literally going to be going line by line once the objections are made,” Czarny said.
That can be tedious, especially in the race for Syracuse Mayor, where thousands of signatures gathered by five democratic candidates are under scrutiny.
Czarny said the most common mistake a campaign makes is trying to collect signatures from people at large gatherings instead of from the approved list provided by the board of elections.
“When you're trying to get 1,000 signatures for mayor, it's very tempting to go to high traffic areas instead of door to door, especially if you don't have a large volunteer base," Czarny said. "In my time as Commissioner, that is the most likely way to get thrown off the ballot.”
Czarny said he expects challenges in high-profile races. He recalled numerous objections in the 2017 mayoral race alone resulted in 40 hours of court hearings. Also on this year’s ballot are all 17 county legislature seats as well as competitive town council and supervisor races.
“[In] Salina, already Democrats got petitions to get on the ballot there. So that looks like a nice battleground of a long held Republican area that might be trending Democrat," Czarny said. "But like Onondaga and Geddes, I think that we're going to see a lot more competition.”
Czarny said rulings on petitions will be made in the last week of April, with a target completion date of May 1st.
