Democrats are promising a thorough scrubbing of the petitions that independent candidate Greg Orman filed on Monday to get on the ballot in the governor’s race.
Orman submitted 10,338 signatures of Kansas voters to the secretary of state’s office, three hours before the noon deadline. He and running mate, state Sen. John Doll, only needed 5,000 signatures.
The secretary of state’s office will now have to verify the petition signatures to ensure that the Orman/Doll team can be on the ballot in the general election.
“The two parties do everything in their power to put up roadblocks and barriers to prevent anyone but their own from participating in our electoral process,” Orman said in a statement.
“That won’t work this year, and Sen. Doll and I will give Kansas voters a strong independent choice this November for the first time in generations.”
Democrats aren’t willing to let Orman get on the ballot very easily. They are promising to thoroughly vet Orman’s petitions to ensure that the signatures – and the people circulating the petitions – complied with state election law.
Will Lawrence, chief of staff for Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, said Democrats are looking at how the Orman campaign went about collecting signatures and whether any laws were violated.
“We’re scrutinizing every signature on every page to see what, if any, issues there are with them,” Lawrence said.
“We’re making sure that the law has been followed and if it has not been followed we will raise issues with that,” he said.
Among other things, state law requires someone who signs a petition to be a registered Kansas voter.
Anyone collecting signatures must be eligible to be a registered voter, which means they have to be at least 18 years old, be a U.S. citizen and not have a felony conviction on their record. They don’t have to reside in Kansas, however.
Democrats are also looking to make sure that anyone who signed an Orman petition didn’t sign any other petition nominating a candidate for the governor’s race.
Lawrence didn’t know how long it would take to review the signatures. He said a decision on whether to file an objection to Orman’s petitions would be made after the petitions are examined more closely.
“I understand that both parties are reluctant to see competition,” Orman said in a statement late Monday.
“Both parties would like to avoid electoral accountability by preventing candidates, who really speak to the real needs of Kansans, from getting on the ballot,” he said.
“They can go through whatever process they want to, but in November we will be on the ballot.”
