Petitioners seeking to oust controversial Ferguson Mayor James Knowles from office haven’t gathered enough valid signatures to trigger a recall election.
Eric Fey, the Democratic director of elections at St. Louis County Board of Elections, told St. Louis Public Radio that petitioners had gathered 1,008 valid signatures. They needed 1,814 to trigger a recall.
Fey also said that 1,125 signatures were declared invalid: 562 of the names weren’t registered in St. Louis County, while another 366 didn’t live in Ferguson.
“So it looks like they collected a substantial amount of signatures from folks that didn’t live in Ferguson,” Fey said.
As for the remaining 197, Fey said:
•19 names had “blank lines” within the petition.
•65 names didn’t provide an address.
•65 names didn’t provide a signature.
•18 names had the wrong signature that was on file with the election board.
•30 names were duplicates.
One of the people leading the charge against Knowles isn’t surprised by the result.
“With any recall petition, you have good and you have bad,” said Phil Gassoway with Ground Level Support, the group trying to recall Knowles. “So you know; it’s nothing that we didn’t expect.”
Even though petitioners fell short of the 1,814-signature threshold, Knowles isn’t completely out of the woods yet.
According to the Ferguson city charter, the petitioners will be notified by certified mail that they did not collect enough signatures. They will have two days to file an intent to pursue an amended petition with additional signatures. After that, the additional signatures must be filed within 10 days.
Gassoway said he was optimistic.
“We’ve got more signatures,” he said. “What happened was we didn’t get them all notarized by the people that circulated the petition. We’ve also been out there gathering more signatures. This is something we expected. It’s no big deal.”
Work to do
Like other Ferguson officials, Knowles was roundly criticized for his response to Michael Brown’s shooting death. But he has repeatedly said he wouldn’t resign from office. That prompted the recall effort.
Ferguson’s mayor has fairly little formal power and is for all intents and purposes an at-large council member. But in many respects, he appears to be in a fairly strong position after “protest” candidates failed to secure open seats on Ferguson’s City Council earlier this year.
In an interview, Knowles said it remains to be seen if petitioners can gather enough signatures. But regardless of the outcome, Knowles said the fact that “there’s a thousand valid signatures says to me that I’ve got a number of people that I need to reach out to.
“Just like everybody else, I’ve tried to reach out to in the community, I want to reach out to them and hopefully continue to work on bringing the community together,” Knowles said. “Beyond that, we’ll see in 10 days if they get enough. And then if they do, we’ll have to deal with the consequences of having another election. But right now, I’m focused on what it’s going to take to bring people together and find out what the frustrations and issues are with people – especially with people who signed the petition.”
Knowles said that if petitioners get enough signatures, the recall election would likely be in November.
“We’ll just have to wait to see if they can get the valid amount,”And hopefully between now and then, we’ll continue to bring people together and reach out to people again who are clearly frustrated. They wouldn’t sign a petition like this if they weren’t frustrated.”
