D.C. Council member Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 7) will remain on the April 3 primary ballot, surviving a scare after a resident challenged the validity of her nominating petitions.
In an 11-page ruling, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics found that 428 of the 1,384 petition signatures Alexander submitted were invalid but that she had more than met the 250-signature minimum to be on the ballot. The board found “a lack of substantial evidence” to corroborate Dawn Matthews’s accusations that Alexander campaign aides illicitly signed and submitted petitions they had not personally circulated.
The board’s ruling said that in previous instances in which petitions were disqualified en masse — during Mayor Anthony A. Williams’s 2002 reelection campaign and a 2004 effort to authorize a Ward 5 slots parlor via ballot initiative — “there was substantial evidence of wrongdoing that warranted grave concern” about the legitimacy of the petitions.
“That is not the case here,” the board wrote.
Matthews, the board held, did not establish a pattern of fraud or successfully rebut sworn testimony from Alexander’s aides that they personally witnessed the signatures to which they attested.
The board, however, described Alexander’s signature collection effort as “sloppy” and criticized campaign aide Derek Ford for an “inability . . . to explain several deficiencies” related to the process, including an “apparent preference of quantity over quality” in gathering signatures.
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