KS-GOV: Greg Orman faces challenge over thousands of petition signatures

TOPEKA - A Democratic objection to independent Greg Orman’s candidacy for Kansas governor says more than 6,000 signatures used to help secure his place on the November general election ballot should be thrown out.

A successful objection blocking Orman’s candidacy would upend the race for governor and arguably improve Democratic nominee Laura Kelly’s prospects in the race. The Orman campaign called the filing frivolous.

Kelly, a state senator from Topeka, will be competing with Orman for unaffiliated voters and moderate Republicans in a state where Republicans outnumber Democrats by a nearly 2 to 1 ratio. Democrats have warned for months that Orman’s candidacy will split votes and benefit the GOP nominee, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Kelly’s campaign declined to comment on the objection to Orman’s signatures, which was filed by the chief of staff for Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, one of her closest allies in the Legislature.

The objection alleges that one petition circulator who recorded more than 1,000 signatures over seven days would have had to collect a signature every 4.5 minutes for 11 hours each day in order to accomplish the task.

“That statistic casts serious doubt as to the validity of his signatures, even more so when you consider that his petitions included signatures from 20 different counties during that time span,” said Pedro Irigonegaray, an attorney for Will Lawrence, who filed the objection.

Orman campaign spokesman Sam Edelen called the filing a desperate effort to avoid electoral accountability.

“This frivolous filing by the lawyer for the Kansas Democratic Party simply shows the lengths to which the supporters of the failed system will go,” Edelen said. “They want to avoid giving voters a real choice at all costs.”

Lawrence’s objection also says several counties failed to validate signatures by a legal deadline – a loss of more than 6,000 signatures if the objection is upheld. The objection says that several petition circulators were not qualified under state law to circulate petitions for Orman.

In addition, the objection suggests that notaries public were notarizing petition pages without personally witnessing the signature of the petition circulator.

Irigonegaray wrote in a letter that “a substantial number of the notary dates on these signature pages appear to be the same, regardless of the dates the signatures were collected.”



https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article217043600.html#storylink=cpy