ELYRIA — Stand Up Elyria, the group hoping to unseat Mayor Bill Grace with a recall election, turned in 902 additional signatures to the Elyria clerk of council’s office Monday afternoon.
The extra signatures are more than twice what the group needed to reach the legal threshold to continue the recall effort after the initial group of petitions it turned in fell 413 valid signatures short of the required 2,270.
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The group needs 2,270 signatures because that number represents 25 percent of the voters who cast ballots in the November 2007 municipal general election.
To move forward with the recall, the new signatures must go through the same verification process as the earlier ones — a process that saw the Lorain County Board of Elections determine that only 1,827 of the 2,629 signatures turned in Oct. 13 were valid.
The provision of the city charter that spells out the rules for a recall effort also includes a 10-day window for a group to gather additional signatures, which is exactly what Stand Up Elyria members did.
If the new names hold up, City Council will call for Grace’s resignation, and if he doesn’t do so within five days, the city has 30 to 45 days to hold a special election for voters to decide whether Grace should continue as mayor. His current term ends in 2012.
Still, Grace said he is not concentrating on the recall effort. While he is mindful that a group of residents wish to recall him, he said he can only worry about his job as mayor today.
“In the last 10 days, it has been all about Issue 10 for me,” he said Monday. “Getting it passed tomorrow has been my main focus. After tomorrow, my focus will be on running the city.”
Getting the additional names in the short timeframe took a tremendous effort, said Craig Bevan, co-founder of Stand Up Elyria.
In the last 10 days, the group has had 10 people out gathering signatures. Some even went door-to-door while children were trick-or-treating last week.
“These people truly love Elyria. God bless them,” Bevan said. “When people do things for the right reason and because they love Elyria and want it to change, when you work with these people, they make you feel good about what you are doing and that Elyria can turn around again and they are willing to make that happen.
“I really respect these people. They worked long and they worked hard.”
Bevan said the group was not deterred after learning their first effort fell short.
“We had people call and say ‘We won’t let this fail’ and ‘We won’t let you fail,’ ” he said. “We had a group that went out and they were signature warriors.”
Board of Elections employees will look over the names in the coming days to ensure each signature comes from a registered voter and resident of Elyria. The names will also be cross checked to ensure the person only signed once.
The first set of petitions contained 772 signatures the board could not validate — 147 names were deemed illegible, 276 came from people who are not registered voters, 49 signers did not live in Elyria. Sixty-three were from people who signed twice and 221 signatures either did not match signatures or addresses on file with the Board of Elections.
Bevan said he believes the additional signatures will be deemed valid because the group checked the names against voting records before delivering them to the clerk’s office.
Contact Lisa Roberson at 329-7121 or lroberson@chroniclet.com.
