WASHINGTON — S. Kathryn Allen has been disqualified from a possible run for the D.C. Council in November by the D.C. Board of Elections after evidence of forged names and other fraud were found in her qualifying petition.
Many of the 6,068 signatures in her petition were challenged by one of Allen’s opponents, Incumbent Elissa Silverman.
Following a review of the signatures by the Registrar of Voters office, many were found to be invalid, leaving Allen with less than the 3,000 required to get on the ballot.
The Registrar found 612 of the challenged signatures were not registered to vote, another 845 required address changes and many others were duplicated, illegible or collected by a person other than the listed circulator.
Questioning of the circulators listed as collectors found some were never involved in the collection process at all, or didn’t file the proper paperwork.
Allen’s campaign has since released a statement, blaming the company hired to collect the signatures, Strategies for Change Group, saying “It is extremely unfortunate that our decision to contract with a petition circulator service cast a shadow on an otherwise optimistic and unifying campaign.”
— S. Kathryn Allen (@AllenforDC2018) September 11, 2018
Strategies for Change Group has said they were never hired by Allen’s campaign.
The statement mentioned no efforts to appeal, but went on to say Allen’s campaign will offer suggestions to the D.C. Board of elections to reform how signatures are collected to keep this from happening to any future candidates.
