AG Miyares says signatures collected January 1st, 2023, do not count.
by Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Attorney General Jason Miyares has ruled that signatures collected on January 1, 2023, by Nick Ignacio and Steve Maxwell — who at the time were running in Spotsylvania County for Clerk of Court and sheriff, respectively — “do not count towards the minimum number of signatures required to be collected by independent candidates seeking to have their name printed on the ballot.”
Read the Attorney General’s full ruling at the end of this article.
Though the ruling comes after the November 2023 election, it puts an end to the argument Ignacio made to the Advance in July that the signatures he and Maxwell collected on January 1st to put them on the ballot were properly collected.
Read our July 19 story breaking the story about improperly collected signatures.
The Advance found that at least 16 of the 128 signatures Ignacio collected, and 37 of the 144 that Maxwell collected, were dated January 1. Had those signatures not been accepted, neither individual would have had enough to have their names placed on the ballot.
Confusion over the acceptable date to begin collecting signatures went all the way up to the state Department of Elections. We received two different answers from the department in July. Originally the department’s spokesperson said that January 1st was not an acceptable date to collect signatures. However, she reversed herself in a follow up note to the Advance saying January 1st was acceptable for collecting signatures.
Spotsylvania Registrar Kelli Acors told the Advance in July, after reviewing the information that we had collected, that she erred in permitting the January 1st signatures.
Had those signatures been rejected, neither Ignacio nor Maxwell would have had enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
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Convenient of Miyares to wait until after the election to let us know. Election integrity AG, huh?
Well, hopefully this sort of issue will never occur again.
Thanks, Advance, for passing the information along.