The Ohio Supreme Court today found the Franklin County Board of Elections could reject a Columbus man’s petition to place him on the May primary election for Columbus City Council because he failed to file enough valid signatures on his nominating petitions.

In a per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court rejected a request from Densil Porteous to order the board to either accept 21 petition signatures it previously rejected or conduct a hearing where Porteous can provide proof that the signatures were from valid, registered voters.

Porteous sought to be a candidate in the Democratic primary for the Columbus City Council Seventh District. The board ruled in February that Porteous was 20 signatures short of the 250 valid signatures needed to be a candidate. He provided the board with 22 unsworn statements from petition signers whose signatures were rejected, and he urged the board to accept them.

The Court today stated that boards of elections have broad discretion to deny signatures that do not match signatures on record with the board. The board can accept evidence from candidates to subsequently validate an unmatched signature, but the board did not abuse its discretion by choosing not to consider Porteous’ submissions, the opinion stated.

Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy and Justices Patrick F. Fischer, R. Patrick DeWine, Joseph T. Deters, Daniel R. Hawkins, and Megan E. Shanahan joined the opinion. Justice Jennifer Brunner did not participate in the case.

Candidate Sought To Validate Rejected Signatures
Porteous filed his declaration of candidacy on Feb. 3, asking that he be named a city council candidate in the May 6 primary. He submitted 332 signatures. On Feb. 14, the board notified Porteous that his petitions had 230 valid signatures, short of the 250 required. The same day, he asked the board by email to reconsider the decision and that he would get 20 valid signatures.

The board did not respond, and on Feb. 27, Porteous sent the board another email, this time writing that he believed several signatures had been wrongly invalidated. He said he was prepared to provide proof that the signers were valid registered voters, but he did not present any proof with his email. The board director rejected the request, and Porteous asked the board to conduct a public meeting to reconsider the signatures where he could present supporting information indicating some valid signatures were improperly invalidated. The director rejected that request.

The next day, Porteous hand-delivered a letter to the board asking for reconsideration. He attached 22 written statements, titled “affidavits,” in which each person whose signature was struck as “not genuine” allegedly confirmed that they signed Porteous’ petition. The board noted that it did strike 21 of the 22 signatures he presented as not genuine.

After the board again declined to reconsider, Porteous sought a writ of mandamus from the Supreme Court to order the board to place him on the ballot or for the board to conduct a public meeting to review the signatures.

Supreme Court Analyzed Signature Law
The Court explained that to prevail, Porteous had to prove that the board abused its discretion or clearly disregarded state law when it invalidated the signatures. The opinion noted that the law requires the board to declare signatures on a candidate’s petition not to be genuine if they do not match the signatures in the voters’ records.  This board, the opinion said, declared these 21 signatures were not genuine by comparing the signatures on the petition to “all signatures on file” with the board.

Porteous did not dispute that the signatures he submitted did not match the signatures on file. But he argued the board’s job is to verify the signers are eligible to sign the petition and can use other means than the signature on file to validate them. Because he had another means, the unsworn statements, the board should verify the 21 signatures it struck, giving him 251 valid signatures, one more than needed to be on the ballot, he argued.

The opinion noted that some boards have chosen to verify the authenticity of signatures that do not match the signatures on files by accepting other evidence, such as sworn statements and even unsworn statements or testimony from petition signatures. If a board does accept the evidence and determines the signatures are valid, it cannot ignore the evidence, the opinion stated.

In this case, Porteous’s statements were not notarized and so they were unsworn statements. Despite the statements being unsworn, Porteous expected the Court or the board to compare the signatures on the statements with the signatures on the petition and with the voter registration records to ”bridge the gap between the initial signatures on his petition and the voter-registration records,” the Court noted.

The Court stated the board is under no legal obligation to make this second comparison, but can choose to if it wishes. It noted there have been cases where a candidate provided a notarized statement that indicated a single discarded signature was valid, and a board was directed to accept the signature. However, Porteous is asking for something different — to review more than 20 unsworn submissions, the opinion stated.

“The unsworn statements Porteous presented are not enough to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the board abused its discretion when it found the signatures to be inauthentic,” the Court stated.

The Court also noted that for the Court to order a hearing, Porteous must cite a law that requires the board to grant him a hearing, and he did not. The opinion noted that a recent case found there is no such duty in state law for the boards to provide a hearing over disregarded signatures.

2025-0354. State ex rel. Porteous v. Franklin Cty. Bd. of Elections, Slip Opinion No. 2025-Ohio-939.

Please note: Opinion summaries are prepared by the Office of Public Information for the general public and news media. Opinion summaries are not prepared for every opinion, but only for noteworthy cases. Opinion summaries are not to be considered as official headnotes or syllabi of court opinions. The full text of this and other court opinions are available online.

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