Brookfield man tells Supreme Court 'arithmetic error' kept him off trustee ballot

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A Brookfield man is asking the Ohio Supreme Court to get him a spot as a candidate for township trustee on the November ballot.
In a complaint filed with the state’s high court, Mark Ferrara says the Trumbull County Board of Elections has refused to give him a spot on the ballot because of what he calls an “inadvertent arithmetic error”.
Ferrara says he submitted a two-part petition, one with twenty signatures and a second petition with 17 signatures. On the second petition, Ferrara says he accidentally stated that he had 16 instead of 17 signatures.
Although Ferrara says although he has seven more signatures than the 25 needed to get on the ballot, the Board of Elections rejected his petitions because he miscounted the number of names on the one petition.
Claiming that there is no evidence of fraud on his part, Ferrara alleges that election officials also refused to conduct a hearing to reconsider its decision.
The Supreme Court has given the Board of Elections until Friday to answer Ferrara’s complaint.