Superior Court Judge Reinstates Some Signatures in Recall Bid

COURT HOUSE – The committee that has been making an effort to recall Wildwood Mayor Ernie Troiano Jr. and Commissioner Bill Davenport did have a number of signatures reinstated by Superior Court Judge Raymond Batten on June 17.
However, the judge’s decision, which is part of an ongoing legal battle over the petition, was not enough to change the outcome of the effort to recall Troiano and Davenport.
Batten ruled that the number of signatures that the recall committee needed was 697. That number has been contested because City Clerk Chris Wood had initially told the recall committees they needed 615 signatures to move ahead with a recall, but he later learned that the number was actually 697, or 25 percent of the 2,788 voters registered at the time of the November 2007 general election.
Batten also ruled that voters that did not check a particular box on the petition did not mean that their vote couldn’t be counted. He also decided to reinstate the signatures that were stricken after undated certification that those signatures were garnered fraudulently.
About 30 people also submitted certifications asking that their names be removed from the petitions because they said they were tricked into signing them.
Batten found that Wood also did not have the authority to strike the entire petition collected by a resident who was reinstated as eligible to vote. That nonresident issue, in particular, revolves around the case of property owner Kathleen McCullough.
The recall effort began last year, largely as a reaction to the city’s high property-tax rate, and on May 19 the recall committees submitted what they believed were more than enough signatures to warrant a recall election, but on June 3, Wood, who also serves as the recall election official, found the petitions were void because they contained invalid signatures.