The World Around You

Jamel Brown is being very vocal about how unfair the process for qualifying to be a mayoral candidate in Montgomery is to young candidates. Based on the reporting, I would argue the bias is towards procrastinators.

The main thing is that candi­dates got the required name, ad­dress and signature, Granger said. The date of birth option is there for when two or more peo­ple with the same name live at the same residence, Granger added.

“That’s been our practice. When you think about the vol­ume that we have to verify, you can’t start looking behind what the petitioner meant,” Granger said.

All three young would-be candidates — Brown, Knight and 28-year-old Byron Berry — waited until shortly before the final deadline to submit their qualifying papers.

Granger said that some of the candidates who qualified actual­ly had the same issue but since they submitted the paperwork earlier, they had enough time left to find more signatures that could be validated.

The bottom line is there has to be a deadline and they have to be able to easily verify the signatures. If you didn’t collect enough names to give you a cushion for those that election officials couldn’t easily verify, you’re out of luck.

I applaud Byron Berry for taking that stand as third candidate who was unable to qualify and do hope he looks at running for office in the future.

Mayoral hopefuls may turn to courts | montgomeryadvertiser.com | Montgomery Advertiser.