Former 13th City Council candidate Victor Ortiz (pictured above in the white shirt and gold tie) was knocked off the ballot when his petition was challenged, and after the Board of Elections had ruled in favor of his challenger Ms. Rebecca Chant. The Specifications of the objection had taken the approx. 1,500 signatures handed in by candidate Ortiz to below the needed 450 valid signatures. The only way to get back on the ballot was for Mr. Ortiz to go to court to Validate his petition which would possibly change enough of The Board of Elections rulings to make Mr. Ortiz, candidate Victor Ortiz again.
After getting a Petition to Validate, and some very hard work by Mr. Victor Ortiz he had proven to the court that he had found more than enough signatures that were ruled invalid by the Board of Elections to be valid signatures. This is not uncommon as this is the way used to get back on the ballot by candidates who feel they did meet the minimum required number of signatures.
There is also a process called Petition to Invalidate when a challenger believes that there may have been signatures ruled valid, but that the Board of Elections does not rule on certain items which can be similar hand writing, and varying degrees of fraud. That was not the case here as there was no Petition to Invalidate against Mr. Ortiz's petition.
Congratulations to Mr. Victor Ortiz for being reinstated to the ballot for the September 12th Democratic primary. There are still several questions to be answered such as why Ms. Chant challenged Mr. Ortiz's petition, and if the other candidate Alex Gomez that was knocked off by Ms. Chant is to be also returned to the ballot or not.
