Public Comment: Disqualified Signatures On Jones Borrowing Petition Are A Voting Rights Issue

The following public comment was made at the meeting of the Amherst Town Council on May 3, 2021.

I am speaking tonight in support of a thorough review of the certification process of the recent petition by Amherst voters. This resulted in the erroneous rejection of dozens of signatures of registered voters.   The subject of the petition is irrelevant to the issue at hand. The particular ask of a petition may make you furious, it may make you ecstatic, or you could give not a wit about it one way or another.  The issue here is that a petition had numerous signatures rejected in error and this resulted in that petition being denied.  The petitioners have asked the appropriate bodies to review those rejections and correct these mistakes. 

Whatever one thinks or wants, relative to the subject of the petition, we should all be concerned when people are disenfranchised. It is not only the individuals whose signatures were rejected in error who were affected. Every person who signed the petition was negatively impacted when the petition was erroneously not certified. If not rectified, every resident in Town will have been denied their right to vote.