CIRCLEVILLE — Members of Madison Township have written a letter to Judy Wolford, Pickaway County Prosecutor, in the hopes that she’d review the Board of Elections’ decision to remove a ballot initiative from the May Primary Election.
Earlier this year the Pickaway County Board of Elections voted to uphold a protest and remove a referendum from the ballot in Madison Township.
The referendum was created by residents that wanted a chance to vote to reverse a decision made by the Madison Township Trustees to re-zone land for warehouses along Airbase Road and Walnut Creek Pike. It would have appeared on the ballot during the May primary election had it not been removed.
Organizers of the protest called for it to be thrown out citing issues with the referendum including a map, inaccurate acreage numbers and concerns that the petition people signed was drawn up before the Trustees even voted on the matter.
A public hearing was held on Dec. 21 at 9 a.m. for about an hour in which witnesses from both sides of the argument were called and the public spoke to the board stating their position. Following that meeting the board met in executive session for 35 minutes and decided to “continue to review information” and met again on Jan. 4 at 9 a.m. to make a motion on the issue.
The board then moved to uphold the protest and remove the referendum from the ballot, by a vote of 3 to 1. Karen Bensonhaver, Fred Mavis, and David Winner all voted yes with Susan Welsh being the lone dissenting vote.
“After a thorough review of the issue, and in consultation with our legal counsel, this is the decision we have reached,” Winner, board chairman, said in a statement.
After that hearing, Ross LaRue, drafted and sent a letter to Wolford outlining their points.
“This correspondence is to inform you that the protest filed by representatives of the Scarbrough Farms FLP. to the Pickaway County Board of Elections on November 23, 2022 appears to be fraudulent, misleading and as a result possibly unlawful,” LaRue wrote.
LaRue outline several statements he believed to be misleading as well as maps he believes were suppose to be used for discussion purposes and are not full and correct but were nonetheless approved by the trustees as part of the zoning change.
“It was discovered the map they claim as inaccurate (Exhibit E, the map rendered invalid by the Board of Elections), was in fact the same map found in both packet presented to the Township trustees as part of the zoning application as well as the sole map sent to the Pickaway County Office of Development and Planning and further approved by the Pickaway County Planning Commission,” LaRue wrote. “In fact, the only time the new map (Exhibit D, protest letter) has ever been presumed to have been viewed is during the protest filed with the Pickaway County Board of Elections. There is no evidence that the Exhibit D Map has ever been viewed by the Township Rural Zoning Commission, the Township Trustees, or the Office of Development and Planning or the Pickaway County Planning Commission. There is, however, more than sufficient physical evidence as well as sworn testimony to prove otherwise. It should be noted that Exhibit E supplements the original zoning application as it is used in all official approval after approval by the zoning commission and was used by the trustees for county approval.”
LaRue then called for Wolford to urge the Township and the Board of Elections to terminate the application.
“Considering the information above, we request you, as legal counsel for both the Township and Board of Elections, terminate the zoning application in its entirety. If the developers and landowners wish to reapply then they would be well within their rights to do so. However since the correct map was not filed with the Township-or County for that matter, the entire application should be null and void.”
Before closing his litter, LaRue asked about who he should report the “offenses of falsification, obstruction of official business and perjury against the individuals that provided the false information to the Board of Elections.
However it doesn’t seem like the letter holds any sway.
“The Board of Elections made a decision and this office will defend them should there be a potential appeal of their decision,” Wolford said via email.
Following the meeting Wednesday, proponents of the referendum said they’d look into their next steps and continue working to stop the development.
Following the decision on Jan. 4, LaRue said he and other residents were disappointed in the result and that is what lead them to pursue additional steps including writing this letter.
“We feel it’s a little bit of voter suppression because it’s big money trying to argue technicalities to prevent the voters in this township to have the right to vote on an issue,” he said. “This just prevents them from having that right and to have a say yes or no.”
LaRue said he felt the “questionable technicalities” were things a normal lay person would not know.
“This is a citizen driven petition and we feel it’s a biased system,” he said. “We’d liked to have the board of election provide us some additional rational for their vote but we’ve not been given that and we probably never will.”
