Aaron Estabrook announced he will “move ahead full-throttle” into a write-in campaign for the District 1 seat of the Riley County Commission on Monday night. He is competing against Republican John Ford, who will be the sole candidate on the November ballot for the seat.
Estabrook entered a petition as an Independent candidate, but had his petition rejected last week. Estabrook said 195 of the signatures he collected were thrown out, bringing him to 320 accepted petition signatures – short of the 408 required to be included on the November ballot.
In Estabrook’s announcement posted on Facebook, he said 88 thrown out signatures were from people not registered to vote in the district he was running in. Estabrook also wrote that those 88 were “the exact number needed to be placed on the November ballot.”
“District 1 is heavily populated with students, soldiers, and young families that are more transient than other groups and this may explain some of the discrepancies with the address of registered voters currently living in District 1 but registered elsewhere,” Estabrook wrote in his statement.
Estabrook criticized the laws regulating the inclusion of independent candidates on the ballot as “ridiculously demanding.
“Partisan candidates can buy ballot access for $150 but Independents have to work tirelessly and then cross their fingers that people updated their voter registration.”
Riley County Clerk Rich Vargo told KMAN that some additional signatures thrown out were duplicate signatures on Estabrook’s petition and some of the names, addresses and signatures were illegible and thus could not be counted.
