Former congressman and convicted felon Jim Traficant is not going down without a fight.
Traficant is appealing the Trumbull County Board's decision to throw him off the November ballot because he did not have enough valid signatures.
"He feels there is something wrong somewhere," said Linda Kovachik, campaign spokesperson. "He feels that and as we checked over everything we are finding a lot of mistakes and we are wondering ourselves. We are not balming anyone at this time. We just want to make it right."
Kovalchik and the Rev. Werner Lange showed up at the Trumbull County Board of Elections Thursday morning and filed a five-page appeal on Traficant's behalf.
The appeal says Traficant's campaign believes the elections board improperly invalidated 250 signatures. The appeal was made after the Summit County Board of Elections confirmed the number it gave the campaign was off by around 3,000 votes.
And Mahoning County elections officials already admitted their figures were off by 1,500.
Now, the Trumbull County Board of Elections will hold a meeting on the appeal in a week. They could have an answer as to whether Traficant can run on the ballot in a month.
"If we fail to get Jim Traficant on the ballot, we will have faield as public officials to do the right thing," said Lange. "It is the will of the people versus the politcal machines."
Traficant did not show up at the board of elections and was not at his home in Poland Thursday afternoon.
Traficant's supporters said he does want to run and will talk to the media soon. They said a fundraiser will be held for him at 2 p.m. Saturday at PaPa's Sports Bar on Poland Avenue.
Traficant was disqualified after he failed to produce the 2,199 signatures necessary to run as an independent candidate. Elections officials said he only turned in 2,092 valid signatures.
By law, Traficant needed to collect enough signatures to equal one percent of the total number of votes for governor during the last election in 2006. Traficant was set to run in the 17th District against Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan and Republican challenger James Graham.
