Petition Submitted

On Wednesday June 20th, 2007 The Committee to Recall Ellen Ritchie submitted its petition to the Franklin Township clerk. The petition contained 1859 signatures far exceeding the required 1512. The Township clerk has 10 business days to check the petition and determine if there are sufficient valid signatures. If she determines that there are enough valid signatures then Ms. Ritchie has five days to resign and ten days to appeal.

Assuming she does not resign then there will be an election in about 2-3 months. The ballot will have two questions. 1) Should Ellen Ritchie be recalled from the Township Council? and 2) Who shall replace her?

The Recall of Ms. Ritchie was initiated because in pursuit of an ill conceived development that would significantly increase traffic on Rt. 27 and lead to increased taxes Ms. Ritchie

1. Without regard to standard ethical protocols meet privately with the developer.
2. Betrayed the public trust by attempting to keep the meeting a secret.
3. Threatened planning board member Dr. Michael Orsini's political career if he didn't vote for the plan.
4. Lied repeatedly and publicly about the threat.

In short she put the interests of the developer/campaign contributor before those of the township.

1. To put 1859 into perspective when Ms. Ritchie ran for office she received 1660 votes.
2. We expect that some signatures will be thrown out but we are certain that because we collected the signatures in good faith in accordance with the law that we have sufficient buffer to overcome technical errors.
3. Roughly 80% of those we spoke to signed the petition. All were told that this was the petition to recall Ellen Ritchie.

This was a grass roots movement that included Democrats, Republicans and Independents. In general no one asked or cared about anyone else's party affiliation. Actually one benefit of the process is that many people from competing parties had the opportunity to work together and become friends.

1. The recall process is anti-democratic. Wrong - To the contrary, it involves people at the most basic level of government, people getting out and talking to people. The desire of the people overriding a wrong of an elected official is exactly what democracy is about. It is a reminder to all politicians that the people MUST come before special interests.
2. Requiring ONLY 25% of the voters to sign the petition is too low of a hurdle. Anyone who has said that hasn't participated in a recall. Ms. Ritchie's biggest ally was not her supporters but simply people not being home. We often had to go back to a home 3 or 4 times to get to talk to the voters. Another problem is that the voter list is bloated with the names of people that have moved out of town. Each one of these was essentially a vote for Ms. Ritchie. In addition since the number of signatures required is dependant on the number of register voters living in the third ward our target of 1512 was artificially elevated. We believe that a more accurate goal should have been well under 1350.

1. Ms. Ritchie has stated that she has talked to her constituency and they think the recall is disgusting. We talked to about 2300 people and over 1800 signed.
2. Ms. Ritchie now claims that the rude comments she made to Dr. Orsini when she threatened him would have been overlooked if she were a man. Clearly she still doesn't understand that it is not the words but the threat and the lie denying the threat that are the offenses. She flips in her explanations constantly but now by using the defense of gender discrimination it appears to us to indicate that she believes her action was justified.
3. Ms. Ritchie now claims that there was nothing wrong with her meeting in private with the developer Jack Morris prior to her voting on it at the planning board. If this is the case why did she try to hide that she had met with him.
4. Ms. Ritchie continues to claim that this is about her efforts to bring affordable housing to the Township. She ignores the fact that state law mandated that we provide affordable housing. Thus it was going to happen no matter what. The debate was over where it should go and if her campaign contributor Jack Morris would profit.
5. Ms. Ritchie said some people she spoke to "had no idea what they were signing." If that's the case then why after talking to Ms. Ritchie didn't they call us and ask that their name be taken off of the petition. Not a single person has contacted us to tell us to take their name off of the petition or complain that they we deceived.

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