I wholeheartedly agree with a recent letter writer, Jacob Morgan, regarding the candidacy of Michael Hennessy for Oneida County executive. Hennessy submitted a designating petition to get his name put on a primary ballot to offer residents a choice for county executive.

In this time when term limits are an important issue, we should be happy when someone is willing to put their life on hold to run for public office.

However, Hennessy’s designating petitions were unjustly ruled inadequate by the powers that be — and an article in Thursday’s Daily Sentinel reports that a judge ruled against Hennessy’s efforts to have them reinstated.

Challengers to the petitions say they had gone over 585 signatures in 10 minutes. I find it highly unlikely that 585 could be individually verified in 10 minutes.

This is highly arbitrary and capricious.

Names were thrown out on the petitions because it was said some had wrong addresses, but Hennessy has shown the addresses of signers are correct. Others are being challenged with claims they are from the wrong party, and again Hennessy proves them to be from the correct party. There are also other challenges to signatures, many of which I believe have proven again to be false challenges.

This is not unusual. They did this to me back in the 1980s when people simply desired to vote on the Off Track Betting issue and filed a sufficient referendum petition. We had to sue the county over improperly invalidated names on the petition. Apparently, times haven’t changed much since then; what happened to us then is happening with Hennessy’s petition now.

When an incumbent, or someone acting on his behalf, challenges designating petitions by invalidating otherwise valid signatures, I see that as a message that the incumbent admits the challenger is a good choice and that the incumbent could easily be unseated by the people if given the choice. It also makes one question the honesty of the incumbent. Sorry, but that is how it looks to me when names are eliminated for no valid reason.

Maybe those petitions should be submitted to a third disinterested party instead.

It is the “right of the people to petition their government shall not be abridged.” I see invalidating these signatures to be such an abridgment. Regardless of what I may have thought of the incumbent, this ‘abridgment’ is distasteful, if not unconstitutional.

— Mary LaClair, Vernon