Fayette Circuit Judge Gary Payne must believe in fairies.
That is about as reasonable an explanation as I can come up with for why Payne would unilaterally change a local election law today pertaining to the collection of candidate petition signatures. The law in question, when applied to any city council candidate other than Mayor Isaac's pal Julian Beard, requires 100 petition signatures for a candidate's name to be on the ballot. Signatures appearing also on opposing candidates' petitions are not counted and no one has had a problem with this for the last three decades.
That all changed because Beard's petition for this year's race, minus duplicate signatures, left him with less than 100 names and, therefore, not legally eligible to run.
His own personal shortcomings should be sufficient to keep him from winning election anyway, but Beard is now "legally" on the ballot to face businessman Bill Roberts in the 4th district council race.
