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Magati likely to remain on Buffalo Grove ballot

A Buffalo Grove electoral board, in a preliminary ruling Wednesday, said trustee candidate Gowri Magati can remain on the ballot in April, even after it threw out five pages of improperly collected signatures.

Former Trustee Jeffrey Berman, the objector to Magati's nominating petition, called witnesses, including Magati and one of the petition circulators, and produced affidavits to support his claim that Magati had committed fraud.

The board agreed that Magati had committed fraud by having a Facebook friend circulate one page that she signed later. But the board rejected Berman's claim that it showed a pattern of fraud that warranted tossing the entire petition.

They also threw out four pages of signatures that Magati signed as circulator even though someone else had collected the names.

Magati testified that in one case a signer "has a really critical medical condition, I was told, so I cannot go inside. I have to stay outside."

Magati's attorney, Matthew Flamm, said Magati attested the signatures were signed "in my presence. What does that mean?" It could mean, he said, that if he had left an unsigned petition in another room and then came back to find his wife had signed it, that would be signing in his presence.

But Berman argued Magati was required by law to witness the signatures.

"It is not enough that she is next door, that she could have seen it, that she was in the general vicinity, that she was across the street, that she was somehow sharing the burden of going door to door," he said.

The board also said Berman did not provide enough evidence to bolster his claims that Magati's petition was riddled with signatures of nonregistered voters, duplicate signatures and signatures that did not match voting records.

Berman said afterward that the board had denied certain evidence that would have advanced the fraud claim.

"It's unfortunate that the preliminary rulings prevented me from presenting a full case," he said.

The electoral board will meet Friday morning to render a final decision.

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