Why did the Orleans Parish Registrar of Voters reject some 30,000 signatures submitted by the campaign to recall New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell? Because many were either duplicate signatures, illegible, or even a list of names of cartoon characters.
"Our supplemental list seems to be a duplicate, a complete duplicate, of the original," said Danielle Duplessis-Hammond, chief deputy in the registrar's office, referring to the list of names brought in by recall organizers in the five-day period after the February 22 deadline that allows for voters to add or remove their names.
Recall vice chair Eileen Carter doesn't dispute that.
"The second batch was, partially, a full copy of everything that we had," said Carter.
But Carter disputes the notion that there were that many duplicates handed in.
"We handed in approximately 100,000 signatures. That's what we handed in. And we have backup to prove it."
Duplessis-Hammond said one sheet of signatures was a list of mainly Disney or other cartoon characters.
"Minnie Mouse, Mickey Mouse, Princess Tiana, Shrek, Goofy D, Doc Dwarf, Bashful, Happy Dwarf, Sleeping Beauty, Donald Duck, Princess Charming, Fred Flintstone, Scooby Doo, and Barney Rubble," she listed.
Duplessis-Hammond said another petition was full of profanity, which she declined to read out loud.
Carter says they were dealing with thousands of sheets of paper and rushing to get them turned in on time, so of course some errors were bound to happen.
Registrar Sandra Wilson said the process of going through thousands of pages to verify or reject tens of thousands of signatures was time-consuming and made it very difficult to handle other duties of the registrar's office, but she believed it was important to go through it all. She also said the recall rules need to be refined to make thing clearer.
"I think that, probably at the legislative level, there should be a lot of conversations as to this process," said Wilson.
