From the "Let PB Decide" web site: A letter from an attorney at the Eastern Missouri division of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) was sent to Wally Duncan, City Attorney, demanding that the petition be certified because Mr. Duncan had mis-read and mis-applied the Missouri statutes. Grant Doty, ACLU attorney, notes that only 609 signatures are necessary to file a petition:
At 3:59pm today, the Open Access Petition group submitted 1,195 new signatures collected over the past 10 days. That is TWO MORE than the 1193 voters the city disenfranchised by invalidating their signatures on Nov 17th. The total number of signatures gathered from both drives is 4,633. Because people were required to sign again, there are now duplicate signatures in the petition.
As soon as your Thanksgiving time is complete, LetPBDecide.com need your help. Please go to our List of Invalidated Signatures and look for anyone you know. Contact them and have them call us at 686-1124 and leave their name & phone number...we will arrange to have a driver come to them to resign the petition. If you don't think they will mind, you can call us and leave their information. Use Facebook, use twitter, use Google, the phone book...whatever way you can to get this message out there for us. Thanks, Brian
Becker was asked about being removed from the City Council meeting on November 21st, “I apologized to the mayor for speaking out of turn, but my wife, Toni, told the Council that each of her petition signatures were stapled to the full page of text of the petition. Mr Duncan said he didn’t know that to be true. He kept parsing words, saying my wife lied, and then repeatedly and condescendingly would say ‘‘I’m not calling you a liar.’ In my frustration I defended my wife and the City Manager kicked me out.”
Brian Becker, owner of SEMO.net, filed a lawsuit in Butler County on Friday asking the courts to uphold the rights of 1193 Poplar Bluff citizens who signed the petition but had their names invalidated by the City Clerk and CIty Attorney. The City Attorney wrote in a letter dated November 17, that the City Clerk had invalidated over signatures because the full text of the ordinance was not on every page of signatures. The suit alleges that the state statues “requires that signature pages be attached to such a copy of the full correct text of the petition. Mr. Becker complied with this requirement as indicated by staple holes in the various pages. They were separated only for the purposed
