Request By:
Ms. Loretta Girten
P.O. Box 623
Uniontown, Kentucky 42461
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in answer to your letter of September 20 in which you present the following questions with respect to a candidate for the office of city council in a city of the fifth class where at the time the candidate filed his petition, he did not own any property within the city:
"1. If Mr. Brown obtains property within the City limits before the day of election, and if he should win his seat on the Council, will he be qualified.
"2. Is it up to the County Clerk to check a Petition to see that the signers are legally registered voters? If not, are the Petitioners permitted to check the registration books to make sure all signers are qualified to vote?
"3. Is it improper for a spouse to sign a Petition?"
Our response to your initial question would be in the affirmative as held in OAG 73-786 and OAG 75-782. These opinions point out that KRS 87.160 requires that candidates for city council be property owners at the time they take office, and if they do so, they comply with the requirements of said statute as held in the case of Kirkpatrick v. Brownfield, 97 Ky. 558, 31 S.W. 137 (1895).
In response to your second question, the county clerk is required to accept a petition if it is regular on its face and contains the required number of signatures. He is not required to check the registration of the signers of the petition unless requested to do so. For your information we are enclosing a copy of OAG 68-502 covering this subject. Certainly a petitioner who has signed the petition, or any interested person, is entitled to check the registration records against the signatures on the petition, as such petition is a public record.
The answer to your third question as to whether or not a spouse of a candidate is entitled to sign his petition would be in the affirmative if she is registered, since she is entitled to vote for him.