The Ohio Supreme Court is allowing an Athens County woman to run for office after previously being barred from doing so.
That decision comes after the Athens County Board of Elections unanimously voted to protest Katie O’Neill’s candidacy because she had not lived in the district for a year before the election, which is state law, according to the Supreme Court of Ohio.
She was also not a registered voter in Athens County when she started circulating her petitions.
While she lived at multiple addresses in a year before the election, she had moved into a friend’s home in Athens County, which would be a year before the election.
O’Neill graduated from Ohio University in 2013 and then moved to Vermont to attend law school. She had to move out of her house because it had been struck by lightning. She then moved in with her parents in Geauga County, where she temporarily forwarded her mail.
O’Neill then used her parents address to register to vote in Geauga County. She looked for a job in Athens County and stayed with a friend while she looked for housing.
In November 2019, O’Neill signed declarations for candidacy and began collecting signatures to run for the Democratic nomination to the 94th Ohio House District, which covers all of Athens and Meigs counties and parts of Washington and Vinton counties.
O’Neill did update her voter registration to her Athens County address in early December.
In mid-December, O’Neill filed her petition, which had 142 signatures, but the Board of Elections did not check the validity of the signatures.
Keith Allen Monk, a registered Democrat and resident of the 94th District, then filed a protest against O’Neill’s candidacy. The Board of Elections held a protest hearing and unanimously voted for her to be barred from running.
