Questions Arise Over East Aurora Board Winner's Eligibility

One week ago, 980 voters in the East Aurora School District chose to represent them on the school board. It may not be Fultz, however, who joins that board next month, if board attorneys determine she was not a registered voter at the time of the election.

Fultz, 45, a longtime community activist in Aurora, received the second-highest vote total of the seven East Aurora board candidates. She finished behind and ahead of , both of whom also won seats on the board.

But in order to take those seats, winners have to meet a series of criteria. Among them: they must have lived in the district for one year, and they must be registered voters when the polls open. And though Fultz is registered to vote in Aurora now, it's April 5 that counts.

“We are still investigating,” said East Aurora School Board President Annette Johnson. “But from what I can tell, she was not a registered voter at the time of the election."

Records provided by the Aurora Election Commission and the Kane County Clerk’s Office seem to indicate the same thing. According to Linda Fechner, executive director of the AEC, Fultz had been registered to vote at her home on Kane Street since 1984, but canceled that registration in 2006 after she moved to North Aurora.

Linda Mitchell, director of elections in Kane County, said Fultz did register to vote in North Aurora in August 2006, and she voted in the November election that year. Fultz also voted in the primary election in 2008.

But in April 2008, the clerk’s office conducted what they call a purge of their voter database, to remove inactive voters from the rolls. Every two years, Mitchell said, the office sends cards to voters, to make sure they are still at the same address. If those cards are returned by the post office, the voters’ registrations are suspended.

That, Mitchell said, is what happened to Fultz. Her voter card was returned with a forwarding address: the Kane Street home in Aurora that Fultz once called home. (Her mother still lives there.)

Fultz’s Kane County registration was suspended in April 2008, Mitchell said. However, Fultz voted in Kane County in the November election that year, a fact for which Mitchell has no explanation.

“She should not have done so,” Mitchell said. “It could have been a judge’s error. The suspended status was missed.”

According to statements she made during the campaign, Fultz moved back to Aurora in February 2010. Her current address is on Serendipity Lane, but Fechner said she has no record of any voters at that address.

When she announced her candidacy for the school board, Fultz did have to sign a disclosure agreement stating she met the requirements. But Johnson said the school district does not usually verify whether candidates are registered voters.

On March 31, five days before the election, Fultz went to the Aurora Election Commission office on Galena Boulevard to vote, according to records provided by the AEC. She was told then that her Aurora registration had been canceled, according to those records.

And since the grace period for registering had ended March 29, Fultz was not allowed to vote in last Tuesday’s election.

Fultz said she is aware of the investigation but offered no further comment Monday.

Johnson said the school board began investigating the matter after receiving a call on election night from “someone at the Aurora Election Commission.” (Fechner said no one from her office made such a call.) She said Fultz has to provide paperwork to prove she was, in fact, eligible to serve on the school board at the time of the election.

If she can’t, Johnson said, she will not be seated May 2 with the rest of the winners of Tuesday’s election. The board will publish that seat as an open one, and take applications for the next 10 days. Then the board will appoint someone to the seat.  

“I wish it had turned out differently,” Johnson said. “I wish the voters were making the choice, not the board.”

Johnson said the school board’s attorney, Bernard Weiler, would likely have more information on a course of action later this week.