SIDNEY — The decision stands. Sidney Mayor Michael Barhorst will remain on the Nov. 3 ballot for Sidney City Council.

The Third District Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the judgment made by the Shelby County Common Pleas Court will stand.

Barhorst filed the original suit, seeking a court order to certify his nominating petition and statement of candidacy, on Aug. 21 in response to a ruling made earlier that week by the Shelby County Board of Elections rejecting his nominating petition.

In the common pleas courts conclusion made on Sept. 10, it states, “The court is required to give deference to the Board’s decisions on election matters. However, in this case all the Board apparently did was look at the number of lines on the petition that were filled out and compared that to the number cited by Barhorst in his certificate without any regard to what a line contained.”

The board didn’t certify his petition because “the Circulator Statement indicated the number of signatures witnessed but contained more signatures appearing on the petition. … A circulator cannot witness fewer signatures than what appears on the petition.”

In Barhorst’s suit it said, “Barhorst, however, accurately represented that the petition contained 29, rather than 30 signatures, since one of the signers of the petition both printed and signed his name as permitted” by an Ohio Supreme Court case.

The board denied this allegation along with saying that Barhorst relied on outdated case law. The board’s position was that Barhorst should have stricken the printed name from the petition.

On Thursday, Sept. 24, the board of elections released a statement saying, “they gave proper notice that it will appeal to the Third District Court of Appeals the decision/order the Common Pleas Trial Court made on Sept. 10, 2015.”

The decision made Wednesday by the appeals court reads, “Since the trial court did not abuse its discretion in determining that Line 16 did not contain a signature, the trial court correctly determined that the part-petition contained the same number of signatures as were indicated by the circulator.”

It continued, “Thus, the trial court correctly determined that the board then abused its discretion by invalidating the entire part-petition. Instead, the board was required to review the individual signatures for … validity and determine whether Barhorst had enough valid signatures to be placed on the ballot.”

This is what the trial court ordered the board to do in the writ of mandamus. Since the writ complies with the law, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in issuing the writ of mandamus, the appeals decision said.

“The board has begun to review the Third District decision confirming that Judge Stevenson did not abuse his authority in this matter. The board will confer with our counsel over the next few days. I expect we will issue a comprehensive statement on the issue soon in an effort to keep voters informed. For now, ballots will remain as directed by the local trial court,” Christopher Gibbs, chairperson of the Shelby County Board of Elections, said.

Barhorst was not able to be reached for comment by press time Thursday.