Stancil on Carolyn Cosby Petition: "We Are Abiding By The Law"

"We are still in the middle of the process," Stancil said. "We are not finished and we are abiding by the law, which says that there is no specific time frame. We started the day she filed (it) and we’ve worked continuously on it."

In press releases issued this week, Cosby has accused Stancil of "discriminating against me by putting the needs of a Libertarian male candidate ahead of a female former TEA Party leader."

Stancil said the process of signature verification process for Cosby is different from the process laid out for Amason. For Amason, who is running for a state office, the local elections office had to have his petition verified within two weeks of receiving it.

That deadline was Tuesday, July 22. 

Amason, who said he collected over 2,700 signatures, submitted his petition to the Georgia Secretary of State's Office on July 8 — the same day Cosby submitted her petition to the local office. 

State election rules dictate Amason, as well as any third-party or independent candidate, must get 5 percent of signatures from registered voters in the district who were eligible to vote in 2012.

"We were working on his at the same time as we were working on Mrs. Cosby's," Stancil said, adding Cosby's petition has about 5,000 more signatures than Amason's. 

Stancil stated the state sets no such guidelines for Cosby, but thought her self-imposed Aug. 1 deadline "was a pretty generous date."

Cosby isn't buying that reasoning, however. In a press release issued on Wednesday, she and her attorney Channing Ruskell demanded Stancil confirm the status of the petition verification process. 

Ruskell also said he sent a letter to Elections Board Chair Randy Gravley requesting he intervene to force Stancil to "expeditiously verify the signatures" on the petition. 

Ruskell states "ridiculous and illegal" for there to be one deadline for Amason, but no concrete deadline for his client. 

"If you continue to treat my client, a woman and former local Tea Party leader differently than you have treated a male Libertarian candidate, we will have no choice but to legally defend her rights under our Constitution to the limits allowed under the law," he concluded. 

Cosby, who recently qualified to run for the county commission chair position, has been criticized by many residents who've questioned the tactics utilized by her supporters in their efforts to gain petition signatures. 

One resident has also filed an ethics complaint against Cosby, alleging she failed to register with the state agency two organizations she's created for political purposes.

Earlier this year, she was booted from the Canton Post Office after she was told it was illegal to collect signatures for a petition on United States Postal Service grounds, which forced her to move her campaign to the Tax Commissioner's Canton and Woodstock offices.