3 Disqualified in City Council Race : Burbank: The would-be candidates fell “one or two” signatures short of the 50 they were required to submit by Dec. 20.

Three candidates for Burbank City Council were disqualified Friday because they had failed to obtain enough signatures of registered voters in their applications for candidacy, officials said.

Ed Tarandek, Mark Chotiner and Jim Torp will be removed from the ballot for the Feb. 26 municipal election, said Assistant City Clerk Marge Lauerman. Twelve candidates qualified for the ballot.

All three candidates fell “one or two” signatures short of the 50 they were required to submit by Dec. 20, Lauerman said.

“One or two signatures of all three of these candidates were from people who were either not registered to vote at all, or were not registered as a Burbank resident,” Lauerman said.

She added that she could not recall these kinds of irregularities in previous municipal elections.

Tarandek, 24, a political science senior at Cal State Northridge, and Chotiner, 22, a speech communications senior at the same university, were on a cross-country driving vacation when they heard the news. The pair had planned to run as a team and had said the main objective of their campaign was to encourage people to vote. They had been talking about running for the past four years, saying that they felt Burbank was rampant with voter apathy.

“We’re not too thrilled right now,” Tarandek said. “We’re going to try and appeal this, but it doesn’t look good.”

The students had started collecting signatures just four days before the deadline. They said they had been too occupied with final exams to collect names before then.

Torp, an electrical contractor who was running for council for the first time, could not be reached for comment.

Lauerman said there were no similar qualification problems for eight candidates who are vying for three seats on the Burbank school board.