Topeka ? A former state Cabinet official Friday sought a court order to be placed on the ballot as an independent candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Horace Edwards criticized Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh for invalidating Edwards’ petition to run in the November election.

“He had not followed Kansas law,” said Edwards, whose petition drive was active in Lawrence for several weeks this summer.

Edwards filed a lawsuit in Shawnee County District Court that seeks a judicial order for Thornburgh to put him on the ballot. Thornburgh’s decision to invalidate the petition already has been upheld by a three-member state panel that included Thornburgh.

Edwards accused Thornburgh of obstruction and of failing to follow the legal requirements for counting petition signatures.

Thornburgh was unavailable for comment, but Assistant Secretary of State Janet Chubb defended the office’s process of checking petition signatures. She declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Officials did say, however, that time was running out to change the ballot. Ballots for military personnel were mailed Friday to counties, which would then forward them to registered voters overseas. Advance voting begins in mid-October. The election is Nov. 2, a little more than six weeks from now.

The dispute is over how many signatures of registered voters Edwards received during his petition drive. Five thousand signatures are required to get on the ballot, and Edwards said he received 5,227 signatures.

But the Secretary of State’s Office invalidated several hundred of those signatures.

Some signatures were invalidated because the names did not match up to the addresses that were written in, Thornburgh’s office determined.

Edwards said he and his assistants rechecked the secretary of state’s work and found numerous errors. In Douglas County alone, Edwards said, he recovered 86 signatures.

Jean Lamfers, an attorney representing Edwards, said that if a petition page had a majority of Shawnee County residents, the Secretary of State’s Office sent the page only to Shawnee County election officials for verification, and not to any of the other counties from which petitioners signed.

Patricia Robbins, a lifelong Topekan and election judge, saw her name invalidated because the page she signed was never sent to Shawnee County, she said.

“I have voted here all my life,” she said.

Edwards, 79, served as state transportation secretary under former Gov. Mike Hayden. Edwards said he launched a petition drive to oppose U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., because Brownback had become too concerned with socially conservative issues.

Lee Jones is the Democratic candidate opposing Brownback.