David Schwartzman. Dorothy Douglas. Natale Stracuzzi. Nelson Rimensnyder. Eugene Kinlow.

These names are amongst the 1,417 that Interim D.C. Councilmember Sekou Biddle says fellow candidate Bryan Weaver improperly collected in his attempt to get on the ballot for the April 26 At-Large special election. Weaver not only disagrees, but contends that Biddle’s challenges of his nominating petitions ensnared hundreds of legitimate D.C. voters and were filed as part of an attempt to bury his small campaign staff in the painstaking work of verifying the names, addresses and signatures of the 3,478 people that signed his nominating petitions.

Both sides will get a chance to hash out their arguments in a pre-conference hearing taking place at 10:30 a.m. today. Biddle only needs the board’s registrar to agree that 479 of Weaver’s signatures are ineligible, pushing the former Ward 1 ANC commissioner and council candidate below the 3,000-signature threshold necessary to get on the ballot.

But in a conversation with DCist yesterday, Weaver sounded both confident in his chances and confounded with the way the Biddle campaign filed its challenges. (Biddle also challenged candidates Jacque Patterson and Patrick Mara; their pre-conference hearings are also set for this morning.) According to Weaver, he and his campaign staff compared the challenged names against the District’s voter registry, ultimately finding that of the 1,417 challenged, 963 were valid. Another 174 had the wrong address listed, for which Weaver’s campaign has started collecting the required change-of-address forms to validate the names.