The D.C. Board of Elections ruled Monday that an effort to recall embattled Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans from office can proceed. That leaves organizers free to start collecting the 5,000 signatures from Ward 2 voters required to get the measure on the ballot.

After an hour-long hearing, the three-person board unanimously dismissed arguments from Donald Dinan, an attorney for Evans, who said that recall organizer Adam Eidinger does not live in Ward 2. D.C. law requires that any resident who seeks to recall an elected official—essentially, call a vote to un-elect them from office—has to live in the same district as the official they’re looking to recall.

Dinan said that Eidinger owns property in Ward 1 and receives mail there, and only claims a Ward 2 address for a small business he operates.

“Looking at the total of the evidence, this is an address of convenience,” said Dinan of Eidinger’s Ward 2 address, a home on Massachusetts Avenue Northwest.

But Eidinger insisted to the board that he had lived in the home for at least four years and registered to vote there last year, making him a legal Ward 2 voter and thus eligible to request that Evans be recalled from office.

“I would invite any of you into my home today if that’s what it would take to convince you,” he told the board, after a number of witnesses—including Eidinger’s business partner and his girlfriend—testified that he did live in the Ward 2 home.

Eidinger—who in the past successfully organized a ballot initiative that legalized the possession of marijuana in D.C.—first announced his intention to recall Evans in March, after news broke that the 28-year incumbent had used his official government email account to solicit business opportunities from law firms that lobby the Council. Evans was officially reprimanded by his colleagues for the behavior.

“D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans behaves as if there is no legal or ethical distinction between being an elected representative and pursuing his own financial self-interest,” reads the recall petition. “That is why he must be removed from office.”

Evans has apologized for his actions, but in an official response to the recall effort, he reminds his constituents of his many years in office; he’s currently the longest-serving member of the Council.

“He guided D.C. through financially turbulent times and helped bring the city into its current era of economic prosperity resulting in earning this year’s AAA bond rating,” reads the statement. That excerpt will appear alongside Eidinger’s message on petition forms that will now be circulated to Ward 2 voters for their signatures.

Recall proponents will have 180 days to collect valid signatures from 10 percent of the ward’s registered voters—roughly 5,200 signatures in all. If those signatures are collected, the Board of Elections has to call a recall election within 114 days of verifying those signatures. Then, if the official is recalled, another special election must be held 114 days after that. The winner would serve out the remainder of the official’s term.

Eidinger says he hopes to have a recall election in November or December of this year. But that possibility prompted Dinan to argue against issuing the recall petitions at all, saying it would create “chaos” in the ward.

“We’re going to have three elections within about a five-to-six-month period, and indeed the specter that the recall election will be just before the primary election,” Dinan said. “The voters are going to be completely confused. All of this is going to be at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the taxpayers of the District.”

Eidinger responded that it wasn’t up to the board to decide whether a recall election would be inconvenient or costly.

“I don’t think this board should decide if a recall is OK,” he said. “You have to let us get a shot before you decide it’s a waste of money.”

Evans is also already facing two opponents for next June’s Democratic primary: ANC commissioner Patrick Kennedy and former Obama administration official Jordan Grossman.

As for the recall, Evans can still appeal the board’s decision to D.C. Superior Court. Dinan did not comment on whether that would happen, saying only he was taking the issue “under advisement.” Eidinger said he would start collecting signatures as early as Monday evening.

If the measure gets on the ballot, it will be the first time D.C. voters will cast ballots on whether an elected official should recalled from office. Just the prospect of getting that far drew support on Monday from Tina Hobson, wife of the late Councilmember and civil rights leader Julius Hobson.

“I don’t believe my husband would have tolerated the Councilmember we have been talking about for this long,” she said to the board. “I am asking for us to have a chance to vote, to have a recall election.”

This story originally appeared at WAMU.