Pennsylvania Supreme Court Puts Democratic Candidate Back on Primary Ballot Only One Week Before Primary

On April 19, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Joseph Vodvarka should be on the April 26 Democratic primary ballot for U.S. Senate. The Commonwealth Court had ruled that he didn’t have 2,000 valid signatures, but the State Supreme Court disagreed and put him on. The issue was whether to count signatures of voters who had moved within a county since they had last registered to vote. The Commonwealth Court had invalidated such signatures in its March 30 opinion.

The late timing of the Supreme Court opinion caused confusion in some counties. The ballots in almost all counties had Vodvarka’s name on them, because the ballots had been printed before the Commonwealth Court had removed him. Between the Commonwealth Court decision and the State Supreme Court decision, notices had been printed, intended for each voting booth, telling voters that Vodvarka had been removed from the ballot and that any votes cast for him should not be counted. After Vodvarka was put back on the ballot, the state instructed county election officials to destroy those notices. But, in some polling locations, the notices were placed inside voting booths erroneously.

Also, Washington County reprinted its ballots to delete Vodvarka after the Commonwealth Court ruling, but before the Supreme Court ruling. So in Washington County, a separate ballot just for U.S. Senate, for Democrats, had to be distributed along with the regular ballots. See this story.

The State Supreme Court order is captionedIn re: Nominating Petition of Joseph Vodvarka, J-75-2016. The Supreme Court order is only one page and puts Vodvarka back on the ballot. The court will explain its reasoning later.


Comments

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Puts Democratic Candidate Back on Primary Ballot Only One Week Before Primary — 3 Comments

  1. How about the votes of the USA military troopers fighting barbarians on the front lines ???

    —–
    I.E. when will the courts AUTOMATICALLY ORDER a N-E-W election when the bureaucrats really screw up an election (and require the moron bureaucrats involved to pay the cost of the new election) ???

    i.e. to have, if needed, armies of folks checking EVERYTHING about an election –
    Electors, Candidates, Issues, Petitions, Ballots, etc.

    Saving – Getting DEMOCRACY is on the line with EVERY election.

    All sorts of tyrants are trying to overthrow Democracy 24/7.

  2. I am interested to see how it deals with UOCAVA and MOVE, which say overseas ballots must be sent 45 days before elections. Election boards always argue that UOCAVA and MOVE prohibit altering federal ballots.

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