On September 2, a Superior Court judge in Bridgeport, Connecticut, restored a slate of candidates for Mayor and Selectman to the Democratic Party’s primary ballot. The judge also postponed the primary from September 13 to September 27. See this story. The case is Foster v Ayala, Fairfield Co. Superior Court, cv-11-602-1487 S. Here is the decision.
A slate of candidates for city office had been kept off the ballot, because the petition (which was permitted to list multiple candidates for various city offices) also included candidates for Board of Education. However, there is no Board of Education election in Bridgeport this year. The city had rejected the entire petition because the petition included the names of candidates for Board of Education. The candidates then sued, arguing that it doesn’t follow logically that just because some of the candidates on the petition can’t run (because that particular office isn’t up), therefore the entire petition is invalid. Thanks to Matt Waggner for the link to the decision.
To add to the confusion, there was scheduled to be a Board of Education race, but the state took over the board, replacing elected members with appointed members mid-way through the petition period.
Some incumbent (now suspended) Board members, as well as some prospective candidates, sued for an injunction against the state takeover, and obtained a court order that Board of Education candidates could be nominated pending final disposition of the case for an injunction.
At issue in the Bridgeport case for the Mayoral challenge candidate and slate was the number of positions eligible to be put forward on a petition for Board of Education, which would depend on a complicated mix of the possible future injunction, state statutes, and city charter. The election official who made the ruling had issued flawed petition forms in contradiction of the Secretary of State’s office’s advice, and the city argued that she had no authority to correct the petition and no duty to inform the candidates that the petition she prepared was invalid. The forms were then rejected based on the errors in the original that she made.
The judge ruled that, as 1) the candidates and their agents had made many good-faith efforts to determine whether their application was correct and were either rebuffed or ignored, 2) the Registrar had represented to them that she had confirmed with the Secretary of State that the application was correct before printing the petitions, and 3) the petition signatures were not approved or rejected within the legally required window, that the non-Board of Education candidates should be allowed to go forward and appear on the ballot.
Phew!
Thanks, Matt. You may be in a position to help me learn the name of this case, and maybe even the case number. I’ll hope so.
Add – if there had not been a state takeover of the Board of Ed, there would have been 4 positions on the November ballot, for which no party could nominate more than 3. Assuming those rules would have applied if the injunction succeeded, the petitioning slate believed that their 4 proposed candidates would appear on the primary ballot, and would be winnowed down to 3 nominees based on the primary vote. The judge, in passing, dismissed this theory.
Will the CT troops on the front line in SW Asia get their general election ballots on time ???