On October 1, U.S. District Court Judge William Smith heard arguments in Fontes v City of Central Falls, Rhode Island. See this story. The issue is whether the city can disqualify signatures on a petition if the same voter had also signed for another candidate for the same office. Petition forms do not ask the voter to indicate a date next to his or her signature, so the first candidate who files gets to count the signatures of voters who sign two petitions. In this particular case, the plaintiff-candidate, Hipolito Fontes, says when he was collecting signatures, he was followed by canvassers for his only opponent, the incumbent Mayor, and those canvassers asked the same voters to also sign the Mayor’s petitions.
On the first day that petitions could be submitted, Fontes says, the Board of Elections allowed the Mayor to submit his petitions first by letting him into the office before the office was officially open. Fontes needed 200 valid signatures but was told he only had 197 valid. The judge promised a decision by October 9.
Out here in California, I have run for City Council. We have at-large elections and 3 seats are avialable every 2 years. When taking out the petition sheet the City Clerk tells the candidates that the first three people to turn in a petition with a registered voters signature will get credit for it. We do have a fairly low requirement of 20-30 signatures to collect. That has been considered sufficient to show a modicum of support. Incidentally, during the last 10 years there have been potential candidates who for whatever reason were unable to collect that number of signatures. It would be interesting to challenge the clear favoritism given the Mayor to submit his petition first.