Court Opinion

ID: 9950489
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-14 13:11:42.793708+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:37:18.815433
License: Public Domain

IN THE COMMONWEALTH COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA

In re: Nomination Petition of:         :
William Parker as Candidate for the    :
Democratic Nomination for United       :
States Senator                         : No. 109 M.D. 2024
                                       : HEARD: March 4, 2024
Objection of: Judith Ann Golding       :
Baker, Elaine Petrossian, and          :
Alexander Rose                         :

BEFORE:      HONORABLE BONNIE BRIGANCE LEADBETTER, Senior Judge

OPINION BY
SENIOR JUDGE LEADBETTER                                    FILED: March 7, 2024

             On March 4, 2024, following an evidentiary hearing, an order was
entered granting the Petition of Objectors Judith Ann Golding Baker, Elaine
Petrossian, and Alexander Rose to Set Aside the Nomination Petition of William
Parker as a candidate in the 2024 general primary election for the Democratic
nomination for United States Senator. In addition, Mr. Parker’s Motion to Dismiss
the Objection Petition was denied. The basis of these decisions is as follows.
             In addition to the arguments made in his Motion to Dismiss, at the
hearing, Candidate raised two additional matters, questioning whether the Objection
Petition was served on the Secretary of the Commonwealth and whether the
Objectors had standing. Counsel for Objectors produced a copy of the Certificate of
Service filed with this Court and service on the Secretary was not further disputed.
Standing of the Objectors was established by viewing their information in the
Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) System, which established that each
Objector was a registered Democrat in Pennsylvania. I found that Objectors’
respective signatures in their verifications attached to their Objection Petition were
consistent with their signatures found in the SURE System. See In re Samms, 674
A.2d 240, 242 (Pa. 1996) (In order “to have standing to challenge a nomination
petition, one must be registered to vote in the district holding the primary election
and be a member of the political party to which the nomination petition pertains.”).
                Turning to Candidate’s Motion, the following facts are undisputed. On
February 13, 2024, the last day to file nomination petitions with the Secretary,
Candidate proffered his approximately 140-page filing somewhere around 3:10 p.m.
The office of the Secretary undertook its duty to examine the nomination petition
and rejected it due to an insufficient number of valid signatures and an invalid
affidavit of circulator, pursuant to Section 976 of the Pennsylvania Election Code,
25 P.S. § 2936.1 Feb. 13, 2024 Nomination Petition Rejection Notice.2 The
Secretary’s notice provided: “If the candidate is unable to correct the defects noted
above on or before the statutory deadline, the only recourse is [the] filing of [a]
mandamus action in Commonwealth Court, pursuant to . . . 25 P.S. [§] 2936.”
Because it was too late to obtain additional signatures and one or more amendatory
affidavits within the hour or so before the deadline, he followed the procedure
referenced by the Secretary and in Parker v. Pennsylvania Department of State
Board of Elections (Pa. Cmwlth., No. 56 M.D. 2024, filed February 16, 2024), filed
an Emergency Petition for Writ of Mandamus with this Court seeking “leave to
amend the nomination petitions that bear [his] name in the circulator statements in
which he personally collected himself” and to “require[] the Pennsylvania

    1
        Act of June 3, 1937, P.L. 1333, as amended, 25 P.S. § 2936.
    2
       The provisions of the Election Code relating to the accompanying affidavits are not mere
technicalities but are necessary measures to prevent fraud and to preserve the integrity of the
election process. In re Farnese, 17 A.3d 357 (Pa. 2011); In re Shimkus, 946 A.2d 139 (Pa. Cmwlth.
2008); In re Bedow, 848 A.2d 1034 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2004).

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Department of State Board of Elections to accept and file [his] nomination
petitions.” Feb. 15, 2024 Emergency Petition at 4 (emphasis added).
             This Court granted Candidate’s Emergency Petition stating:

             [U]pon notice that the Secretary . . . does not oppose
             [Candidate’s] . . . Emergency Petition . . . , the Petition is
             GRANTED, provided that [he] file with the Secretary, no
             later than Thursday, February 22, 2024, at 3:00 p.m.,
             the original nomination petition pages, Candidate’s
             Affidavit, Statement of Financial Interests, and filing fee .
             . . , along with a sworn supplemental circulator affidavit in
             the form as agreed to by the parties. In the event that such
             nomination petitions and affidavits are submitted pursuant
             to this Order, any objections to the nomination petition
             shall be filed with the Prothonotary of this Court no later
             than 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 29, 2024.

Parker (Pa. Cmwlth., No. 56 M.D. 2024, filed Feb. 16, 2024) (emphasis in original).
In accordance with the order, on February 22, 2024, Candidate filed his nomination
petition pages and a Supplemental Affidavit of Circulator. On February 26, 2024,
Objectors filed their Petition to Set Aside, well within the time mandated by this
Court’s order.
             Candidate argues that Objectors’ Petition is untimely, claiming that this
Court lacks jurisdiction to extend any statutory deadline set forth in the Election
Code. He contends that the Court cannot use equitable principles to extend statutory
deadlines. Candidate’s arguments are without merit.           Obviously, because the
statutory deadline for filing nomination petitions had passed, the whole point of the
mandamus process was to extend that deadline.             Therefore, in entering the
mandamus order, the Court had to set a time frame within which the nomination
petition pages and amending affidavit(s) could be filed, and the same necessarily
applies to the time for filing objections. Simply put, if the deadlines set in the

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Election Code could not be extended by the Court, the mandamus order would be
invalid and Candidate’s filing of nomination petitions would be well out of time.
             Candidate has misconstrued Section 976 of the Election Code, 25 P.S.
§ 2936, providing for mandamus actions, and Section 977 of the Election Code, 25
P.S. § 2937, setting the seven-day filing deadline for challenges. The mandamus
petition process and the objection petition process coexist and provide an
opportunity for a candidate to amend a filing, where appropriate, and an opportunity
for an objector to assert challenges. An order in mandamus that extends the time for
filing nomination petition pages, with objection petitions to be filed seven days
thereafter, is entirely consistent with Section 977 of the Election Code’s requirement
that objections to nomination petitions or papers be filed “within seven days after
the last day for filing [the challenged] nomination petitions or papers.” 25 P.S. §
2937. Absent the mandamus petition process, Candidate’s facially defective filing
on the last day for filing nomination petitions would have been fatal with no
opportunity for redress. Likewise, potential objectors must have time to review a
nomination petition to determine whether valid objections can and should be made.
The mandamus petition process does not eliminate that statutorily prescribed
opportunity. Thus, this Court’s Order of February 16 was consistent with both the
letter and the spirit of the Election Code.
             Candidate’s argument that the original date for filing objections,
February 20, would continue to apply even though he was given until February 22,
when he did in fact file his nomination petition pages, leads to an absurd result, i.e.,
that the objection petition was due two days before his nomination petition was filed.
In construing the Election Code, “[w]e presume the General Assembly does not
intend a result that is absurd or unreasonable, but intends for the entire statute to be

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effective and certain. [Section 1922 of the Statutory Construction Act of 1972,] 1
Pa.C.S. § 1922.” Banfield v. Cortes, 110 A.3d 155, 165 (Pa. 2015).
             Finally, the extension of objection petition deadlines until seven days
following an extended deadline for filing nomination petitions has been specifically
approved by this Court and our Supreme Court. In the case of In re Morrison-
Wesley, 946 A.2d 789 (Pa. Cmwlth.), aff’d sub nom. In re Nomination Petition of
Morrison-Wesley, 944 A.2d 78 (Pa. 2008), the governor had extended the date for
filing nomination petitions by two days because of a snowstorm, but had not
extended the date for filing objections. In rejecting a motion like that presented here,
this Court noted:

             In short, the deadline to file objections does not begin to
             run until the last day to file a nomination petition has
             occurred, whatever day that might be. The last day to file
             a nomination petition this year was February 12, 2008.
             Governor Rendell, by Executive Order No. 2008-1,
             extended that deadline to February 14, 2008, because of a
             sudden and severe snowstorm that struck Pennsylvania on
             February 12, 2008.[]
                    Candidate asserts that the Executive Order extended
             the deadline for filing a nomination petition, but it did not
             extend the deadline for filing objections. It is true that the
             Executive Order was silent about the deadline for
             objections, but it is irrelevant. It was not necessary for the
             Governor to address the objection petition deadline in his
             Executive Order because that deadline is driven by the
             statutory formula in Section 977 [of the Election Code].
             The last day to file an objection is “seven days after the
             last day for filing [the] nomination petition.” Id. The
             Executive Order established the nomination petition filing
             deadline to be February 14, 2008, and Section 977
             established the deadline for objections to be February 21,
             2008. Objector satisfied that deadline, and Candidate's
             motion to dismiss must be denied.

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Morrison-Wesley, 946 A.2d at 793. See also In re James, 944 A.2d 69 (Pa. 2008).
Accordingly, Candidate’s Motion to Dismiss the Objection Petition in the present
case was denied.
             Following the ruling on Candidate’s Motion to Dismiss, Objectors
undertook their burden to prove the requisite number of invalid signatures to support
their Petition.    After approximately 150 signature lines had been stricken or
stipulated to be invalid, Candidate announced that he had other things to do and so
did not wish to continue the hearing, but would stipulate that he lacked sufficient
valid signatures so long as he could continue to press his argument on appeal that
the Petition was untimely.     Ultimately, the parties entered a Joint Stipulation
providing:

             The parties hereby stipulate that [Candidate’s] petition
             does not contain 2,000 valid signatures. If the objection
             petition was timely filed, [Candidate] concedes he will not
             be on the ballot. Nothing herein waives [Candidate’s]
             right to timely appeal his motion to dismiss pertaining to
             timely filing of the objection.

March 4, 2024 Joint Stipulation.
             Accordingly, for the foregoing reasons, I granted the Objection
Petition, denied Candidate’s Motion to Dismiss, and directed that the Secretary
remove Candidate’s name from the 2024 primary ballot.

                                       Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter,
                                       President Judge Emerita

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