Scrutinizing candidate nomination petitions part of the political game

Sen. Boscola, Chester County judge said they did not sign petitions that show their names

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Last week, state Sen. Lisa Boscola, a Democrat who represents Northampton County’s 18th District, said her signature falsely appeared on a nomination petition for state representative candidate Taiba Sultana of Easton.

And Mark Pinsley, the Lehigh County controller who is vying for the Democratic auditor general nomination, acknowledged that his nomination petition mistakenly included a signature of a Chester County judge who is prohibited from signing petitions for non-judicial candidates. 

These are just two recent examples of the pitfalls of petitions, which are a necessary step for a candidate to get on the ballot. If there are enough questionable signatures, a candidate could be knocked off the ballot. 

That’s a longtime campaign strategy that appears to be used even more frequently today.

“Now more than ever, petitions are being evaluated carefully,” said Terry Madonna, a longtime political analyst of Pennsylvania politics and a senior fellow in residence for political affairs at Millersville University. “The scrutiny will continue.”

Candidates for the April 23 primary had three weeks to collect signatures and file their petitions by Feb. 13. State representative candidates needed to collect a minimum of 300 signatures. For a statewide office such as auditor general, a candidate needed at least 1,000 signatures, with 100 each from at least five counties. Tuesday is the deadline to challenge a candidate’s nomination petitions, with state election challenges heard in Commonwealth Court.

People who sign a nomination petition must meet several criteria, such as being a registered voter, a member of the party of the candidate and a resident of the district the candidate wishes to represent. 

Boscola discovered her name on a petition for Sultana, an Easton City Council member who wants to challenge Rep. Robert Freeman in the Democratic primary for his seat in the 136th District. 

Boscola released a statement that said she is the only registered voter in Northampton County with that name, adding that the signature and the address with it are not hers. Indeed, she pointed out, she does not even live in the 136th District. 

“Taiba Sultana should be ashamed of herself for submitting a nomination petition containing my forged signature,” Boscola said. “Getting on the ballot is a serious responsibility for any candidate seeking public office and knowingly turning in petitions with fraudulent signatures should be a disqualifying act.”

It is a misdemeanor for someone to sign a name other than their own.

“I'm not sure why someone wrote her name, and I wish Boscola had reached out to me about it instead of attacking me on the spot with my opponent, Freeman, to join in,” Sultana said.

“It was an oversight to not have caught this trick but it is not a forgery on my part and, once again, calling for my disqualification is a shameful reveal of the true intentions of the powerful people who made this a big deal.”

Her petitions contained 650 signatures, she said. As of Sunday night, no court challenge to her nomination petitions was listed on the court’s website.

In the state auditor general race, Chester County Judge Alita Rovito called into question a signature bearing her name that appeared on a nomination petition for Pinsley. Besides Pinsley, the other Democrat seeking the nomination is state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of Philadelphia. Incumbent Republican Tim DeFoor is the only candidate seeking his party’s nomination. 

Pinsley said he wasn’t aware of the matter until he was contacted for a story by The Philadelphia Inquirer. He said he immediately launched an internal investigation. Rovito told the Inquirer she did not sign the petition and reported the incident to the county district attorney’s office.  

“At present, we lack clarity on the circumstances surrounding this incident,” Pinsley said last week in an email.

“The swift discovery of that lone signature raises suspicions of deliberate tampering so we are investigating this internally (reviewing circulators) and investigating any external influence. Although I must stress that no concrete evidence supports this conjecture at present.” He said a volunteer circulated petitions in Chester; he also used paid signature collectors.

The petition process

It takes time to collect signatures, particularly for offices that require several hundred signatures or more. Candidates can get their own signatures, but they often supplement efforts with campaign volunteers. Some larger campaigns may even hire a company to collect the signatures, which can lead to problems.

That’s what the campaign of then-Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy discovered earlier this year when it outsourced petition work to get on the primary ballot in Rhode Island. Election officials discovered a large number of signatures containing names of people who had died, The Boston Globe reported. 

“The problems of paying people are real,” said state Rep. Mike Schlossberg. “They may not be accurate. You have to really supervise and make sure people aren't forging others' signatures.”

Schlossberg, who is unopposed in the Democratic primary for his seventh term representing the 132nd district in Lehigh County, said he is personally involved in collecting and reviewing signatures. 

“I usually collect around half myself, and typically do so by setting up appointments on social media or via emails,” he said in response to emailed questions.

“The local party also does petition parties, and that is very helpful. So are volunteers – they do a great job. I've paid college students in the past to collect other students' signatures, but even then, I've always checked those for their validity,” he said.

“As the candidate, I always scan my petitions to make sure that there are no glaring errors or outright fraud. I've crossed off other signatures in the past when they were incomplete or inaccurate. You can't know if a regular voter signs their real name. But you should know if someone makes an obvious forgery, the Lisa Bosocla signature thing with Tabia Sultana. There's no way any candidate should have let that go.”

Larry Otter, a Bucks County lawyer who specializes in election law, has represented Democrats and Republicans over the last 25 years. The first rule of nomination petitions, he said, is to have significantly more signatures than required.

“If you're running for state rep, the minimum requirement is 300 signatures. You come in with 310, I can guarantee your petitions are going to be challenged and you're probably going to get knocked off the ballot. … It's been my experience that, unless you use a street list [of voters] and go door to door, there’s a 30% error rate on the signatures you collect at the Wawa or Sheetz or Acme or whatever. … Now going door to door takes a lot longer, but those signatures should be relatively bulletproof.”

Local Democratic and Republican organizations hold petition-signing events, where interested voters can meet candidates and sign the appropriate petitions. Such events tend to result in accurate signatures, Otter said.

Joe Vichot, chairman of the Lehigh County Republican Committee, said his group held two petition gatherings this year. In addition to the state legislative races and the congressional contest, local committee members are also seeking positions from their municipalities.

The event brought “as many Republican voters out to one location as possible. We had two sponsored events by the LCRC but some candidates also planned their own.”

The challenge process

For state races, lawyers file challenges with the Commonwealth Court. Among the paperwork, they must include a spreadsheet listing each questionable signature and the reason why it should be disqualified. The number of potentially invalid signatures can range from a dozen to hundreds.

Sometimes a court hearing before a judge is not needed, Otter said. Lawyers for each side first examine the spreadsheet to determine which signatures can be rejected or retained.

“You review the challenges line by line and see if you can stipulate to certain challenges,” he said. 

For example, if the opposing lawyer agrees that their client does not have a sufficient number of valid signatures, that case does not need to go before the judge for a hearing and the candidate will withdraw.

Two years ago, that’s what happened when Schlossberg decided that nomination petitions for an opponent, Republican Bethney Q. Finch of South Whitehall Township, didn't meet the threshold of 300 valid signatures. He enlisted two Republican voters to file the court challenge.

When presented with the evidence, Finch withdrew from the race. She then waged a successful write-in campaign for the Republican nomination to qualify for the November ballot but lost to Schlossberg in the general election.

But if there’s disagreement, the case then goes to the judge who will determine whether the questioned signatures should be included or removed.

Otter said the decision can come down to one signature making the difference: “I've lost cases by one line, and I've won cases by one line.”