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Thursday, August 24, 2006

Romanelli Loses Key Court Case on Petitions

A decision was rendered today regarding Green Senate candidate Carl Romanelli's nominating petitions. The court upheld the requirement that he needs 67,000 valid signatures to be on the ballot. The contention here was which statewide election the count should be based upon, the state Treasurer election in 2004 or the Supreme Court retention election of 2005. The court interpreted the law to say the judicial election doesn't qualify as a statewide election.

That may be news to Russell Nigro.

The rationale of the court is that voters aren't choosing a candidate in retention elections, only voting stay or go. Because the candidate is not elected the court holds that doesn't constitute an election under a previous Supreme Court decision.

Gee, I'd say that if the person loses their office if they lose the election, it's an election.

So how does this impact the Senate race? Romanelli will have to appeal the decision. Meanwhile he's fighting to get into the debates. That's going to be nigh on impossible until he qualifies for the ballot. Qualifying for the ballot will mean needing 67,000 signatures, obviously a threshold he cannot attain. There are simply too many fraudulent signatures on those petitions.

I interpret this to mean Romanelli's effort is dead.

At least the lawyers made out. They made fees on all the court challenges and the petition challenges. Those Republican contributors who ponied up $66,000 to pay for the petition effort have 66 grand less to give Santorum. They were probably maxed out anyway though that hasn't kept Santorum from accepting third $2100 checks from 38 contributors anyway. He'll simply keep taking their money until Casey wakes up and reads my previous blog article about it.

Romanelli cannot get 67,000 signatures. Even if he did he won't be in the debates, dooming whatever chance he had to be a spoiler anyway. The other losers in this are the voters who were seeking a true progressive candidate to vote for. With no pro-choice Senate candidate they'll be sitting at home on election day and Ed Rendell will be wondering why the numbers from suburban Philadelphia are so low. At least he doesn't have a serious challenger. The Congressional candidates in the 6th, 7th and 8th Districts may be crying though. Their challenge will be to give those pro choice voters a reason to get out and cast their ballots.