A challenge to nominating petitions in the Democratic primary for the Paulsboro Borough Council is set to be heard in court on April 30, 12 days after ballots are mailed and likely after votes are already cast.
Councilman Tahje Thomas is seeking re-election on a slate with Michelle Baylor that has the endorsement of the Gloucester County Democratic organization. Another incumbent councilman, Eric Singleton, is running on his own without a slogan.
Thomas alleges Singleton fell short of the number of signatures needed to get on the ballot because five voters signed both petitions and ought to be invalidated.
But Municipal Clerk Elsie Tedeski had already certified the candidates and County Clerk James Hogan, who was not named in the lawsuit, has already prepared the ballots.
“They are all processed and go out as a bunch,” Hogan said. “We cannot go in and pull a town.”
Superior Court Judge Benjamin Telsey held a brief hearing this morning on a motion filed with the court on April 6 and not considered until this morning. Telsey outlined an “expedited” schedule that includes briefs due on April 22 and April 27 and a court hearing on the afternoon of April 30.
Telsey had initially restrained the municipal clerk from mailing the ballots, even though only county clerks printed and mailed primary ballots.
In the meantime, Telsey stopped short of restraining Hogan from mailing ballots and said he wouldn’t decide on an emergent basis.
That means if Telsey were to side with Thomas, he could inadvertently confuse voters by invalidating ballots – those sitting in someone’s home and ones that have already been returned – and forcing a reprint and new mailing of mail-in ballots in a municipality with roughly 2,000 registered Democrats. In that scenario, there would be no way to know whether an envelope contains a new or old ballot without potentially disenfranchising a voter.
Thomas had challenged 13 signatures on Singleton’s petition and disqualified seven of them. That left Singleton with 26 – one more than the minimum requirement.
The key legal issue appears to be whether duplicate signatures across multiple petitions invalidate all signatures, or whether the first valid filing controls. If the overlapping signatures were removed, he would fall short of the 25 he needs.
Michael Maley, an attorney representing the Paulsboro municipal clerk said the “risk that disqualifying duplicative signatures invites strategic manipulation by later filers is not hypothetical here—it is illustrated by the facts.”
“Singleton filed his petition first, and at that moment, each of the five signers, including (Thomas himself, was within the statutory limit. (Thomas) Plaintiff then chose to sign and later filed his own petition with Baylor, containing the same overlapping signers. If the Court were to cancel all signatures appearing on multiple petitions, a later-filed candidate could deliberately seek out individuals who already signed an opponent’s petition—including signing it himself—and then ‘duplicate’ those endorsements to trigger wholesale invalidation,” Maley said. “That is not enforcement of the statute; it is an invitation to manipulate it.”
The municipal clerk’s attorney, Michael DiPiero, disputed Telsey’s concern that “gamesmanship” could interfere with the process.
“We have the statute that we have. I’ve not seen any gamesmanship being alleged here, and I don’t think it changes the standard that you can only sign for one candidate,” he said. “If there was a concern about gamesmanship or concern about, they (the legislature) certainly could put an exception into the statute. They certainly could have another statute that would apply. But in this case, it says this is what you need to have to, have a valid petition., and this this is what the signers need to do.”
