- who would like to see Verizon offer cable TV in Phila?
- Council Committee Passed the Freeze
- Carol Campbell Passes Away
- My first trip to the public library
- Fight digital exclusion
- What if half of Philadelphia didn't have roads?
- You know, let's not even worry about the City Commissioners office messing up voter registration processing
- Bold ideas to fix the budget
- Mayor Nutter's Town Hall Meeting Schedule
- City Releases Library Information to City Council
Haile Johnson challenges John Longacre over signatures
Submitted by raideradam on Thu, 03/15/2007 - 11:20pm.
Some interesting information involving the 5th Council District race.
Haile Johnson challenged John Longacre over petition signatures. He has done the "name not spelled exactly correct" that we have chastised people for.
As an example, one of the petition gatherers put his signature first on his sheet. It didn't match his name on his registration card because of initials. They are challenging not just to remove his name, but to disqualify the whole sheet of signatures he collected.
As an aside, apparently Longacre and Clarke had agreed not to challenge filings. Apparently Longacre also saw some obvious errors on Johnson's filing but didn't challenge since he was planning on letting it be fought out by the voters.
Finally to make it even more interesting, Haile is a member (or atleast signed on) of that reform ballot group Ben Waxman posted about.
For those who live in the 5th District and are serious about wanting candidates to hold up to ignoring petty challenges, keep in mind what Haile Johnson has done in the 5th and vote for Longacre. He was taking the high road and Haile has tried to get him thrown off the ballot over signature disputes.
Looks like Haile is playing dirty while claiming reform candidate.
For full disclosure, I have collected signatures for Longacre.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
I have noticed a deafining
I have noticed a deafining silience related to "progressive" candidates who attended that press conference and, yet, despite the things they said about democracy, still challenge their opponents in court. And, from what I have seen, the challenges are not that strong nor are they within the realm of the "Vern Anastasio" issue.
Like I said before--don't set standards you do not intend to fulfill. I have no problem with challenges, especially in situations where there are very legitimate issues of concealment and fraud. Honestly, with the exception of one race (where the challenger WAS NOT at that press conference), I have seen no such situation.
How can a good "progressive" support such a candidate? I know I'm having trouble doing it.
I agree and I think that we
I agree and I think that we were pushing for candidates to respect the "spirit" of the challenge process and just to use it to filter out people being fraudulent and not use it as a way to force your opponent to spend valuable resources to just stay in the race.
It is dumb. I want to see
It is dumb. I want to see the reasons they are challenging them. But, I agree, its dumb.
They also challenged the
They also challenged the sheets I turned in saying I wasn't a registered dem.
I know for a fact I am. ;)
I have noticed a deafining
I disagree about the "deafening silence", I think it's that information about the details of the challenges are just starting to come out. One of the first challenge threads asked several times: who challenged who was at the press conference or signed onto its intent (with Councilman Kenney jumping in to imply that all challenger candidates had, further lessening the chance that I'll vote for him). Andy Toy's campaign manager finally came on and said that of the candidates actually present, only Damon Roberts had filed a challenge. Based on what I've read about his challenge, it's crap, and he totally violated the letter and spirit of the event that he attended. He's not even in a three-or-more-way race, and should take Verna on honestly.
I was surprised from the beginning to see Johnson on the list of challengers vs. Longacre. It sounds like it's another crummy challenge (especially that whole "all sigs on this sheet are invalidated by one faulty one" schtick), and if he was at or signed onto the "no bogus challenges" group, then he should be ashamed and people who supported him based on him professing to be clean and fair should abandon his campaign. It is absolutely true that having both Longacre and Johnson in the race pretty much erases whatever chance either might have had against Clarke in a head-to-head, but this isn't the way to solve it.
McClure's challenges seem worthwhile, especially in the case of Campbell - did anybody from the Fourth sign on or attend?
In the other cases, unless somebody is acting as a candidates proxy, I don't think there's anybody else to comment on.
News update.
They have been in court since 9 am. Haile Johnson is also challenging some of the signatures because of ditto marks and slashes.
Some (I believe two) community groups even sent Haile a request for him to not pursue this and to back off the challenge and not show up to the court date.
I spoke to John
I spoke to John Sunday.
Apparently they have not seen the judge yet. The last days have been sitting in front of a terminal with an election official going through signatures and seeing which ones Haile is disputing.
Basically, it is down to around 700 signatures good and 200 some that Haile is still disputing to go in front of the Judge today.
So, now we see if the judge goes line by line or as a group.
The theory is going to be that, since only 25% need to be "good" for him to be a legal candidate, the Judge will look to see if there is any evident sign of fraud and if not, will rule him able to be on the ballot.
Did he only turn in 900, or
Did he only turn in 900, or did he concede to the election official on some that he turned in?
I believe he turned in more
I believe he turned in more than that and conceded some (things like people signing that weren't registered or signed multiple petitions ... you really can't fight for those and no point wasting time).
Update.
The judge is going through the disputed signatures line by line.
Haile johnson failed.
John Longacre is officially on the ballot.