The machine is being turned inside out this election season.

First, with the campaign finance stuff we heard that it wasn't fair that Knox was spending so much, cause they couldn't get their voice out. In other words, they didn't like that someone had a big money advantage over people they thought were better candidates. Wow, that sounded familiar, and sounded like a great reason for public financing of elections, and free TV time.

And now, this. This is crazy.

Brady should stay on the ballot- as long as he starts immediately changing the way the party does business internally, and gets his allies in the House and Senate to introduce bills immediately to change these stupid laws.

Not only are these challenges often ridiculously-technical, the standards seem different depending on whom is the subject of the challenge.
If nothing else, perhaps the Courts can use any challenges this year to finally give some clarity to the law. Last year, a state representative remained on the ballot after not disclosing rental income on certain properties, while other candidates in the state were removed for similar failures. The inconsistency in this area of the law is overwhelming. Hopefully, this year it will end.

My recommendation - With each packet that a candidate receives, a detailed, very detailed, explanation of the form should be included. Also, a representative of the Ethics Commission is available at the County BOE office on the Monday and Tuesday of filing to interview candidates prior to filing. They explain each line of the form (there are only about 12-15 lines of required disclosures). This could serve as one last reminder prior to filing. It also removes the gotcha that Irv is talking about, to some extent. We should also make the filing amendable after a challenge until the date that a candidate can withdraw from the race. If the candidate doesn't correct the mistake after notice and a two-week window to make necessary corrections, the challenge can proceed.

Aren't we supposed to encourage citizen participation and democracy? The Ethics Commission should not be a techincal tripwire.

"We would hope that the spirit of democracy and the will of 24,000 Philadelphians who signed our petitions will rise above petty politics," Philips said.

Spoken in defense of Brady by a campaign spokesperson.

Now, I'm sure that we'll hear Brady's campaign also speaking loudly about the will of 27,000 who signed the casino petitions. Won't we?

Here are Damon K Roberts, Irv Ackelsberg, Marc Stier, & Vern Anastasio trying to make heads from tails of the financial disclosure form:

You know things are bad when four lawyers need another four lawyers to figure out the language of a document required for entry into a race for public office...

I work for Damon K. Roberts in his run for City Council. Unless otherwise stated this and every comment by myself is the opinion of myself, and not of Damon or any other candidate, organization, committee, etc.

Like the title says, "Will Congressman Brady now help us end "gotcha" ballot challenges?"

Of course, it was in his favor--no surprise there. I think it had something to do with who had signed his form.

Vern Anastasio was not "disqualified last time in his City Council challenge as a result of omitting mention of a paid government position on one line that he had already disclosed on another." His errors -- though certainly unintentional -- were far more signficant than that. While your version offers better support for your argument, it has the disadvantage of being completely innacurate. Perhaps you should have taken the time to read Vern's 2003 statement and the challenge before writing about them.

Wait a minute. I think the Daily News article might not be presenting its facts as fully as they might. The big problem is here:

In 2005, former Common Pleas Judge John Braxton was removed from the ballot for city controller after an extended court battle over his failure to list several sources of income... [W]hen Braxton was stricken from the ballot two years ago, the courts ruled that one of his fatal errors was failure to list his state judicial pension.

That might be true, but the primary reason Braxton was stricken from the ballot, and then only by the State Supreme Court after the Common Pleas and Commonwealth Courts ruled in his favor, was his failure to fully report his property and rental income. One motive Braxton may have had for failing to disclose this income was that he'd called another judicial candidate a "slumlord" in an earlier election.

Can anyone get their hands on the Supreme Court ruling and see whether it really establishes a precedent that the statute is to be interpreted as requiring a candidate to disclose all of their pension income unless it's self-funded, and that the failure of a candidate to disclose such income is a "fatal" failure?

Note that none of this affects the silliness of both the way the disclosure laws are written and purely procedural petition challenges. It only affects the likely success of any ballot challenge to Brady's mayoral petition. Brady should still get out in front on petition reform, since this incident shows how messed-up this whole thing is.

Supporting Michael Nutter for Mayor.

(aside from Milton?)

This is an interesting discussion but until there is a candidate with standing to challenge Brady, I fail to see that it'll even go to court.

The key question is, who among the candidates would challenge Brady? What are the risks versus the rewards? It seems to me like there is a lot of both to be spread around.

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Supporting Michael Nutter for Mayor.

I just heard on the radio that Milton Street is going to challenge Brady staying on the ballot. So someone that was illegitimately trying to run for mayor is now challenging the legitimacy of another candidate. This would really be funny if it wasn't so sad.

I at first thought Steve Cozen (an insurance subrogation lawyer) an odd choice to represent Brady in an election matter. Then I recalled that Cozen's firm, Cozen & O'Connor, recently hired former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Neumann as a partner. Since the case is likely to end up in the State Supreme Court, I guess having a recently retired justice on his side seemed like a good idea to Brady.