Shipley petitions for prothonotary will stand
The objection lodged to the nominating petition of one candidate for Fayette County prothonotary by another candidate for the office as been dismissed by a judge for the second time.
Paul Shipley is one of four candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for prothonotary in the May 21 primary. Fellow candidate Robert “Ted” Pritchard objected to Shipley’s nominating petitions, claiming the ethics statement was deficient. Pritchard also questioned the validity of all the signatures on the petitions.
This week, however, Senior Judge Gerald R. Solomon — for the second time — dismissed Pritchard’s challenge to Shipley’s petition.
In the order denying the challenge, he wrote, “A party alleging defects in a nominating petition has the burden of proving those defects.
“On his objections, Pritchard objected to the ‘irregularities’ of the nominating petition of Paul Shipley.”
“Pritchard failed to present any testimony or evidence in support of his objections and failed to meet any burden of proof showing his alleged ‘irregularities’ in the nominating petitions,” Solomon wrote.
The jurist held a hearing Thursday, after the state Commonwealth Court ruled he had to hear the petition. Solomon previously dismissed Pritchard’s objection without having a hearing because, he found, Pritchard filed the objection belatedly.
During that hearing, Pritchard attempted to compel elections bureau director Larry Blosser to verify all the signatures were valid and not forged, and to verify that all the signatures were legible, according to Solomon.
Upon objection, Blosser was not permitted to testify to either of those allegations because he is not a handwriting expert, Solomon wrote.
Pritchard also attempted to ask Blosser to determine whether the signatures belong to voters or non-voters, Solomon’s ruling noted. Pritchard was unable to cite authority that would require Blosser to examine the documents for such defects, however, the jurist wrote.
Pritchard lodged similar objections to the nominating petitions of the other two candidates, Pamela Hudson and Nina Capuzzi-Frankhouser. Two other Fayette County judges denied those objections, and the Commonwealth Court affirmed their decisions. Pritchard appealed state Supreme Court in both those cases, where they are currently being considered.
Pritchard has appealed to the Commonwealth Court again in a continued effort to have Shipley’s nominating petitions invalidated.
The court will rule at a later date.
Although no one filed objections against Pritchard’s nominating petitions and the time to do so has passed, his petitions — available for public inspection at the Bureau of Elections — contain several of the same kinds of irregularities he spelled out in his objections to the other candidates’ documents, including abbreviations for the names of municipalities, incorrectly identified municipalities, and the use of ditto marks.