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A judge has given a partial victory to a West Philadelphia lawyer who sued the city over a change in election rules — but the dispute still remains far from settled.
Four Republicans who ran for their local ward committees in the May primary election are the winners of their races, despite receiving as few as two write-in votes, Court of Common Pleas Judge Jessica Brown said in an order issued last week.
Earlier this year the City Commissioners, who make up Philadelphia’s Board of Elections, had voted to bar write-in candidates from winning if they received fewer than 10 votes. But Brown agreed with Republican election lawyer Matt Wolfe that the commissioners were not following the correct provision of state election law.
In many Philadelphia wards, there are so few Republicans that it’s virtually impossible for candidates to get on the ballot or receive 10 write-in votes. In much of the city, the Republican committees already don’t exist for lack of members, and allowing write-ins to win with just one or two votes is essential to keeping the party alive and relevant, Wolfe argued.
Only 302 Republican committee members were elected in the primary, out of 3,406 available positions, he said.
“I’m very pleased that the judge sees the election code as I see it. It’s a win for the committeepeople and the voters who voted for them,” Wolfe said.
However, Brown only ordered the commissioners to certify the four candidates who sued, and not the many others — potentially numbering in the hundreds, both Democrats and Republicans — who ran write-in campaigns for ward committee and won with fewer than 10 votes.
That means it’s unclear how other candidates are affected by the order and how it will apply in future elections. The write-in vote requirement has been repeatedly litigated over the years, and the judge’s decision could lead to more legal filings, Wolfe said.
“We’ll see if anybody appeals and how that impacts the implementation of the order,” he said. “One might argue that if other committeepeople get closed out, this order may give them some litigation options.”
The deadline to appeal the decision is this Friday.
Lisa Deeley, vice chair of the City Commissioners, declined to answer questions about the court order, as did the city’s Law Department. An attorney for the Republican City Committee declined to comment and a lawyer for the Democrats did not respond to an email.
Rules vary from election to election
In cases about write-in requirements, attorneys and judges point to two different sections of state law. The section that Wolfe and Brown cited says party officers like ward members win their races by receiving “a plurality of votes…at a primary” — that is, with the most votes, even if it’s just one write-in vote.
However, other judges have deferred to a different part of the law that says a candidate can’t be certified the winner “unless the total number of votes cast for said person is equal to or greater than the number of signatures required on a nominating petition for the particular office.” For ward committee seats, that’s 10 signatures.
That’s the position a judge took last week in Greene County, in the very southwest corner of the state, bordering West Virginia. Common Pleas Judge Christopher Simms said the petition-signature rule applied to an election for the county Republican committee and canceled the wins of 33 write-in candidates.
However, Simms still allowed a path for some candidates to be seated.
He noted that the Greene County Board of Elections has not followed the 10-vote rule consistently, requiring it in 2022 but not in 2018, and he agreed to a consent order between the county Republican committee and the disputed write-in candidates. It allows them to individually go to the committee, where “they will be offered the right to seek appointment.”
Wolfe initially sued over the rule change in May and won, but the city and the Philadelphia Republican party appealed and a Commonwealth Court judge ruled against him, saying the case was premature.
Using the law to protect incumbents
While races for ward committee and county party positions are obscure to many voters, Wolfe and others argue they are important because of the key role committees play in elections.
Committee members vote to endorse candidates for City Council, judge, and other positions and then distribute endorsement lists to voters, which often determines who wins, especially in low-turnout races.
They also elect the ward leaders who make up the Republican and Democratic city committees that pick party leaders — currently, Democratic chair Bob Brady and Republican chair Vince Fenerty.
Leaders sometimes seek to enforce the 10-vote rule in an effort to exclude dissident party members from committee positions or protect incumbents. In 2018, for example, Philadelphia’s Republican party joined a suit over write-in results after two incumbent GOP ward leaders lost reelection bids due to votes from written-in committee members.
Wolfe is a frequent critic of Fenerty’s leadership and contends that he has pushed for enforcement of the 10-vote rule to protect his control of the party. Fenerty has in the past declined to comment on that claim.
Wolfe declined to say if he will appeal Brown’s decision himself, but said he will continue his efforts to change how the local Republican party operates.
“If this ruling stands, I plan to use it to file suit against the city committee,” he said. “The fact that Republican City Committee is still opposed to bringing new people in should be baffling to anybody that cares about the city of Philadelphia.”
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