Why Are Petitions So Important At Election Time?

As of Friday, March 18, 2022, Election Petitions are available for people who want to be candidates in the upcoming Tuesday, May 17, 2022, Primary Election in Pennsylvania. People, who are serious about being a candidate already know this information and have been to the office to pick up copies of the petition form and have been hitting the streets since March 18th, getting signatures of registered voters who live in the right district. Let me say that again. Election petition circulators must pay attention and be sure to only get signatures from people who:
One, are registered voters; and
Two, live in the area of the candidate that is running for an office.
In the case of judicial candidates and certain other specific races, for example, when someone runs for District Attorney or Mayor, that’s a citywide race, so as long as you’re a registered voter, you can sign a petition.
By law, one person is not supposed to sign an election petition more than once. Also, you should know that when you commit to signing a petition, you must also print your name, address, and zip code. All the information on the petition that is signed by an individual, must be true and correct. Let me give you an example. Let’s say I print my name on an election petition. I then sign my name. I moved a year ago but never changed my voter registration information via the City Commissioners office.
A sharp-eyed political campaign worker can catch that “mistake” and have the name of that individual disqualified. Just like that. How so? I’ll let you in on one of the many things now retired PA State Representative Rosita C. Youngblood taught me. She taught me that on the day when petitions must be turned in to the city commissioners’ office, all candidates and or members of their campaign team, can come to the commissioners’ office at Spring Garden Avenue and Columbus Boulevard, and request to see petitions of your opponent(s). Trust me, and believe me when I say it is a tedious job. Candidates who are serious about trying to knock off their potential opponents before they even get out the starting gate need to have a team of at least six people to go together and be dedicated to going line by line, down each and every petition signature. Before long, team members will start to catch errors or various kinds and sometimes plain old fraud.
Neglecting to put a date by your name on the petition can get that name thrown out. Someone printing their name but not signing their name can also get that name thrown off of the petition. Not including your address on a petition you sign can throw a name off a petition. Then if there’s a petition that has eleven, twelve, fifteen lines in a row of printed names, signatures, and addresses that all look the same, they’re the same. Someone who was a petition circulator got lazy and decided to sit at a table somewhere, and write all the information requested on the petition, themselves. That is fraud, punishable by law.
By law, once you reach eighteen years of age, you can register to vote and participate in political elections by exercising your right to vote. You have to do things the right way and so when it comes to election petitions, whether you are simply someone who is a registered voter and agrees to sign a petition because they know a certain candidate and like that person or they sign just because they feel sorry for the petition circulator because they look desperate to get signatures, be honest as you fill out your one line on that petition sheet.
Example: If you don’t live in a certain candidates’ district that’s running for state representative, don’t sign their petition just because you want to help them. When it comes time to check the petitions, a sharp-eyed campaign staffer will catch the fraud.
There are big thick books filled with names, addresses, and political party affiliation of every single registered voter in the City of Philadelphia. Voters are listed street by street, to road to road, to avenues and boulevards. Campaign staffers who are assigned by the campaign manager or by the candidate to go to the city Commissioner’s office on Spring Garden Street are comparing information presented on the petitions against information in the city of Philadelphia Commissioners’ office computer system.
As campaign staffers find mistakes or bold fraud on certain petitions, those names get knocked off.
Depending on which office you are running for, you have to turn in a certain number of correct and honest petitions when you run for office in Philadelphia. For example: let’s say you’re running for state representative, and you need fifteen hundred good and honest signatures to qualify you to run. If you are a lazy candidate with a lazy campaign manager, you’ll turn in exactly fifteen hundred signatures on the deadline date. Then when it comes time for petitions to be checked, it’s determined that you have thirty bad signatures on some of the petitions you turned in. You can try and fight it in court, but once you lose, and you will lose if addresses or dates are missing, or you have dead people’s names and signatures, you will lose in court. And you will not have your name on the ballot for the election.
If you cannot get through the petition process, go sit down and try again–next election cycle when the office you want to run for is up for grabs again. Petitions can make or break a campaign right at the beginning.
Candidates beware of lazy petition circulators. They can kill your political campaign before you even get started. Petition circulators should have some training before they hit the streets, so they know what they are doing. They should also be registered voters themselves, and there is a place on the petition where the circulator themselves are supposed to sign their names. If a petition circulator’s name is missing from a petition that’s grounds to throw out the entire petition sheet. Those types of mistakes are the kind of thing that can sink a campaign.
The following information comes directly from the Philadelphia City Commissioners web site:
On February 23, 2022, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court announced the petition calendar for the Congressional and Statewide candidates but not state legislative offices. For Congressional and Statewide candidates, the first day to circulate and file nomination petitions was February 25, 2022, and the last day to circulate and file is March 15, 2022. The order did not specify if this calendar applies to candidates for the Democratic and Republican City Committee. The Pennsylvania Department of State filed a request for clarification to the Court’s February 23rd order–requesting that the local committee petitions coincide with the state legislative races and Delaware County sought to intervene, requesting that the local committee petitions coincide with Congressional and Statewide candidates. On February 25, 2022, the Philadelphia City Commissioners made petitions available online at PhiladelphiaVotes.com or in City Hall Room 142.