Don't count your nomination signatures before they've hatched.
Lancaster County elections officials are spreading that warning to local candidates for some state offices after a court ruling last week.
Wednesday's 4-3 vote by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out a redrawn map of all state House and Senate districts. When that happened, Pennsylvania reverted to the old district maps, drawn in 2001.
That meant big changes in the races for state House and Senate seats coming up in the Primary Election in April.
Candidates must now run for seats in districts delineated under the 2001 maps.
To account for the switch, the Pennsylvania Department of State pushed back from Jan. 24 to Jan. 26 the date when candidates for state House and Senate seats were allowed to begin circulating nominating petitions to get their names on the primary ballots.
"Anyone who might have started circulating their petitions on Jan. 24 is going to have invalid signatures," said Dennis Stuckey, chairman of the county's Board of Elections and a county commissioner. "Only signatures from Jan. 26 going forward will be accepted."
Also, because the boundary lines of some districts changed as a result of the Supreme Court's ruling, candidates could end up with signatures from residents who live outside their districts.
Stuckey said it's likely some Republican candidates started gathering signatures Jan. 24, because the county GOP committee met that night to endorse candidates for state House and Senate.
"That's an event where I would expect candidates would gather signatures," he said.
Nominating petitions cannot be altered, according to Diane Skilling, acting chief clerk of the Board of Elections, which means simply crossing out the dates listed next to signatures on a petition is not allowed.
"We're telling candidates to throw out any paperwork they started circulating before Jan. 26 and start over," she said. "And we're reminding them to make sure they're getting signatures from people in the right districts."
To account for pushing back the start date for circulating nominating petitions, the Department of State also moved the end date from Feb. 14 to Feb. 16.
Welcome to the new TalkBack on LancasterOnline. Please use the comment box below to share your opinion on this article. If you would prefer to use the previous TalkBack forums instead, please use this link to post in the TalkBack forums.
