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High Court won't intervene in GOP snafu |
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Tuesday, 29 July 2008 |
PROVIDENCE — According to an order issued yesterday, the Rhode Island Supreme Court has declined to intervene in a case involving the nominations of five Republican candidates for the General Assembly, among them Lammis J. Vargas of Pawtucket.
The chairman of the Rhode Island Republican Party had asked the court to review and reverse a July 3 decision by the state Board of Elections that denied the party’s petition to compel the Providence, Pawtucket and West Warwick boards of canvassers to issue nomination papers to the five candidates, according to the order.
On July 3, the Rhode Island Board of Elections handed down a unanimous ruling that Rhode Island Senate hopefuls Lammis J. Vargas (Dist. 15, Pawtucket), Kofua Z. Kulah Sr. (Dist. 5, Providence), Elana K. Goldstein (Dist. 3, Providence) and Clarke (Dist. 9, West Warwick), along with Damien J. Baldino, who intended to run for the Rhode Island House of Representatives seat in Providence’s District 13, were ineligible to run for office.
“The requirement is that candidates notify and file nomination papers with the board of canvassers where the candidate lives. And, in this particular case, the Republican Party filed their papers for a group of individuals from across the state with the Secretary of State’s office and not with the local boards,” Board of Elections Executive Director Robert Kando said at the time.
According to the order, the Rhode Island Republican Party chairman had first approached the Rhode Island Supreme Court prior to the board of elections hearing, seeking to have the court direct the Secretary of State’s Office to issue nomination papers to the candidates in question so voter signatures could be collected and certified within the statutory 10-day period. The Secretary of State’s Office had apparently denied the Republican Party’s request to do so. The court declined to take action, the order states, because of the hearing scheduled before the elections board.
On July 22, according to the court order, 19 days after the board of elections ruling and 12 days after the expiration of the signature gathering period, the Republican Party filed its request for the Supreme Court to review and reverse the Board of Election’s decision.
In its order declining to intervene in the case, denying both of the Republican Party’s petitions, the court cited procedural impropriety in that the party’s second request was filed as supplemental to the first despite the fact that it asked the court to rule against a separate entity. The court also cited the Republican Party’s failure to invoke the court’s assistance before the expiration of statutory cut-off dates for the issuance of nomination papers and the collection and certification of signatures as fatal to a determination.
“The timing of this filing, given the party’s prior urgent declarations … about the need for action before the expiration of these crucial deadlines, was not only ironic but, we might add, it is difficult to simply ignore, in that it may conceivably have affected the scope of the remedies which would have been available to the Court …,” the order states.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 02 August 2008 )
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