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As voters prepare to go to the polls next week, the city is trying to alter election rules in a way that could tighten the grip of local Republican and Democratic leaders over their parties, according to a lawyer who sued to stop the change.
The Board of Elections approved the new policy in February. It would make it harder to elect write-in candidates to ward committees, which do electioneering work and help choose party leadership, attorney Matthew Wolfe said.
Lawyers for the city and both political parties asked Common Pleas Judge Jessica Brown to quash the lawsuit, but she sided with Wolfe late last month and blocked the change.
“One might think that what’s good for the Democrats is bad for the Republicans, and what’s good for the Republicans is bad for the Democrats, but they apparently are unified that this is bad for the entrenched party organizations,” said Wolfe, an election attorney and Republican ward leader in West Philly.
He argues the change would make it even harder for scarce Philly Republicans to fill thousands of ward committee vacancies, and would weaken a party that already struggles to win elections in the heavily Democratic city.
Alleged “laziness” of write-in candidates
Wolfe contends the new rule could also create a barrier for Republicans seeking to challenge the party’s leadership by mounting write-in campaigns.
“I believe that Vince Fenerty, our chairman, all things being equal, would rather win elections than not win them. But I think that more important to him than winning elections is maintaining his position as chairman,” Wolfe said. “Incredibly, he is insecure enough that he thinks that somehow this might lead to his losing, which is not really possible.”
Fenerty declined to comment, saying, “We’re going to present our case to the court.” The Republican Party’s attorney, Anthony Christina, also declined to comment, as did the city’s Law Department. The attorney for the Democrats did not respond to a request for comment.
The new rule says write-in candidates for ward committee need to receive at least 10 votes to win, because that’s the minimum number of petition signatures a candidate needs to get their name printed on a ballot.
In a court filing, Christina faulted people who win races with just a few write-in votes.
Winning with one or two votes “insults the hard work” of ballot candidates, he wrote. “Laziness is not an excuse… This minimum threshold ensures the person has some level of reasonable support in their community… Oftentimes committee people are elected as write-ins on a whim by family and friends and have no intention of actually serving in that role for the next four years.”
The city and the Republican City Committee appealed the judge’s order. A decision on the appeal could come in time to affect the certification of votes for ward committeepersons following the May 19 primary election.
An essential tool in low-profile races
Write-in candidates’ names don’t appear on ballots, but are manually added by individual voters.
On rare occasions, they play a role in elections for city offices, as in last year’s primary for District Attorney. Candidate Pat Dugan was on the ballot as a Democrat, but Wolfe, Fenerty and others also organized a write-in campaign for him on the Republican side.
While Dugan lost the Democratic primary, he received more than 6,000 write-in votes in the Republican primary, earning him a spot on the November ballot. He subsequently lost to incumbent DA Larry Krasner.
In many lower-profile races, write-ins are essential. Judges of elections — the people who run polling places on Election Day — routinely get their positions through write-in votes. Often no names appear on the ballot, and in some cases judges of elections win their races with one just vote after writing themselves in.
Write-ins also play a big role in elections for the Democratic and Republican committees in Philadelphia’s 66 political wards. Committeepersons are volunteers who knock on doors and hand out campaign literature before elections. They select ward leaders, who then get together to elect their parties’ respective chairs — currently, Fenerty and Democratic City Committee head Bob Brady.
Adam Bonin, a Democratic election lawyer who is not involved in the case, noted that the committees also play the crucial role of voting to endorse candidates for mayor, City Council, judges and other offices.
“Endorsements which come from the wards, and the grassroots get-out-the-vote work which is done by members of the ward committees — all of this matters. All of this helps shape who represents us. If we’re ever in court on a matter, who are we appearing in front of?” he said. “This is a very granular part of the system, but it matters.”
Adoption of the 10-vote minimum varies from county to county in Pennsylvania and has been repeatedly litigated over the years.
In 2018, Jimmy Lewis, an unsuccessful candidate for Democratic ward leader in Northeast Philly’s 58th ward, tried to have 11 committeepersons removed because they had received fewer than 10 votes, the Inquirer reported. A judge ruled Lewis did not have standing to sue. The Republican party also joined that suit after two incumbent GOP ward leaders lost reelection bids thanks to votes from written-in committee members.
Both parties struggle to fill vacancies
With registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans by a 7-to-1 margin citywide, many neighborhoods have few registered GOP members. That can make it impossible to get even the minimum 10 petition signatures needed to get on the ballot, making write-ins important for filling committees.
When Wolfe recently tried to get on the ballot for his ward committee, he worked hard to contact the 25 Republicans registered in his voting division and ask them to sign his petition, he said.
He knocked on doors, sent emails and made phone calls. But some people had moved away and others couldn’t be reached, making it impossible to get to 10.
“These people are the building blocks of what we do as a Republican party. This city needs a viable Republican party to step up and present alternatives to the voters, and everything we do leads us to that,” Wolfe said. “Filling positions on election boards with Republicans moves us in that direction, and getting committee people lined up to work in their divisions and develop relationships with Republican voters does that.”
But while party leaders may agree on the need to elect more committee members, especially on the Republican side, they may also want to maximize their control of their sprawling committee structure and the decisions members make, Bonin said.
“Would you rather have fewer members, but people that you know and trust, or open the doors and — especially in this MAGA environment — you don’t know what’s coming through the door?” he said.
If a committee seat isn’t filled during an election, a ward leader can appoint someone to the position. However, Wolfe and other critics say that process is less democratic, reinforcing the leader’s control and priorities over the possibly different values of the voters in the ward.
Despite its higher registration numbers, the city’s Democratic party also struggles to get people to run in some neighborhoods. Progressive groups, including Reclaim and the Philadelphia Democratic Socialists of America, responded with a campaign called Wards That Work that educates residents about how to run for committee.
Alex Reusing, a Democratic committeeperson in the 22nd ward, said the coalition is making “a real push to get as many write-ins as possible across the city.” That’s largely to address the high vacancy rate on committees and the city’s low voter turnout, but also to avoid having appointed members.
“The ward leader can just appoint whomever to the slots and and then use that for whatever are their purposes,” he said.
Reusing has criticized his ward leader, Councilmember Cindy Bass, and supported a challenger to her reelection bid. The Democratic City Committee attempted to remove him and several other committeepersons from their positions two years ago over their support for Working Families Party candidates.
A claim of unfair advantage
In February, without any recorded discussion of their reasoning, two of the three City Commissioners who make up the Board of Elections voted to approve a set of rules that included the changed policy on write-ins for ward committee.
A spokesperson for the City Commissioners’ office and the dissenting member, Commissioner Lisa Deeley, declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
Under the change, a write-in candidate would have to get at least 10 write-in votes to be elected to a committee. If they get two votes or nine votes, those votes effectively won’t count and the candidate won’t be elected.
In the last two election cycles, no Republican has won a committee election with 10 or more write-in votes, Wolfe said.
“Out of those 3,406 committee positions… we can only fill a maximum of 307 of those positions, less than 10% across the city,” by voting only for candidates who managed to get on the ballot, he said.
Also, when there’s a competitive race, the change would give an unfair advantage to candidates who appear on ballots, he argued. If a balloted candidate gets two votes and a write-in gets nine, the candidate with two votes would be declared the winner despite receiving fewer votes.
When a candidate is not a “candidate”
The arguments in the case turn on differing readings of state election law.
The revised rule the City Commissioners approved in February cites a law on primary elections. The statute says votes in various races are only valid if the candidate got at least as many votes as petition signatures required for the position — in this case, 10 votes.
In his lawsuit, however, Wolfe pointed to another law that says candidates for party positions specifically need a “plurality of the votes” to be elected — that is, just the most votes, regardless how many that is.
The essential difference is that the ward committee elections aren’t really primaries, despite being held on Primary Election Day, he and others argue. They are “final elections” that definitively pick winners.
According to that argument, “whoever wins wins, and state law as a general matter says the winner of the election is the person who receives the plurality of the votes, period,” Bonin said.
Wolfe also contends it’s unconstitutional to treat write-in votes differently than regular votes.
The city’s lawyers responded with an argument over the meaning of a “primary,” and cited a court decision that parsed the difference between a “candidate” on the ballot and a “person” seeking write-in votes. They also brought up a 1969 Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that said a minimum vote requirement for write-ins in certain elections is not unconstitutional.
Judge Brown rejected those arguments and agreed with Wolfe, ordering the new vote requirement suspended. The law he cited “controls the election” of ward committee members, she said.
