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Commonwealth: A Journal of Political Science  Volume 15, Number 2  September 2009

 2009 PPSA/LORL, PA House of Reps. ISSN 0890-2410

The Removal of Carl Romanelli from
Pennsylvania’s 2006 U.S. Senate Ballot

Blyden Potts1

Shippensburg University

This article is a case study of the ballot qualification challenge
brought by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party against Carl
Romanelli, the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate in 2006. The
study argues that the state’s legal process for challenging
signatures on ballot access petitions imposes a greater burden on
independent and minor party candidates than the letter of the law
suggests; that Pennsylvania signature thresholds are arbitrary and
unjust; and that the signature challenge process is motivated more
by partisan political considerations than by a genuine public
interest in preventing signature fraud. The study concludes that
Romanelli may have qualified for a place on the ballot had the
standard applied to him been that suggested by the ballot access
law without the various criteria for disqualifying signatures added
by his partisan opposition, legal precedents, the court-ordered
review process, and the state’s database of registered voters.

arl Romanelli was not the first candidate to have his initial
qualification for the ballot in Pennsylvania overturned through a

court challenge, but his 2006 U.S. Senate campaign was notable for
several reasons. First, Romanelli was a potential “spoiler” candidate in a
race that had attracted national attention. Second, even though he faced
the highest signature hurdle for ballot access ever imposed on a
candidate by Pennsylvania electoral law, he nonetheless submitted more
signatures than any candidate in the state’s history. The most remarkable
aspect of Romanelli’s campaign, though, is that while the number of
signatures from registered Pennsylvania voters signing his petition in
good faith likely exceeded the legal threshold of 67,070 names, the
Democratic Party nevertheless succeeded in having Romanelli removed
from the ballot. The process by which many of his petition signatures
were challenged and invalidated shows that the actual barriers to ballot
access in Pennsylvania for independent and minor party candidates are
far greater than even Pennsylvania’s restrictive ballot access statute

C



38 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

suggests. Romanelli’s case thus calls into question whether independent
and minor party candidates have a real opportunity to get on the ballot in
Pennsylvania if one of the major parties wishes to thwart their access.

Ballot Access

The account of ballot access presented here presupposes that the
number of candidates on the ballot has a generally curvilinear impact on
the quality of election outcomes. As a general principle, having more
candidates on the ballot increases the odds that the “best” candidate in a
particular race will win because each additional candidate has a chance
of being an improvement over the best option already in the pool. This
tendency is subject to diminishing returns, however, inasmuch as the
likelihood of an added candidate being an improvement tends to be
inversely proportional to the number of choices already available.2

Having more candidates on the ballot also gives representation to a
greater range of ideas and issue positions. Countering these probable
benefits is the fact that each added candidate is likely to increase the
time, energy, and money spent on the campaigns by the media and by
voters evaluating the candidates. Hypothetically, as the number of
candidates increases, some point eventually is reached where benefit
relative to costs is maximized, after which the transaction costs begin
substantially to outweigh the potential gains. Additional candidates
beyond this optimal number constitute “ballot clutter.” Because the costs
and benefits defining the conceptual curve are highly variable and
subjective, there can be no simple or objective determination of an ideal
number of candidates in an election; but it seems likely that elections
with three or four candidates would often be an improvement over two-
candidate elections.3 Unfortunately, few political races in Pennsylvania
offer more than two choices. This condition suggests that current state
ballot access requirements deprive Pennsylvania voters of an optimal
number of ballot choices.4

Independent and minor party voters suffer in another, more direct
way. Where ballot access is restricted to the two major parties and the
election process has been largely co-opted by party primaries, voters
have no candidates that truly represent them. Accordingly, they are
reduced to being mere swing voters. Moreover, where one party or the
other dominates, as in many Pennsylvania legislative districts,



Blyden Potts 39

independent and minor party voters are essentially disenfranchised
because there is no viable alternative toward which to “swing” one’s
vote.5 For this large minority of Pennsylvania voters, having a
meaningful vote depends upon the ability of independent and minor party
candidates to obtain ballot access.6

In Jenness v. Fortson (1971), the U.S. Supreme Court recognized
“an important state interest in requiring some preliminary showing of a
significant modicum of support” before including a candidate’s name on
the ballot. That court decision and others building upon it established
“modicum of support” as the threshold-defining principle in setting
ballot access rules. There is consensus that in principle a candidate
showing a modicum of support must be included on the ballot, whereas
one failing to do so may be excluded. What constitutes a “modicum of
support” has been much debated, however, both in enacting ballot access
legislation and in deciding ballot access disputes (see, e.g., ACLU 2006;
Maryland Green Party et al. v. Maryland Board of Elections et al. 2003;
Rogers et al. v. Corbett et al. 2006; Rogers et al. v. Cortes 2006; and
Winger 2006a).

Under Pennsylvania law, the ballot access standard applied to
independent candidates and minor political parties differs from the one
applied to major parties. Republican and Democratic candidates must
obtain a fixed number of signatures from registered voters of their own
party within a three-week period to appear on their party’s primary
ballot. They must then win their party primary by obtaining a plurality of
votes to be placed on the general election ballot. The thresholds for
statewide offices are either 1,000 or 2,000 signatures, depending upon
the office. By contrast, the standard for minor parties requires that:

the number of qualified electors of the electoral district signing
such nomination papers shall be at least equal to two per centum of
the largest entire vote cast for any officer, except a judge of a court
of record, elected at the last preceding election in said electoral
district for which said nomination papers are to be filed, and shall
be not less than the number of signers required for nomination
petitions for party candidates for the same office [Pennsylvania
Election Code, §2911(b)].

In practice, this law typically sets a threshold somewhere between
20,000 and 40,000 signatures; but because Bob Casey Jr. got 3,353,489
votes in the 2004 State Treasurer’s election, the threshold or “modicum



40 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

of support” for statewide candidates was 67,070 signatures in 2006. Two
points should be emphasized regarding this threshold. First, the precise
threshold fluctuates greatly from year to year because it is dependent
upon the popularity of candidates from other parties who ran in prior
election cycles. Second, the number of signatures required for
independent and minor party candidates is typically 12 to 20 times
greater than that required for Republicans and Democrats. In 2006, it was
over 30 times greater.

As unfair as Pennsylvania’s ballot access rules are on paper, they are
worse in practice. If having a “modicum of support” were the true
criterion by which candidates are assessed for ballot access, Romanelli’s
name would likely have appeared on the 2006 ballot. The barrier he
faced—and other candidates continue to face—was far greater than the
ostensible “modicum of support” principle behind the state election code.

The 2006 Election

The 2006 U.S. Senate contest in Pennsylvania provided a special
opportunity for Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli. The two-term
incumbent, Rick Santorum, was a prominent conservative Republican
whose articulation of right-wing moral positions made him a favorite
with moral conservatives nationwide but placed him at the top of the
Democrats’ “hit list.” Bob Casey Jr., the Democratic challenger and son
of a popular former governor, was only slightly less morally conservative
but he had a much milder disposition. Pundits foresaw a competitive race
with Santorum expected to close an early gap in the polls as the election
drew nearer. These elements put a national spotlight on the race, which
Romanelli entered as a potential spoiler. Minor party candidates who are
neither wealthy nor famous have a difficult time attracting media
coverage, but thanks to the attention given to this particular race,
Romanelli garnered considerable press interest while drawing financial
support from Republicans who calculated that he would steal votes from
Casey, thereby enhancing Santorum’s chances.

An eloquent speaker and self-described “fireball,” Romanelli
frequently portrayed himself as the “little guy” standing up to
Democratic bullies, and he spoke assuredly of his intent to get on the
ballot and run a competitive campaign. Along with Marakay Rogers, the
Green Party nominee for Governor, Romanelli headed a slate that



Blyden Potts 41

included four candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, one for
the Pennsylvania state Senate, and a dozen for the Pennsylvania House of
Representatives (Green Party of Pennsylvania 2007). There were 17,762
registered Green voters in Pennsylvania by November 2006, making the
Green Party the fourth largest and fastest growing party in the state
(BCEL 2006b). Romanelli advocated the immediate withdrawal of
American forces from the war in Iraq, an end to what he regarded as
imperialist U.S. foreign policy, enactment of a single-payer health care
system for all Americans, defense of women’s reproductive rights, and
extension of the right to marry to gays and lesbians. Each of these issues
was important to some portion of Pennsylvania’s voters. After Chuck
Pennachio lost in the Democratic primary, Romanelli was the only
Senate candidate representing any of these issue positions. Both Casey
and Santorum supported American involvement in the Iraqi war, and
both were “pro-life” foes of gay marriage who also opposed universal
health care. Romanelli’s position on the Iraqi war was particularly
popular in an election cycle where many races were seen as referenda on
the war. On the strength of these otherwise unrepresented issue
constituencies, Romanelli may have drawn more than 10% of the vote
had he remained on the ballot. It is therefore quite plausible that he could
have been an effective spoiler. Indeed, it is conceivable that he could
have won the election had he been included in the candidate debates.

To demonstrate the necessary “modicum of support,” the party had
to circulate nomination papers on which would be entered the signatures
of registered Pennsylvania voters who supported inclusion of their
candidates’ names on the November ballot. The names of candidates for
various offices were typically “stacked” on the same form, with
Romanelli, Rogers, and one or more legislative candidates and their
respective offices on the same sheet. Each sheet had space for up to 60
signatures. Signers were required to sign and date their signature and
provide their address. They also were expected to print their names so
that their identity as registered voters could be validated. The circulation
process began on March 8 and continued through August 1.

Romanelli and Green Party leaders knew that the Democratic Party
would challenge their submitted signatures; and based on past experience
they calculated that more than 100,000 signatures might be needed to
survive a Democratic challenge, even though the formal number of
signatures needed to get on the ballot was 67,070.7 By late May,
projections suggested that Green volunteers would get only 25,000 to



42 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

30,000 signatures. About that time, Romanelli began to receive a large
number of campaign contributions, which ultimately totaled over
$158,000 for the Luzerne County Green Party and $15,000 for Carl
Romanelli for U.S. Senate (Federal Election Commission 2007). Nearly
all the money came from supporters of conservative causes presumably
motivated not by genuine support for Green Party ideals but rather by a
desire to boost a potential spoiler so as to help the conservative Santorum
(Kiel 2006). Indeed, almost half of the contributions came from out of
state. Romanelli used the money to hire contractors who in turn hired
nomination paper circulators. Hired circulators paid on a per-signature
basis have an incentive to work hastily, which may lead to sloppiness
and even fraud if the contractors are unscrupulous. Using contractors and
circulators exposed Romanelli to legitimate skepticism about the validity
of the signatures obtained on his behalf, but without the help of these
workers, Romanelli and the other Green Party candidates could not have
exceeded the 67,070 signature threshold.

On August 1, the Green Party of Pennsylvania submitted to the
Bureau of Commissions, Elections, and Legislation (BCEL) a total of
3,698 pages8 of nomination papers with what would later be determined
to be 99,965 signatures, several thousand of which had been flagged as
invalid by Romanelli’s own reviewers. BCEL staff reviewed the pages
for face validity, ensuring that required information had been included,
that each line contained a signature, and that each signer had given a
Pennsylvania address. They stopped reviewing once the tally of valid
signatures exceeded 67,070 by a modest margin. Romanelli and all the
other Green candidates were thus on the ballot, pending a probable
challenge by the Democrats.

The Signature Challenge

In early August, Pittsburgh attorney William R. Caroselli and other
Democrats filed suit in Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court
challenging the nomination papers of Green Party candidates Marakay
Rogers, Christina Valente, and Carl Romanelli and asking the court to
remove their names from the ballot (Petition to Set Aside 2006).
Challenges were raised by other objectors to seven independent and
minor party candidates for Congress and the Pennsylvania General



Blyden Potts 43

Assembly, including Green Party candidate Titus North in the State’s
14th Congressional District.9

Under Pennsylvania law, a candidate who loses a signature challenge
may be forced to pay court costs as well as the opposition’s legal fees.
Ralph Nader had been assessed over $80,000 in such penalties after his
failed Pennsylvania ballot access effort in 2004 (Brown 2007, Winger
2006b). This penalty is a deterrent few candidates are willing to risk
unless they are wealthy or certain of winning a signature challenge. The
major parties, for which this liability would be trivial, use it as a threat to
drive otherwise qualified independent and minor party candidates off the
ballot. Green Party candidates Rogers and Valente felt compelled to
withdraw their nomination papers, as did most of the other candidates
who had been challenged. Only North and Romanelli chose to fight the
Democrats despite the risk (BCEL 2006a).

Media

The legal challenge to Romanelli’s signatures was backed by a
media campaign by the Democratic Party of Pennsylvania implying that
Romanelli’s signature collection effort had been fraudulent. Democrats
said his nomination paper showed a “pattern of forged and fictitious
signatures” and “impropriety” on the part of the circulators (Petition to
Set Aside 2006). Democratic press releases were rife with
misinformation. The Democrats, particularly party chairman T.J. Rooney
and party spokesperson Abe Amorós, falsely claimed that: (1) the Green
Party had lied about submitting 95,000 to 100,000 signatures when it had
submitted only “approximately 85,000,” (2) the Green Party had engaged
in “rampant fraud,” (3) the signature collection was “the most deceitful
and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated” on the Commonwealth Court,
and (4) thousands of names had been “created at random then randomly
assigned either existent or non-existent addresses” (Amorós 2006). The
Democrats also gained a great deal of publicity from Rooney’s reference
to phony names (e.g., Mickey Mouse) that appeared in the nomination
paper, suggesting that there were many fictitious signatures even though
their own petition to the court documented only two dozen allegedly fake
names, a few of which were later shown to belong to valid voters who
shared a celebrity name. Given the propensity of some people to sign a
silly or lewd name as a joke, it is almost inevitable that in any large
collection of public signatures some tiny fraction will be bogus. Rooney
also advanced the unlikely contention that Romanelli was actually a



44 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

“puppet candidate created” by the Santorum campaign (Amorós 2006,
Fudge Report 2006, Petition to Set Aside 2006).

The Democrats’ defamation of Romanelli largely succeeded because
while the media readily relayed the allegations of Democratic Party press
releases, they mostly ignored Green Party statements delivered to them
rebutting Democratic allegations. The major newspapers in Philadelphia
and Pittsburgh published allegations that as many as 70,000 of the
collected signatures were “forgeries, false signatures, and voter fraud”
(Barnes 2006). None of the media appeared to have investigated these
allegations, even though the filed nomination papers were open to public
inspection. Media complacency and outright bias in favor of the major
parties is another means by which ballot access is effectively restricted.

Types of Challenges

The signature challenges consisted of two types: global challenges in
which objectors sought to strike one or more pages of the nomination
paper because of alleged problems with the page, its notarization, or its
circulator, and line challenges of specific signatures. Global challenges
were made against 1,782 pages alleged to contain 45,918 signatures.
There were 24 bases for such challenges. Most involved technical
infractions, such as signers failing to fill in one of the lines on the page,
notaries pressing the page with their seal rather than with their ink stamp,
and nonsignature portions of the form being illegible or containing
misspellings. These challenges also alleged forgery or malfeasance on
the part of the circulator. Some circulators did in fact commit fraud, as
evidenced by use of the same hand to complete an entire sheet and a rate
of signature validity that was approximately random. Yet, the number of
such nomination papers was only a couple dozen pages—a fraction of
1% of all those collected—and not remotely near the level of fraud
alleged by the Democrats (Petition to Set Aside 2006). A small amount
of fraud can be expected in almost any large signature effort using paid
signature contractors. When circulators are hired off the street, paid on a
per signature basis, and subject to little quality control oversight (as is
typical of signature contractors), there is going to be sloppiness and, if
enough people are involved, some few who are motivated to cheat by
forging signatures.

Line challenges were made independently of whether the page was
also subject to global challenge. There were 13 bases for line challenges.
These included legal technicalities for disqualification, such as signatures



Blyden Potts 45

and printed names that were not legible, use of a nickname or initial
instead of the name used on the voter registration record, use of ditto
marks in the address or date field, incomplete address, and incomplete
date. They also included substantive violations, such as multiple
signatures, not being a resident of the proper county, and having
someone other than the signer write the information. Other bases for
challenge were either substantive or technical, such as the address or
signature varying from the one on the voter registration card and
signatures alleged not to be cursive. The Democrats claimed they made
69,692 line challenges, of which 33,494 belonged to people allegedly
“not registered in county” (Petition to Set Aside 2006). There was
considerable overlap in the signatures subject to each type of challenge
(see In re Nomination Paper of Rogers et al. 2006a).

A Little Room in Harrisburg

Given the availability of the Pennsylvania Department of State’s
recently created Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors database of
registered voters (SURE), and recognizing the strain that signature
challenges place on courts, Commonwealth Court Judge James Gardner
Colins issued an order on August 9 that in effect created a new
requirement and burden for candidates seeking public office. His order
required each side to field teams consisting of counsel and at least nine
staff members to work together in Conference Room 303 of the North
Office Building in Harrisburg from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (or from 8
a.m. to 8 p.m., if necessary) Monday through Friday (and Saturday, if
needed) for a period of several weeks, beginning August 14, until the
validity of enough signatures was established to determine whether
Romanelli’s name would appear on the ballot. The process took six
weeks. Under court supervision, pairs of Democrats and Greens
“diligently and expeditiously” checked the validity of each signature line
challenge using the SURE electronic database of registered Pennsylvania
voters. Each signature was stipulated as being “valid,” “invalid,” or
“disputed” (see In re Nomination Paper of Rogers et al. 2006a). The
review of signatures for Titus North, whose signatures were a subset of
the Romanelli signatures, was merged into the Romanelli review.

This new obligation was far more burdensome for Romanelli and the
Green Party than it was for the Democrats who typically had a lawyer
(Shawn Gallagher), a database manager, and nine staff members in the
room, along with a separate group of lawyers to argue in the courtroom.



46 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

Most of these people were either regular staff members or interns who
would otherwise have been working in Harrisburg, or they were local
volunteers. On any given day, most of the Democratic staff consisted of
people with experience from prior days. By contrast, Romanelli had only
one lawyer (Larry Otter) who often could not be in the conference room
because he also had to attend to matters in the courtroom. In addition,
Romanelli struggled to find nine people to staff the computer stations.
The Green Party thus faced a serious challenge, given that its small size
precluded the hiring of paid staff or interns. It had to rely instead on
volunteers, many of whom had to travel a considerable distance from
either Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. Furthermore, the business hours all but
precluded working people from participating. When fewer than nine
Greens were in the room, the Democrats sometimes accused Romanelli
of contempt of court and motioned to have his name summarily removed
from the ballot, a tactic the court rejected. To ensure the ongoing
presence of sufficient staff, Romanelli had to hire several workers from
temporary employment agencies. Paying them full-time salaries for six
weeks essentially added an extra “fee” of several thousand dollars to the
ballot access requirements. There were few regulars on the Green team,
which meant that on any given day several of the Greens might be
rookies in the review process. Because of errors caused by staff
inexperience, the signatures of registered Pennsylvania voters who
should have been recognized as valid signers were erroneously stipulated
as invalid, which resulted in the disenfranchisement of people who had
signed the Green Party nomination papers in good faith.

The stakes were high. Events in the conference room might
determine the outcome of the election, garner or deny publicity for the
Green Party, or be crucial to its continued status as a minor party in
Pennsylvania. The Democrats saw Romanelli as a candidate who in the
absence of Republican backing would not have had a modicum of
support and whose chief purpose was to spoil the contest by helping to
reelect one of the most hated politicians in the country, Senator
Santorum. The Greens viewed Democrats as hypocrites willing to
subvert fundamental democratic values out of naked self-interest.
Arguments arose frequently, occasionally escalating into shouting
matches or other forms of disruptive behavior, including one shoving
incident that required the intervention of the Court Officer and Capitol
Police who removed the combatants from the scene.



Blyden Potts 47

Bases for Invalidation

In light of the “modicum of support” language used in state ballot
access law, it might be supposed that the signature challenge was
fundamentally a process intended to ensure that the signatures on
Romanelli’s nomination paper represented real, registered Pennsylvania
voters who had signed the nomination paper in good faith to support the
inclusion of Romanelli and the other Green Party candidates on the
ballot. That is what the law and the principle of “modicum of support”
imply. That is also the rhetoric the Democratic Party used—both before
the Commonwealth Court and in the media—to explain why it was
challenging the signatures. Such a supposition would be naïve. In
hundreds, if not thousands, of specific instances in the Harrisburg
conference room it was evident beyond reasonable doubt that a signature
represented a real, registered Pennsylvania voter who presumably signed
in good faith, but the Democrats nevertheless succeeded in having the
signature invalidated. On many occasions when confronted with this
point, the Democrats’ lawyer, Shawn Gallagher, would reply, “I do not
doubt that [X] is a registered Pennsylvania voter who signed with intent
[to support Romanelli], but that’s not our responsibility.”10

The Democrats’ interest was in using the letter of the law and past
court decisions to strike as many signatures with “facial defects” as they
could in hopes of removing Romanelli from the ballot. They had no
qualms about deliberately disenfranchising voters to achieve their goal.
Drawing on past legal precedent and supported by the courts, the
Democrats were able to apply to many signatures a number of narrow
legal requirements in such a way as to pervert the spirit of the law. Many
of these requirements were embodied in a Protocol for Signature Review
(2006), which was part of the stipulation process between Democrats and
Greens as directed by the Commonwealth Court.

One of the more egregious of these requirements was that if a
scanned image of a signer’s signature was not on file in the electronic
SURE database, then the petition signature would be summarily
invalidated. The Commonwealth Court later indicated that these
signatures should have been marked as “disputed” rather than “invalid”
(see In re Nomination Paper of Rogers et al. 2006c). There were at least
162 such instances.11

Another onerous requirement was that the address on the form had to
match exactly the one listed in the electronic SURE database. If the



48 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

digits of the house number were transposed (e.g., 134 for 143), or if there
was a missing or extra digit or letter, the signature would be summarily
invalidated, regardless of whether the mistake was on the nomination
paper, on the voter registration form, or in voter registration data entry.
Most, if not all, of the entries with minor address inconsistencies likely
represented legitimate registered voters. There were 103 instances in the
review in which the house number was the only error. In most of these
cases the problem appeared to be transposed, missing, or added digits.

The city, borough, or town listed on the nomination paper had to
match the one in the SURE system. The instructions from BCEL to
circulators of nomination papers indicated that the municipality listed
was to be the voter’s political municipality, which is not necessarily the
same as the municipality used in their mailing address; but the SURE
system screen used for the review process showed only the mailing
address. At least 42 cases in the review were found to have been
erroneously invalidated on this basis. More than a week passed before it
was made clear that this kind of error would not be grounds for
invalidation, by which time possibly thousands of signatures had been
invalidated. Even after this problem was discovered, some reviewers
continued to void signatures on this basis.

At one point, Democrats sought to invalidate about 50 signatures on
a page from a rural county because the addresses were listed in SURE as
“HCR” (Highway Contract Route) but the signers had used “RR” (Rural
Route) in their addresses, another name for the same concept. All other
aspects of the address and signature matched perfectly. Those signatures
were ultimately validated after much contention, but a few others of this
sort were not. In the review, 18 signatures were improperly invalidated
on the erroneous grounds that “RR” was not the same as “HCR.”

Initially, any signature that used a nickname or substituted an initial
for a name was invalidated. Later this rule was relaxed so that obvious
nicknames like “Bob” or “Rob” for Robert were allowed (although for
awhile the Democrats challenged the use of “Peggy” as a nickname for
Margaret). Signatures using initials for names were always invalidated.
There were at least 221 such cases in the reviewed subset. It is not
certain what portion of these challenges were noted, but it is likely that at
least 400 signatures may have been lost in this way.

If portions of the name were added or omitted, the name would be
invalidated, even if it obviously referred to the correct person. Mary



Blyden Potts 49

Colleen Mullen, as she was listed in SURE, signed the nomination paper
as Colleen Mullen. The address was correct and the signature was a
distinctively clear match of handwriting; only the first name of “Mary”
was missing. Yet, the Democrats insisted that her signature was invalid
because the legal precedent did not permit any discrepancy in name.
Similarly invalidated were the names of several hundred people, mostly
women, who had hyphenated surnames in the SURE database but who
used only one of their two surnames (e.g., Tina Smith-Jones signing as
Tina Jones) or who had only one surname in SURE but signed the
nomination paper with a hyphenated compound surname. There were at
least 120 instances in which the name of the signer substantially varied
from a registered voter in the SURE system but the signer nevertheless
appeared to be that registered voter. If the reviewed subset had covered
all noted lines and if the Harrisburg review had been completed, it is
likely that there would have been at least 330 substantial name variations
with at least 20 hyphenated surnames. Had the people involved in these
instances tried to vote, they almost certainly would have been allowed to
do so. Even people who relocate to a new address within the same
election district are typically able to vote despite their address change.
Nonetheless, such signatures for Romanelli were invalidated.

A more ambiguous situation concerns married women who change
their surnames. Numerous instances were found of women whose
address information, first name, and handwriting matched that in the
SURE system but whose last name was incorrect. Often there would be a
male registered voter living at the same address who had the surname
that the woman had used in signing the nomination paper. Such people
apparently are married couples who had registered to vote prior to
marrying, but after the marriage the wife failed to update her voter
registration to reflect the surname change. Chances are these women are
able to vote under their maiden name, but their petition signatures were
nevertheless invalidated by virtue of the inconsistent surname. The
review found 49 cases of women using a maiden name who otherwise
appeared to be the correct registered voter. If the reviewed subset had
covered all noted lines and if the Harrisburg review had been completed,
it is likely there would have been at least 130 such cases.

The category with the most line challenges was “Not Registered in
County” (Code 33), followed by “Signature Illegible.” Many of these
challenges were valid, particularly in Philadelphia and the surrounding
counties where signatures were collected by paid circulators who appear



50 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

to have frequently failed to confirm the county of residence of their
signers. At least a large minority of these challenges, however, were
cases in which the objectors apparently misread the name of the
individual and thus were unable to find them in the SURE database.
Roughly a third of line challenges of this type were found in the SURE
system and validated by the Harrisburg reviewers. Many that should
have been found were not, thanks to the “expeditious” nature of the
search, the inexperience of the reviewers, or problems with the SURE
database. Subsequent review by Green volunteers of 6,720 of the
invalidated and disputed signatures found 4,729 to belong to identifiable
registered voters in the SURE registry who had been overlooked.12

Almost 3,000 (44%) of the 6,720 flagged invalidations were Code 33
cases; and of these, 2,032 (69%) were found to belong to registered
voters subject to no other challenge. These cases alone represented more
than 6% of all Code 33 challenges made by the Democrats. If the
reviewed subset had included all the noted lines and if the Harrisburg
review had been completed, these cases would have represented about
5,300 (or nearly 16%) of the Democrats’ “Not in County” challenges.
Combined with the one-third of these challenges that were validated in
the Harrisburg review, nearly half of the Democrats’ Code 33 challenges
(about 16,000 out of 33,494) lacked merit. They might have been only
slightly less accurate had they flipped a coin to determine whether to
challenge a signature.

The SURE database had become fully operational less than a year
prior to the Romanelli signature review. As an attempt to track over eight
million registered voters by integrating into a uniform format the many
formats previously used by different Pennsylvania counties, the SURE
system could not have been expected to be flawless. In addition to the
lack of scanned images of signatures for a significant number of
registered voters (which may or may not have been an error on the part
of SURE), several other problems were encountered. One of these
concerned abbreviations in street directions that appeared in some places
after the street name (e.g., “Washington St E”) and in other places before
the street name (e.g., “N 17th St”). There were even a few places where
the direction was spelled out (e.g., “South East St”). These directions
hampered address searches because addresses in Philadelphia, unlike
those in other counties, were required to include a directional if it
appeared at the beginning of the street name in the SURE database.
Compounding the problem, many signers did not include the directional



Blyden Potts 51

in their address information. Similarly, the name of single digit streets
might appear as “5 Ave,” “5th Ave,” “05 Ave,” or “05th Ave,” and even
with the use of wildcard search terms a reviewer might have to search
two or three times to find the right listing, a task made even more
onerous when street addresses included directionals. These problems led
to the wrongful invalidation of the signatures of an unknown number of
registered voters.

Some portion of those lines challenged as “No Cursive Signature”
(Code 24) and “Illegible Signature” (Code 25) likely represented
legitimate voters. Arthritic voters in particular often found it difficult to
sign their names in the small spaces provided on the nomination paper.
At least 138 of the signatures in the reviewed subset invalidated on the
basis of Code 24 were specifically identified as belonging to registered
voters, as were 257 signatures invalidated on the basis of Code 25. At
least 34 other signatures of identified voters were improperly invalidated
because the signature and printed name were transposed (i.e., in the
wrong boxes). Invalidations of this type were supposed to have ceased in
the second week of the review.

Accounting

The adversarial accounting system established by the
Commonwealth Court also worked against Romanelli. He had volunteers
count the total number of signatures on the submitted nomination paper,
but he had no systematic accounting process to track the signature
stipulations (i.e., “valid,” “invalid,” or “disputed”) as they were being
reviewed. His lawyer was thus less than fully prepared to make effective
court motions or to try to thwart the Democrats’ tactics (see In re
Nomination Paper of Rogers et al. 2006c). Nor did the court make an
independent accounting. Accordingly, both Romanelli and the
Commonwealth Court were dependent upon the Democrats’ numbers,
which proved to be substantially flawed.

One large Democratic accounting error discovered and corrected
during the review concerned the gross number of signatures submitted.
Neither side had an accurate figure. The Greens knew they had submitted
over 99,000 signatures, of which at least 5,400 had been struck as invalid
by the Green signature team prior to filing; but because several pages
were missing from their photocopies, they did not know exactly how
many more signatures there were. Nor did they know how many
signatures had been invalidated by the BCEL initial review. Hence, after



52 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

the Code 30 (“pre-struck”) signatures were set aside, they could only
estimate the number of presumptively valid signatures to be
approximately 94,000. The Democratic count of gross and net signatures
was several thousand signatures lower than the Green count. The
Democrats had started with a gross count that had already factored out
the pre-struck lines. They then subtracted the number of pre-struck lines,
thereby effectively discounting the pre-struck lines twice. The discovery
of this error embarrassed the Democrats who for two days had adamantly
insisted that such an error could not possibly explain the count
discrepancy.

The Commonwealth Court easily could have ordered a neutral count
to eliminate accounting errors. Since both the Democrats and the Greens
had spreadsheet records for each page of the nomination paper, it would
have been a simple task to merge the two counts of gross, pre-struck, and
net signatures for each page, then flag the discrepancies and cross-check
them against the actual nomination paper pages to determine accurate
numbers.13 It might also have expedited the review process. Yet, the
Commonwealth Court apparently never considered this possibility.

Another signature accounting issue arose when the specific
challenges against a given signature were unsubstantiated and the
Democrats sometimes found a new basis for objection, most commonly
an address discrepancy. They sought the permission of the
Commonwealth Court to amend their challenges, which the court granted
(see In re Nomination Paper of Rogers et al. 2006b). The Democrats
then went through the signatures already reviewed and unilaterally
declared invalid many of those that had been previously stipulated as
either valid or disputed. They did so without any independent review of
whether there was a legitimate basis for amending these prior signature
determinations.

The accounting began with the premise that there were 3,702 pages
of nomination paper containing 99,802 gross signatures, as both sides
had stipulated, and that 5,973 of these were “Code 30s,” pre-struck by
either the Romanelli volunteers or the BCEL reviewers prior to the
challenge, leaving a net of 93,829 signatures. A later audit of the
Democratic and Green numbers found only 3,698 pages of nomination
paper containing a nominal 99,965 signatures. With a stipulated 5,973
pre-struck, the base number of presumptively valid signatures prior to
review should have been 93,992. Romanelli lost 163 signatures there.14



Blyden Potts 53

From the 93,829 base the Commonwealth Court subtracted the stipulated
invalid signatures and added a “Code 30 Adjustment” that reduced the
nominal number of invalid signatures by 1,081 to correct for the
Democrats’ double-counted Code 30s and to adjust for the unilaterally
amended challenges. Except for these adjustments, the court basically
accepted as accurate the stipulated invalid signatures; and finding these
sufficient to dismiss Romanelli from the ballot, the court effectively gave
him the benefit of the doubt on disputed signatures by disregarding them.
The adjusted number of invalid signatures was 35,690 in the court’s final
count, which gave Romanelli 58,139 presumed valid signatures, an
official deficit of 8,931.

The review was not completed, however, before it was ended. Only
71,662 (72%) of the total 99,965 lines and 49,266 (78%) of the 63,557
alleged challenges (after removing the Code 30 lines) had been reviewed.
If the rate of successful challenges up to that point (65%) would have
applied to the 14,291 challenges allegedly remaining, then the number of
stipulated invalid signatures would increase by 9,300 to 44,990, thereby
giving Romanelli a nominal deficit of 18,230 signatures. It is doubtful,
though, that the 65% rate would have pertained. The review had gotten
the highest rate of invalidation in Philadelphia, which was completed by
the end of the review. The remaining challenges were overwhelmingly in
other counties on pages that had been circulated mostly by volunteers.
Among these, only about 43% of challenged lines had been invalidated.15

Had that rate prevailed on the remaining 14,291 challenges, Romanelli
would have picked up 6,135 signatures, for a total of 41,825. Finally, had
the Commonwealth Court accurately counted base lines, Romanelli
would have been left with a total of 52,167 signatures, for a deficit of
14,903. In virtually any other election year 52,167 signatures would have
been far more than sufficient to qualify him for the ballot.

In addition to this projected number of signatures that the
Commonwealth Court would have recognized as valid had accounting
errors been remedied and the review concluded, it is important to
consider the number of signatures erroneously invalidated by the court
due to human error or flaws in the SURE system. No firm estimate of
these numbers is available, but a rough estimate can be made. During the
review process, Green reviewers noted instances where names had been
marked as invalid or disputed but the reviewer believed the signer to be a
valid registered voter. Experienced Green volunteers often noted as many
as half the invalidated signatures on a given page, but some of the



54 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

temporary reviewers did not note any signatures. The vast majority of
these had been stipulated invalid (they also included some disputed
lines). Green volunteers were able to verify several thousand of these
lines before the court’s decision, thereby double-checking the Harrisburg
review in hope of rehabilitating some of the signatures. Still, thousands
more were never verified. Of the 6,720 names looked up in SURE by
Green volunteers, 4,729 (70%) were found to be valid, identifiable
registered voters who should not have been challenged.

Hence, at least 13% of invalidated signatures in the court accounting
were legitimate, registered Pennsylvania voters. Just under half of them
were simply missed by Harrisburg reviewers, and the rest had been
invalidated on legal grounds that probably would not have prevented
them from voting. An attempt to rehabilitate these signatures in court
was denied on several grounds (see In re Nomination Paper of Rogers et
al. 2006c). If sufficient time had been available to review all the noted
signatures, it is likely that the total number found to belong to
identifiable registered voters would have been twice as great as thought,
perhaps a quarter of all the invalidated signatures, or between 9,000 and
10,000 names. If the Harrisburg review had been completed, this number
may have grown proportionately to between 12,000 and 13,000
signatures. If note-taking had been more thorough, the number could
have exceeded 15,000 signatures.

The portion of these signatures erroneously invalidated under the
existing law would not by itself have been enough to put Romanelli past
the 67,070 signature threshold. Under the law—arbitrary and unfair as it
was—the “right” decision most likely was reached. Yet, the overall
estimate, including both the outright errors and the signatures of
legitimate voters invalidated on technical grounds, suggests that
Romanelli likely satisfied the principle of a “modicum of support,” even
when the hurdle was set at 67,070 signatures. More than 70,000
registered Pennsylvania voters may have signed his nomination paper in
good faith. Thus, there is a substantial probability that he may have been
effectively removed from the ballot mainly by challenges sustained on
legal technicalities. If so, the spirit of the law—a law at the very heart of
our democratic ideals—was subverted by the Democrats’ rigid
invocation of the letter of the law.16



Blyden Potts 55

Repercussions

As a result of the signature challenge, Carl Romanelli was removed
from the ballot as a candidate for the U.S. Senate. His name had been
printed on a number of absentee ballots, but subsequent to his loss in the
signature challenge the Commonwealth Court instructed county election
offices to cross his name off any absentee ballots on which it appeared.
In the general election he received fewer than 1,000 votes as a write-in
candidate. The exact number of votes is uncertain since a few counties,
most significantly Philadelphia, certified write-in ballots as a group
without distinguishing the particular candidates. But his vote share
clearly was far below the 2% of the total vote that the Green Party of
Pennsylvania needed to retain its status as a minor party (Pennsylvania
Election Code, § 2831). Moreover, the Greens lost a special opportunity
to garner publicity and dramatically influence an election that had
attracted national attention. The Libertarian and Constitution parties also
lost minor party status as a result of the ballot access barrier and petition
challenges from opponents. As a result, Pennsylvanians may find it
difficult to register to vote as members of the Green Party or other minor
parties.

During the signature review Romanelli petitioned the courts for relief
from the 67,070 signature requirement, arguing that the rule setting the
threshold was unconstitutional, that by the plain language of the law the
election that should have been used to set the threshold was the judicial
election of 2005 rather than the statewide election of 2004, and that the
“qualified elector” language in the law should mean any individual who
is eligible to register to vote rather than be restricted to those who are in
fact registered to vote. These arguments were rejected by the state
Supreme Court, although Romanelli’s “qualified elector” argument won
support in a dissenting opinion by Justice Thomas G. Saylor [In re
Nomination Paper of Rogers et al. 2006d). Because Romanelli lost the
signature challenge, the Commonwealth Court assessed him and his
attorney, Larry Otter, more than $80,000 for court costs and their
opponents’ legal fees. The fine against legal counsel was unprecedented
and thought by many observers to be unconstitutional. Romanelli and
Otter pursued a series of legal appeals for relief from these penalties.
Their appeals had been headed to the U.S. Supreme Court (see Rogers et
al. v. Cortes 2006), but in 2008 Romanelli and Otter decided to petition
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to rehear the case (Brown 2007, Green



56 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

Party of the United States 2006, Moulton 2006, Skrapitz 2007, Winger
2006b and 2007). About that time the 2008 “Bonusgate” indictments
were issued, charging Democratic Party leaders with having criminally
diverted state funds to pay staffers for various party activities. Two of the
major activities at the heart of the indictments concerned the signature
challenge teams that removed Romanelli from the ballot and had
removed Ralph Nader from the ballot in 2004. Democratic use of
taxpayer money to fund these efforts not only was a crime, but it also
gave Democrats an unfair advantage with an essentially free challenge
against Romanelli. If the money had to come out of party coffers, the
Democrats might have opted not to incur the expense. Romanelli and
Otter amended their appeal to the state Supreme Court based on the
“Bonusgate” revelations.17 Although a federal district judge did criticize
Pennsylvania’s ballot access rules for being unnecessarily restrictive (see
Rogers et al. v. Cortes 2006), no court found them to be
unconstitutional.18

In the wake of these judicial rulings, various voting reform groups,
such as the Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition, called for new state
legislation to ease ballot access for independent and minor party
candidates (see PABAC). The state legislature made a few efforts in this
direction. In 2006, spurred in part by the Romanelli case, House Bill
2830 sought to cap the number of signatures required for ballot access:

The number of qualified electors of the State signing such
nomination paper shall be at least equal to two per centum of the
largest entire vote cast for any elected candidate in the State at large
at the last preceding election at which State-wide candidates were
vote for and shall not exceed forty-five thousand signatures
(General Assembly of Pennsylvania 2006).

This amendment may have been intended as a form of mild ballot
relief that would prevent the signature threshold from exceeding 45,000
signatures. Nonetheless, the wording actually limits the number of
signatures collected rather than the necessary threshold. As worded, the
amendment would deny ballot access to independent and minor party
candidates when they submit the necessary number of signatures if the
2% threshold exceeds 45,000.

A bill introduced in 2007 sought to disqualify entirely the votes of
people who cast them for candidates like Romanelli:



Blyden Potts 57

On any ballot indicating a vote for any person whose name is
not printed on the ballot because the name of such person was
removed from the ballot according to law for any reason, the entire
vote in said office shall be rendered void (General Assembly of
Pennsylvania 2007).

Two more ballot access proposals were introduced in the state
legislature the following year. One would have allowed candidates to pay
a fee in lieu of filing signatures at a price of $1 per required signature
(Benninghoff Bill 2008). Because it did not change the threshold level,
this bill would have allowed independent and minor party candidates to
buy their way onto the general ballot at a cost of tens of thousands of
dollars, while Republicans and Democrats would be able buy their way
onto the primary ballot for no more than $2,000. Such an arrangement
would provide little, if any, improvement to the unequal ballot access
problem. Near the end of the 2008 legislative session, Republican
Senator Mike Folmer introduced a bill to adopt the Voter’s Choice Act
(VCA) that the Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition (PABAC) had been
proposing (Folmer 2008). This bill offers exactly the kind of ballot
access reform that Pennsylvania needs. It would put independent and
minor party candidates on an almost equal footing with Republicans and
Democrats by requiring all statewide candidates to obtain just 2,000
signatures to appear on the ballot. When the bill was not adopted in
2008, Folmer reintroduced it in 2009. It now awaits committee action.

If something like Folmer’s bill is not enacted, the biggest impact of
the Romanelli signature challenge may be on future independent and
minor party candidates. The challenge showed that it is not sufficient for
such candidates merely to overcome the arbitrarily fluctuating and often
extraordinarily high signature requirement necessary to show a
“modicum of support.” Rather, they must be prepared to obtain perhaps
twice that number of signatures. Then they must field a legal team and
staff of reviewers to defend their signatures in a system almost rigged to
bar independent and minor party candidates from getting on the ballot by
permitting the invalidation of a substantial number of their signatures on
legal technicalities. Finally, they must be prepared to pay a financial
penalty on the order of $1,000,000 should they lose the signature
challenge.



58 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

Conclusion

The analysis here leads to several conclusions. First, Carl Romanelli
likely had the “modicum of support” among Pennsylvania voters
necessary to qualify for access to the ballot. Second, the standards
imposed in validating signatures are far more stringent than the rhetoric
of a “modicum of support” among registered voters suggests. Third, the
numbers used by the Commonwealth Court were in error because the
process by which the Court calculated them was fundamentally flawed,
given its tendency to undercount valid signatures. Fourth, the Democrats
(and by extension probably also the Republicans) did not act in good
faith in the signature review since they willfully disenfranchised voters
they knew to be valid and then dissembled about doing so. Finally, these
factors combine to force candidates to obtain a number of signatures that
is in fact substantially greater than the already high barrier set in state
law. It would be surprising if these factors did not have a significant
chilling effect on some people considering running for state office in the
future, one that is ultimately harmful to the interests of all
Pennsylvanians.

Notes
1Although the author is a sociologist by training, he has written this article not
simply as a social scientist but as a person perhaps uniquely qualified to
comment on the events related herein by virtue of the roles he performed on the
Romanelli team in the signature review process. The author makes no pretense
of political neutrality. As an officer of the Green Party of Pennsylvania, he is an
ardent supporter of minor parties and of election reforms, including more open
ballot access and Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).
2While a full defense of this supposition is beyond the scope of this article, the
general principle that the value of the best candidate in the pool should be
expected to improve systematically with an increased number of candidates
reflects basic probability theory. Consider a random process such as die rolls or
drawing playing cards from a deck. If the goal is to get the highest possible
value on any one die or card, then throwing more dice or drawing more cards is
an advantage (although the marginal benefit of each additional die or card
declines as the number of dice or cards increases). For instance, the probability
of getting a six on one die is 1:6, on two dice 11:36, on three dice 91:216, etc.
The same tendency should also apply to drawing a pool of candidates, even
though candidate nominations never approach the pure randomness of dice rolls.
A better analogy might be to imagine a deck of cards randomly shuffled into
four hands. Even if the best card is selected from each of two hands, there is a



Blyden Potts 59

chance that the better of those two cards could be bested by a card drawn from
either of the two other hands, even if the latter are drawn randomly. The
likelihood of additional candidates improving the field is, of course, dependent
upon the quality of the candidates already in the race as well as the process by
which candidates enter the race. If the political process already tends to provide
highly qualified candidates, then there may be little gain from adding
candidates. Indeed, where the race already consists of the two best possible
candidates, adding more candidates gives no benefit. Yet, actual elections rarely
approach this scenario. Also see note 4.
3Most people likely would agree that the 2003 California Gubernatorial recall
election with 135 candidates reflected ballot clutter (California Secretary of
State 2003). The U.S. Supreme Court has suggested that a cluttered ballot is one
with an excess of twelve or even eight candidates (see Lubin v. Panish 1974,
and Williams v. Rhodes 1968, as cited in Winger 2006a). Yet, the rhetoric of
Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party suggests that having more than two candidates
means ballot clutter (although the party rarely complains when its own primary
elections contain several candidates).
4It might be argued that Pennsylvania already benefits from multiple candidate
fields for legislative offices with primary elections serving as the first of two
stages and the general election being in effect a runoff between the best
candidates offered by each of the two major political parties. This argument
overlooks the ineligibility of “independent” voters to participate in
Pennsylvania’s “closed” primaries, and it presumes that the criteria by which
each party evaluates candidates for its nomination align with the criteria by
which the electorate evaluates candidates. Having subsets of the population
winnow a handful of choices down to one candidate for each party is not the
same as having the full electorate make that choice.
5According to November 2006 voter registration data, one party outnumbered
the other by more than 10% of the population of registered voters in 40 of
Pennsylvania’s 50 Senate districts. In 15 of those districts the dominant party
accounted for at least 60% of all registered voters, outnumbering the other party
by a ratio of at least 3:2. Similarly, one party outnumbered the other by more
than 10% of registered voters in 14 of 19 Congressional Districts. In four of
those districts the dominant party accounted for over 60% of the voters.
6In 2006, minor party and unaffiliated voters accounted for 12% of Pennsylvania
registered voters, or just under a million people (BCEL 2006b). Yet, the number
of people identifying as independent or with a minor party is probably higher
because many of these voters register as Democrats or Republicans in order to
be eligible to vote in a party primary. In the 2004 National Annenberg Election
Survey (2005), 18% of Pennsylvanians identified as independent, while most
states had percentages from 23-30%. Over 26% of Pennsylvania residents in the
American National Election Survey (2000) identified as independent, with
another 13% indicating they had no preference between the two major parties.
7In 2004, the party struggled to get ballot access with just over 30,000
signatures. The 2006 goal was three times as great. Many Greens were daunted



60 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

by the task and chose not to “waste” effort collecting signatures. Some
participated only half-heartedly. Other minor party candidates had a similar
view. Ken Krawchuk, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in 2006, testified
that collecting 100,000 signatures was in his estimation virtually impossible.
Consequently, he discontinued his campaign (Krawchuk (2006). Russ Diamond,
founder of the PA Clean Sweep movement and an independent candidate for
Governor in 2006, tried but came up short with about 38,000 signatures.
8The largest number of pages was 3,704, but it was later determined that one
page number had been duplicated and seven page numbers had been skipped in
the enumeration of pages.
9One of the main factors driving the major parties to try to limit ballot access to
two candidates is the constraint of winner-take-all elections. Such contests tend
to create “spoiler” election dynamics, where minor party candidates siphon off
votes from the more similar of the two lead candidates, thereby effectively
helping the less similar candidate. It was the spoiler issue, rather than the
principle of ballot clutter per se, that motivated Democrats to try to remove
Romanelli from the ballot. The spoiler issue could be virtually eliminated by
adopting Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) in elections.
10Statement made in the doorway of the North Office Building Conference room
in August of 2006 during the review process. Other participants in the process
heard Gallagher make similar remarks at various times during the review.
11These cases were found in a subsequent review by Green volunteers of 6,720
of the invalidated and disputed signatures that had been flagged as likely to be
valid despite being labeled as invalid. This review is the basis for counts of other
invalidations reported in this section. Most cases missing SURE signatures were
probably flagged, but the subset covers only about half of all notes made; and
roughly one quarter of the lines were never reviewed, so there are no notes for
those lines. A few hundred signatures may have been lost in this way. Between
0.1% and 0.5% of SURE records have this omission.
12Although at least 4,729 signatures were improperly invalidated, the 70% rate
of false invalidations is not representative of the likely rate across all invalidated
signatures. A strong selection bias toward legitimate voters was likely since the
reviewed signatures were drawn from a pool that Green volunteers in the
Harrisburg review had flagged for review in the belief that they probably
belonged to valid registered voters even though the stipulation process required
that they be marked as invalid. That also may make them somewhat dependent
upon the propensity of individual reviewers to make such notes. Some reviewers
noted many such cases; some noted none.
13This author later performed the crosscheck and found several other accounting
errors made by the Democrats.
14The number lost at this point was probably a bit more. The stipulation of Code
30s split the difference between the numbers of the two teams. The Green figure
took into account only a few of the BCEL pre-strikes, which must have
numbered several hundred. So on the face of things, splitting the difference



Blyden Potts 61

helped Romanelli. Yet, spreadsheet comparison showed the Democrats had
miscounts on 195 pages, with all of the errors in their favor—an undercount of
1,686 signatures—while the Greens had errors on fewer than a dozen pages,
including the four overlooked in the copying process. It therefore seems likely
that Romanelli would have fared better if there had been an accurate count of
Code 30s. The Democrats had also duplicated accounting for a few dozen pages,
which inflated the count of invalid signatures. The Commonwealth Court denied
a motion to remove these duplicated invalid signatures because the matter had
not been brought to the court’s attention earlier (see In re Nomination Paper of
Rogers et al. 2006c).
15Signatures from the Philadelphia area differed greatly from those obtained in
other counties because the signature contractors operated almost exclusively in
southeastern Pennsylvania, whereas signatures from other counties were
collected largely by Green volunteers. The nomination paper pages suggest that
Green volunteers were careful to ensure that their signers were registered voters
and residents of the proper county. The higher rate of invalidations for
contractors suggests that they often did not ask signers the necessary questions.
Furthermore, contractors collected signatures on a convenience basis. Many
volunteers did so too, but some of them used street lists to target signers. These
workers had validity rates above 90%, which generally was better than that of
the volunteers.
16Titus North’s signature review fared significantly better than Romanelli’s.
North committed to a diligent review and zealous defense of his signatures. That
review ultimately demonstrated that North had received a sufficient number of
valid signatures to qualify for the ballot in the 14th Congressional District. He
was the only candidate challenged in Pennsylvania in 2006 to prevail. He went
on to win 9.9% of the vote in November (BCEL 2006c).
17On October 21, 2008, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court refused to reconsider
their case on the grounds that the new appeal should have gone first to the
Commonwealth Court. On January 15, 2009, Romanelli and Otter asked the
Commonwealth Court to rehear their case in light of the July indictments. That
court refused on January 23. Romanelli and Otter then appealed again to the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which has yet to rule.
18The Green, Constitution, and Libertarian parties have filed a federal suit
against Pennsylvania’s ballot access scheme. See Constitution Party of
Pennsylvania et al. v. Cortes et al. 2009).

References

ACLU. 2006. Press Release: ACLU of Arkansas and State Green Party Win in Third
Party Ballot Access Case. www.aclu.org/votingrights/access/26516prs20060823.
html.

American National Election Survey. 2000. Pre- and Post-Election Survey Data, 2nd

ICPSR Version. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, Center for Political Studies.

http://www.aclu.org/votingrights/access/26516prs20060823. html
http://www.aclu.org/votingrights/access/26516prs20060823. html


62 THE REMOVAL OF CARL ROMANELLI FROM PENNSYLVANIA’S
2006 U.S. SENATE BALLOT

Amorós, Abe. 2006. “Rooney: Rampant Discrepancies in Green Party Signature
Gathering.” Press Release of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. August 4.

Barnes, Tom. 2006. “Dems: Green Party Petitions Fake.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
August 10.

Benninghoff Bill. 2008. www.lppa.org/documents/legislation/benninghoff_bill_070108.
pdf.

Brown, Mark. 2007. “Political Peril in Pennsylvania: Ballot Access Penalties Create
Chilling Effect.” Green Institute. February 19. http://www.greeninstitute.net/sub
pages/brown_ballot.asp.

BCEL. 2006a. Bureau of Commissions, Elections, & Legislation. Pennsylvania
Department of State. 2006 Nomination Paper Objections Cases. October 5.

BCEL. 2006b. Bureau of Commissions, Elections, & Legislation. Pennsylvania
Department of State. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 2006 Voter Registration
Statistics. November 7.

BCEL. 2006c. Bureau of Commissions, Elections, & Legislation. Pennsylvania
Department of State. 2006 General Election Official Returns. http://www.
electionreturns.state.pa.us/.

California Secretary of State. 2003. Certified List of Candidates: October 7, 2003
Statewide Special Election. http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/2003_cert_list.pdf.

Constitution Party of Pennsylvania et al. v. Cortes et al. 2009. (No. 09-1691, E.D. Pa.).

Federal Election Commission. 2007. http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/srssea.shtml.

Folmer, Mike. 2008. http://www.senatorfolmer.com/press-2008/072408.htm.

Fudge Report. 2006. “PA Democratic Party Files Office Challenge of Green Party
Petitions.” August 8. http://www.fudgereport.net/pa_080806.htm.

General Assembly of Pennsylvania. 2006. House Bill No. 2830.

General Assembly of Pennsylvania. 2007. House Bill No. 48.

Green Party of Pennsylvania. 2007. Press Release: “Green Party of Pennsylvania
Nominates Romanelli, Rogers For 2006 Campaigns.” February 27.

Green Party of the United States. 2006. Press Release: “Pennsylvania Court Upholds
Rigged Election, Bumps Green Party Candidate Running for Senate.” October 9.
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2006_10_09.shtml.

In re Nomination Paper of Rogers et al. 2006a. __ A.2d __ (Pa. Cmwlth. No. 426 M.D.).

In re Nomination Paper of Rogers et al. 2006b. __ A.2d __ (Pa. Cmwlth. Sept. 1).

In re Nomination Paper of Rogers et al. 2006c. 914 A.2d 457 (Pa. Cmwlth. Sept. 26).

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