Five candidates for Hopewell Township’s proposed charter study commission will remain on the November ballot after a Superior Court judge rejected a challenge to their nominating petitions Friday, finding that problems with the candidates’ original circulator affidavits were correctable mistakes rather than fraud.
Superior Court Judge William Anklowitz issued his decision from the bench Friday evening following a trial that stretched past 5 p.m., dismissing the case with prejudice and finding that Christopher Pazdan, Joshua Wilson, Melanie Walter, Francis Guenther and Grace Rarich each had enough valid voter signatures to appear on the ballot.
The lawsuit, brought by fellow charter commission candidates Michael Markulec, Vanessa Sandom and Stephen Klopfer, sought to invalidate the five candidates’ petitions. The plaintiffs alleged that circulators had sworn to witnessing signatures they had not actually collected and argued that the defects amounted to fraud.
Anklowitz agreed that there were problems with the original filings.
“There were pages out of order,” the judge said. “There were certifications that covered signatures that the circulator didn’t actually witness.”
But he rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that those errors amounted to the kind of fraudulent conduct that required the petitions to be thrown out.
Central to the dispute was McCaskey v. Kirchoff, a 1959 New Jersey appellate decision cited by the plaintiffs. In that case, at least two signatures on a nominating petition were determined to be forgeries, and the court found that two of the people who swore to the petition knew the signatures were not genuine. The Appellate Division concluded that the false authentication tainted the entire petition and invalidated it.
Anklowitz found the circumstances in Hopewell Township fundamentally different.
“We don’t have any false signatures here, or even anything that’s quote close to it,” Anklowitz said.
The judge said the errors in the Hopewell petitions did not amount to the deliberate false swearing and creation of false information at issue in McCaskey. Instead, he found that New Jersey election law allows defects in petition paperwork to be corrected under circumstances such as those before him and noted that the law directs the provision to be “liberally construed” to protect the interests of candidates.
The five candidates submitted amended circulator affidavits after the problems were raised.
Peters-Manning acknowledges mistake
Much of Friday’s testimony focused on how the original petitions were assembled and circulated.
Courtney Peters-Manning, who helped organize the five-candidate slate and collect signatures, acknowledged that the original circulator affidavits contained mistakes. She testified that the effort involved collecting hundreds of signatures for five separate candidates and that she failed in some instances to obtain the proper circulator affidavit from the person who had actually witnessed the signatures.
“I admit I made mistakes,” Peters-Manning testified, calling them an “unintentional error.” She said the volume of paperwork and the compressed timetable contributed to the problem and that the amended petitions were prepared more carefully to make sure the correct circulator was matched with each set of signatures.
Peters-Manning also testified that she went back through the signature pages, identified who had actually witnessed each group of signatures and matched those pages with new circulator affidavits. She said she checked the amended packet repeatedly before it was resubmitted.
Anklowitz said he accepted that explanation.
“It just couldn’t be more obvious that she made a mistake,” Anklowitz said. “Everybody makes mistakes.”
He noted that Peters-Manning had admitted the error, apologized and tried to correct it. The judge said that conduct did not amount to deliberate false swearing.
“But that’s all it was,” Anklowitz said. “It was not the McCaskey kind of false swearing and intentional conduct.”
He then made his credibility finding explicit: “The court accepts her testimony and her explanation in its entirety.”
Following the decision, Peters-Manning told MercerMe she was pleased with the outcome.
“The will of the voters prevailed and five great candidates are on the ballot,” Peters-Manning said.
Anklowitz ultimately found that all five challenged candidates had more than the 100 valid signatures required.
Guenther’s petition received particular attention during the trial. The plaintiffs argued that after several signatures from people who were not eligible Hopewell Township voters were removed, one circulator’s affidavit left him with only 98 valid signatures. Anklowitz found that additional signatures covered by another circulator affidavit put Guenther above the 100-signature requirement.
Case dismissed with prejudice
Anklowitz dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, finding no cause of action following the trial.
Immediately after the decision, plaintiffs’ attorney Scott Salmon asked Anklowitz for a stay pending an appeal. The judge denied the request, saying a stay would require a showing of a likelihood of success on the merits and that he could not make such a finding after ruling against the plaintiffs.
Anklowitz also lifted the temporary restriction on Mercer County moving ahead with ballot preparation. He said any further stay would have to come from the Appellate Division but that, absent such an order, “the election is free to go forward.”
Mercer County had planned to send ballots to be printed on Aug. 31.
Calls and emails to Salmon seeking comment and clarification on whether the plaintiffs intend to appeal were not returned by Monday morning. Based on the outcome of Friday’s trial and with ballot preparation moving forward, an appeal appeared unlikely as of Monday morning.
Sandom asks to withdraw from ballot
There will be one fewer charter commission candidate on the November ballot for a reason unrelated to Friday’s decision.
Sandom has asked to withdraw her candidacy for personal reasons and has formally requested that Mercer County remove her name from the November ballot.
Her withdrawal would reduce the field from 10 certified candidates to nine candidates seeking the five seats on the commission.
Sandom was one of five candidates running together as part of the Chart New Course group, along with Chad Goerner, Klopfer, Markulec and Tamera Matteo. The five challenged candidates — Pazdan, Wilson, Walter, Guenther and Rarich — make up the other group that qualified for the ballot.
Two decisions for voters in November
The candidate election is only one part of the charter question Hopewell Township residents will decide in November.
Voters will first be asked whether a charter commission should be elected to study Hopewell Township’s existing form of government and consider a new charter or improvements to the current one. The Township Committee unanimously approved placing the referendum on the ballot in May.
Voters will also select five people to serve on the commission. If the referendum passes, the five candidates receiving the most votes would make up the commission.
The commission would then operate as an independent public body, examining Hopewell Township’s current form of government, comparing it with other forms available under New Jersey law and hearing from the public before determining whether to recommend changes. Any proposed change to the Township’s form of government would ultimately have to go back to voters for approval.
With Sandom’s requested withdrawal, the nine candidates expected to appear on the November ballot are Chad Goerner, Stephen Klopfer, Michael Markulec, Tamera Matteo, Christopher Pazdan, Joshua Wilson, Melanie Walter, Francis Guenther and Grace Rarich.
