ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has granted a petition to set aside the nomination of a local candidate, removing her name from the May 19 Democratic primary ballot.<\/p>\n
Taiba Sultana’s name will be removed from the ballot for Pennsylvania\u2019s 18th Senatorial District, according to a news release.<\/p>\n
Attorney Raymond Lahoud represented four electors \u2014 Patricia M. Hitzel, Celeste Lillian Dee, Patricia Joan Bruno, and Pamela A. Panto \u2014 who filed objections to Sultana\u2019s nomination petition with the court.<\/p>\n
In a decision issued April 1, the court found that Sultana\u2019s petition contained a “material defect” that misleads voters, specifically her failure to disclose her occupation beyond listing \u201cself-employed,\u201d officials said.<\/p>\n
The court concluded the omission was legally insufficient under the Pennsylvania Election Code and warranted setting aside the petition.<\/p>\n
In the petition, the objectors maintained that marking “self-employed” without further information has the potential to mislead electors.<\/p>\n
They contended that a candidate may be either unemployed or self-employed in an occupation that falls short of the values voters seek, and that Sultana specified she was self-employed to be perceived in a “more complimentary manner,” according to the court order.<\/p>\n
The court agreed, holding:”By merely declaring that she is self-employed, without specifying the occupation in which she is self-employed, Candidate deprived electors of information the General Assembly and the Department of State deemed sufficiently material to appear at the top of each Nomination Petition page while electors apply their signatures. . . . Our Supreme Court proclaimed that the statutory purpose behind the requirement is that Candidate supply for the benefit of electors his [or her] present occupation or profession. The effect of Candidate\u2019s response is no different than if she had simply put employed.”<\/p>\n
The court\u2019s order directs that Sultana\u2019s name be removed from the Democratic primary ballot for the upcoming election.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis decision underscores the importance of transparency and strict compliance with Pennsylvania\u2019s Election Code,\u201d Lahoud said. \u201cThe integrity of the electoral process depends on candidates providing voters with accurate and meaningful information. Today\u2019s ruling affirms that those standards will be enforced.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sultana announced Wednesday that she will pursue an expedited appeal to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania following a Commonwealth Court decision removing her from the Democratic primary ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sultana’s campaign says that the ruling was based solely on the interpretation of the term “self-employed” listed as Sultana’s occupation on her nomination petition, according to a news release.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis decision is deeply disappointing because it removes a candidate who<\/p>\n
met every substantive requirement to be on the ballot,\u201d said Sultana. \u201cThere<\/p>\n
was no fraud, no wrongdoing, and the Court confirmed that we had more than<\/p>\n
enough valid signatures. This comes down to a technical interpretation of a<\/p>\n
single word.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sultana’s campaign will file an expedited appeal and continue outreach across the district, officials said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We are not backing down,” she added. “We are fighting to ensure that voters – not technicalities – decide this election.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has granted a petition to set aside the nomination of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232,43471],"class_list":["post-157979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-area","tag-local_government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}