Fifteen county clerks from both parties asked the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals last night to stay a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi to prohibit county organization lines and replace them with office block ballots in the June Democratic primary.
They claim Quraishi gave the U.S. Supreme Court’s Purcell decision a “short shrift” when deciding that the Kim challenge was “not last-minute.” In Purcell, the court held that “When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled. Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties, and voters, among others.”
“It is one thing for a State on its own to toy with its election laws close to a State’s elections. But it is quite another thing for a federal court to swoop in and re-do a State’s election laws in the period close to an election,” the Purcell decision stated.
The appellants argue that Kim and other plaintiffs “are eager for the Court to view this suit as a last-minute election case, and exercise caution against upsetting the status quo.”
“The problem with Defendants’ position is that this case is not last-minute. It was filed 100 days before the primary election on June 4th, and well over a month before the April 5th deadline for preparing official primary election ballots for printing,” they said.
In the court filing, the lawyers said that Quraishi “granted this extraordinary relief after a nearly one-sided evidentiary hearing” and were not permitted to call rebuttal witnesses or fact witnesses. They told the judge “largely ignored and inexplicably discounted” the testimony and certifications of county election officials,” “particularly as to the feasibility of radically changing statewide ballot design on the eve of the deadline for ballot printing without ‘chaos’ ensuing.”
Quraishi’s assurances that an election with office block ballots “unfortunately ring hollow and defy both common sense and the extensive evidence in the record.”
“The Court’s follow-up Order – ‘clarifying’ that the injunction applies only to Democratic primary ballots and not to Republican ballots — which the same machines will need to count on the same election day — baldly illustrates the predictable confusion wrought by this ill-considered, eleventh-hour edict.”
At the request of Morris County Republicans, Quraishi explained on Saturday evening that he had intended for the order to apply only to Democrats and that his ruling would not affect the Republican primary.