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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2021 - 2022
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | December 10, 2020 01:22 PM |
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| From: | Representative Joe Ciresi |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Cross-filed School Board Petition Circulation (Former HB 1707) |
| While most candidates running for office may only run in their own party’s primary election, the Pennsylvania Election Code allows an exception for candidates for school board and certain judicial offices, offices traditionally viewed as nonpartisan, allowing them to cross-file nomination petitions for multiple political parties. However, a different section of the Election Code that requires petition circulators to be of the same party as the one listed on their petition provides an exception for Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia Municipal Court, Philadelphia Traffic Court, and justice of the peace, but omits candidates for school board, making it the only office eligible for cross-filing restricted by the party of circulator rule. Because of this rule, school board candidates, unlike candidates for other offices eligible for cross-filing, cannot circulate even their own petitions for every party that they have cross-filed for, and those who are not registered with a major political party cannot circulate their own petitions at all. My legislation would correct this discrepancy by adding school board to the list of offices that are exempt from the rule requiring circulators to be registered to the same party as their petitions. This would put all offices eligible for cross-filing on an equal footing, and eliminate an obstacle that makes it more difficult to run for our state’s only all-volunteer elected office. Prior Co-Sponsors: CIRESI, OTTEN, ULLMAN, MERSKI, MALAGARI, HILL-EVANS, WEBSTER, McNEILL, DeLUCA, SCHWEYER, WILLIAMS, HENNESSEY and HOWARD |
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| View Attachment | ||
Introduced as HB188