SantorumBlog

Carl Romanelli’s petition attorney Larry Otter has kindly agreed to an interview with SantorumBlog.com

How much of your practice is regarding election law? What other election related cases have you worked on?

Election Law is a subset of my practice which deals with Litigation in federal and state courts and administrative agencies in PA and NJ/ Health Care/First Amendment/Civil Rights/Poltical Speech/Election law.

This has been a very heavy year in the spring I prosecuted or defended over 12 cases in a three to four week period won some lost some. I had two other cases to defend this week besides the Romanelli matter.

I was a lecturer at the Pennsylvania Bar Institute Election Law Seminar last winter and have spoken about these issues at various political seminars.

You have a two pronged strategy in working with the Greens, it looks like you’re defending all of the 90K signatures, AND you’re working to get the signature requirement lowered to about 16,000 signatures. Outside of the fracas on friday, how is the defense going? Some Democrats say that 90% of the 11K or so signatures have already been struck. How many have made the cut? Are you confident the defense will be successful?

The best case scenario that the Dems have at the moment is a 57% success rate in Philadelphia which is probably our worst county for a variety of reasons, Pittsburgh (Allegheny County) is about 80-90% going our way. These are the Dem numbers.

This could be a close call if we have to litigate each and every signature we agree is questionable they have over 30 different categories of challenges–mostly boilerplate stuff but the critical one in any challenge is whether or not the person is properly registered.

For the uninitiated, what is the process of reviewing signatures? Does it really involve sitting in a room looking at EVERY signature? Is a judge involved on ruling on the signatures?

The process is tedious. You have to go to the page and line of the petition where a signature is challenged and then pull up the name from the state election database (8 Million plus signatures) and see what matches and what does not. We have agreed to stipulate to certain items but it requires a review of 70,000 signtures one at a time.

The judge comes in later, after the signatures have been reviewed.

Can you comment on the events of the friday morning? Where you a witness?

I was a witness to the events on Friday and attempted to break it up. It could not be done until the police 6 plus a dog arrived. The police were absolutely professional and handled the situation

Regarding your offensive strategy, lowering the signature requirements, I understand your case to revolve around the meaning of what constitutes the last statewide election. If it was November 2004, Bob Casey’s victory forced the signature requirement to be about 67K signatures. If it was the November 2005 Judicial Retention election, then the requirements are far far lower. It may take until Labor Day to check all 90K signatures, but a ruling in your favor would cut that much shorter, perhaps even monday or tuesday. Where does that action stand? When do you anticipate a ruling in that case?

On the offense my motion and brief is posted at Politicspa.com [Motion, Memo -ed]

The State Dept. has filed an amicus brief and the other side has until 4pm on Monday to respond. The oral argument is Wednesday at 2:30 in Harrisburg. A decision will be issued probably within 48 hours (no later than Friday). This is going to the Supreme Court. I am supremely confident about my motion and brief.

Who gets the credit for the idea that the 2005 election is the signature standard? I’ve been following the race for nearly a year now, and this is the first time I had ever heard that Casey’s 2004 victory was NOT the number.

The idea had been bandied around in politcal circles but no one has ever litigated this point,
thus this is a case of “first impression.”