Reinforcing that you can't fight City Hall, or the Democratic Party machine, a judge ruled that party-backed write-in candidate Emilio Vazquez should be declared the winner of the Democratic primary in the 179th state house district. You may remember this as the district that repeatedly sent State Rep. Bill Rieger back to Harrisburg every two years even though, by all accounts, he hadn't even lived in the district for over a decade.
To recap, here is what happened: Upon hearing about the impending retirement of State Rep. Rieger, Vazquez, an employee of the Philadelphia Parking, Authority, filed the necessary papers to become a Democratic candidate for the open seat. He was opposed by Tony Payton, Jr. a housing counselor who also lives in that area.
With the backing of the Democratic party, supporters of Vazquez challenged Payton's candidacy in an attempt to get him thrown off the ballot. That challenge failed. In response, Payton supporters challenged Vazquez's candidacy by noting that he failed to disclose one of his sources of income - namely the income he earned as an employee of the Parking Authority (duh). Undeterred by the fact that their candidate was no longer on the ballot, Vazquez's supporters engineered an elaborate write-in campaign that involved handing out rubber stamps with his name on them which could be used to stamp his name on the write-in slip after selecting "write-in" on the state rep. ballot line.
At first, the plan seemed to work as "write-in" actually seemed to get more votes than "Payton" at the end of Election Day. Upon further review, however, it seems that many people got a little confused, stamping Vazquez's name in the slots for committee person and judge - two offices that he wasn't even running for. So after counting all of the properly filled out write-in ballots, Payton had a slim lead, 962-943. The Vazquez camp appealed the results, essentially arguing that just because someone is ignorant about how to use the voting machine, he or she shouldn't forfeit his or her vote. They claimed that the 52 voters who put Vazquez's name in the wrong space actually intended to vote for him for state rep. so those votes should count.
Apparently, the judge agreed. So now Payton, instead of being up by 19, is down by 33 and it appears that, depending on the outcome of an appeal filed by Payton's attorney, Vazquez will be the Democratic Party nominee and should win the general election in a walk.
Aside from the storyline of man vs. the machine, there also seem to be some pretty fascinating legal questions pertaining to voter intent. On a much smaller scale, this seems to be Florida in 2000 all over again sans the hanging chads. It seems like this one could go all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court - though they better figure it out soon since those ballots have to be printed up soon.
Your thoughts? How can we judge a voter's intent? Maybe they really did want Emilio Vazquez to be their commiteeman.