Republican candidate for Canonsburg-based magistrate race removed from ballot
A Republican running for the Canonsburg-based magistrate’s position was removed from the ballot Monday after it was determined he did not have enough valid signatures on his nominating petition.
Ivan Casilli had submitted 108 signatures from voters to get on the Republican primary ballot, but a review of his paperwork revealed that dozens of them signed their home municipality as “Eighty Four” rather than North Strabane Township, which nullified them and dropped him well below the 100 threshold needed to run for the position.
“I circulated all of these (nominating petitions) myself. No one did it for me,” Casilli told Senior Judge Katherine Emery during the hearing challenging his candidacy Monday at the Washington County Courthouse. “This is my work and my effort.”
“There certainly isn’t any evidence that this was intentional,” Emery responded, alleviating any suggestion that something nefarious had happened.
She immediately struck three voters from his petition because they had already signed paperwork circulated by District Judge James Saieva Jr., who is running for reelection in the magisterial district that includes Canonsburg, Houston and North Strabane. That left Casilli with only five signatures to spare, but that was quickly overcome after attorney Chad Schneider, who represented three registered Republicans who challenged the petition, found four pages of signatures where voters wrote their mailing address of Eighty Four rather than their home municipality.
Such errors can only be amended by the signer, but Casilli admitted that he crossed out Eighty Four and wrote North Strabane in the slots. He told Emery he thought the municipality section that asks voters to write “city, borough or township” meant that Eighty Four could be written in that spot, but he later learned from the elections office that was not the case since it’s an unincorporated village and not a municipality.
“When I spoke to them, I had no reason to believe they wouldn’t count,” Casilli said of the registered voters who signed his petition with the intention to support his candidacy.
Emery said that she had no choice but to nullify all of those signatures, making the North Strabane resident ineligible to get on the primary ballot.
“I am going to strike them, so that will result in you not being on the ballot,” Emery said.
Even if those signatures had not been stricken from the petition, there were several other voters who apparently were not registered as Republicans, meaning they could not sign Casilli’s paperwork to get him on the GOP ballot. Schneider said it was a moot point and did not ask to have those signatures removed.
Casilli’s removal from the ballot leaves just Saieva and Charles “Chuckie” Tenny as cross-filed candidates on both the Democratic and Republican ballots in the race for the magistrate during the May 20 primary.
Tenny’s candidacy was also challenged by the same three voters who questioned Casilli’s signatures – John Lombardo, Charles Walnoha and Jacob McCabe-Cavallo – but Emery decided he could remain on the ballot after he showed proof of residency in Canonsburg during a hearing Friday. Schneider said Monday that the three clients he represents for the challenge had not yet decided whether to appeal Emery’s decision on Tenny’s candidacy.