Election petitioners seeking second chance

Pro se petitioners who missed their court dates Monday to argue for the recount of several precincts in the Nov. 7 General Election have asked for those hearings to be rescheduled.

Lead plaintiff Joy Schwartz, a Republican candidate who lost her bid for a county council seat last month, emailed an administrative assistant for Common Pleas Court Senior Judge John Capuzzi on Tuesday morning explaining that she and more than 70 other petitioners were all under the mistaken impression that the hearings had been rescheduled for Wednesday morning.

The petitioners sought recounts in Middletown 1-1, 3-2 and 3-3, Edgmont 1, Upper Darby 1-4, 1-6, 4-9, 3-1, 5-8, 3-3 and 4-11, Haverford 8-1 and Upper Providence 3, as well as approximately 38,500 mail-in ballots processed at the central counting center in Chester, referred to as the Union Power Plant petition.

The petitions were filed Nov. 15 and the county filed preliminary objections for each Nov. 21.

Capuzzi had scheduled staggered hearings on each of the municipal petitions throughout the morning on Monday and the Union Power Plant petition for Monday afternoon.

His administrative assistant sent emails on the morning of Nov. 30 to each of the petitioners with signed orders from the judge affirming the time and date of those hearings. Election Bureau Solicitor J. Manly Parks and Nicholas Centrella, representing the Election Board, were also copied.

But Schwartz said Tuesday that the only emails she saw concerned Centrella requesting a date change for the afternoon hearing due to a scheduling conflict. Centrella made the request shortly after receiving the scheduling emails Nov. 30 and that hearing was rescheduled for Wednesday at 10 a.m.

The rest, however, proceeded as scheduled Monday morning. Centrella and attorney Brian Kennedy were present, but because no petitioners showed up to challenge the Election Board’s preliminary objections, Capuzzi granted each of those in turn, dismissing all of the municipal cases.

Now, Schwartz is asking for another chance.

‘Blindsided’

“We regret our absence in court on Monday, and any resulting inconvenience to His Honor Judge Capuzzi, but we cannot be blamed for not showing up to a hearing which we had no knowledge that we were scheduled to attend,” she said in her email to Capuzzi’s assistant. “Based upon the email we received from you, any plan for the 13 petitions to be heard on Monday morning was not made at all clear to us, and based on the information we had, the possibility of a Monday hearing did not even enter our minds.”

Though Centrella specifically stated in his Nov. 30 email and in a formal letter to the judge on the same date that he was able to appear “at all other hearings scheduled on the 4th at their original times,” Schwartz said she did not know that those “other hearings” were referring to the petitioners’ other cases.

“We thought Judge Capuzzi was hearing other matters that morning,” she said. “For some reason, that just never came up as a connection that he was talking about our appointments, because we were thinking of just one appointment.”

And so Schwartz said in her email Tuesday that she was “blindsided” when the Daily Times asked for comment shortly after noon Monday about why none of the petitioners had appeared.

“(O)ur absence in court yesterday was not the result of 70-plus petitioners just not bothering to show up,” she said. “Our failure to appear was not because of any neglect on our part. Our absence was clearly a result of miscommunication and ambiguity from the court, and our resulting perception that there was no hearing to be held Monday morning. We were never told that individual hearings on each of the 13 precinct petitions would be occurring. We were not told that 13 of those would be heard on Monday morning. We were not informed that a separate hearing for the mail-in ballots would be held on Wednesday.”

‘No support’

Centrella penned a response letter to the judge opposing reopening the cases because, as he said, there was no ambiguity about the hearing times or dates.

“Any confusion on the part of the petitioners is attributable to the petitioners, and not to the court or its staff,” he said.

Centrella identifies 12 petitions in his letter, while Schwartz said there were 13. The preliminary objections indicate one filing may have been a duplicate.

Centrella notes Capuzzi’s assistant had sent six emails to the respective petitioners for each petition between 10:46 a.m. and 11:32 a.m. Nov. 30, each with attached, signed orders denoting exactly when each hearing for each precinct and the Union Power Plant was to take place.

He pointed out that only the petitioners for the Union Power Plant hearing were notified of the change in a subsequent email from Capuzzi’s chambers on the morning of Dec. 1, however.

“The scheduling emails and correspondence could not have been clearer that 11 of the 12 petitions were to be heard on December 4th between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m., and that the Union Power