A Centre County judge on Friday denied Philipsburg-Osceola Area School District’s emergency request to place a vacant school board seat on the ballot for the Nov. 4 election.
Judge Brian Marshall agreed with the Centre County Board of Elections that the school district failed to provide the required written notice and that granting its request less than two weeks before Election Day “could undermine the integrity of the election process for the entire county.”
The district filed a lawsuit on Wednesday and sought an emergency order to have the board’s District 1 seat placed on the ballot for a two-year interim term. Attorney Jennifer Dambeck wrote that the district verbally informed the county elections office of the vacancy but was never informed it had to submit notice in writing, and argued that written notice was not required.
Timothy Bainey won election to a four-year term as the District 1 board member in 2023 and told the district on March 17 of this year that he would be resigning at the end of the month.
Superintendent Daniel Potutschnig says he informed the Elections Board by telephone on March 19 and again on April 14 after Bainey’s resignation was accepted, and was told only to provide notice of when the vacancy was filled. The board appointed Amber Vesnesky on April 23 to fill the position until December, and the vacancy did not appear on the primary ballot in May.
During a Sept. 29 phone call, Potutschnig was told the seat was not on the ballot for November, and the board reaffirmed the decision at an Oct. 16 meeting because no written documentation was provided.
Dambeck wrote that the district two verbal notifications constituted timely notice, that the Pennsylvania School Code does not require written documentation of a school board vacancy and that the Elections Board has an obligation to ascertain the offices to be filled in the November election
Failing to put the seat on the ballot “will cause immediate and irreparable injury to the District — including but not limited to majority vote requirements… and for which the District has no adequate remedy at law,” Dambeck wrote
Elections Board attorney Betsy Dupuis countered in a filing this week that the Elections Code does require written notice, which “serves essential administrative functions in Pennsylvania’s election system.”
“Written documentation creates a clear paper trail for election officials, provides definitive records for potential legal challenges, ensures county boards have unambiguous information for ballot preparation, and eliminates uncertainty about which offices must be included on election ballots,” Dupuis wrote.
Dupuis added that she informed the district alternative remedies are available, including petitioning the court to appoint a member.
At a hearing on Friday, county election coordinator Jodi Nedd testified that it typically takes two and a half months to prepare the ballot, and that redesigning it in conjunction with the contractor hired to prepare ballots would take at least a week. All mail ballots already requested and delivered would have to be recalled and destroyed, and new ballots would have to be approved in a public meeting of the board.
Nedd also said that the state requires counties to conduct “mock elections” to test and verify proper operation of election equipment, which has already occurred. Because of that, Marshall wrote, adding the school board seat might require the board “to essentially remake the ballots for all 87 precincts in Centre County to effectuate the change to the one ballot, in one precinct.”
“This testimony on the extensive, mandatory pre-election testing further supports this Court’s conclusion that the Election Board does not have a continuing duty, up to the day of the municipal primary, to make inquiry of vacancies…,” Marshall wrote.
County Administrator John Franek testified on Friday that he had concerns about any appearance of impropriety from making the last-minute change, that voters may complain of disenfranchisement and that changing the ballot could impact certain races.
A hurried change to the ballot, Marshall wrote, “is a practical impossibility.”
“To order otherwise may create a reasonable possibility of compromising the integrity of the election in all 87 precincts in Centre County,” he wrote.
