Judge rejects GOP attempt to strike student voters

A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge last week agreed that local Republican officials acted improperly when they pushed to get students stricken from voter rolls last fall. But Matthew Wolfe, the 27th Ward Republican Leader, said yesterday that the party will appeal the decision to Commonwealth court. The case began last fall when the Republicans filed a petition with the City Commissioners asking that approximately 700 names -- all of them registered Democrats or independents and many of them students -- be stricken from the voting rolls because the voters had failed to re-register after changing voting divisions. The city requires people challenging registrations to notify voters at their old addresses and Wolfe has said in the past that the Republican Committee adhered to the rule. But the City Commissioners ruled that the Republicans had failed to properly serve notices of the challenges, according to Commissioners spokesperson Ralph Teti. The GOP filed the appeal asking the Common Pleas Court to reverse the decision of the City Commissioners, but the appeal was denied last week. "It is to be hoped that [the decision] will stop the Republicans from harassing Democratic students and independent students who want to vote," 27th Ward Democratic Leader Kevin Vaughan said yesterday. Republican Leader Wolfe said that one of his complaints with the City Commissioners' decision was that he was given no reason that the practices they have been using were improper. Wolfe said that until 1989, investigators from the City Commissioners office served the hearing notices to voters who had moved in the same manner that Republican committee volunteers have since then. Volunteers used several different methods, and at some residences they left notices of the challenges with current residents of the building and noted their names. But at others -- particularly dormitories -- they left notices with desk workers or building supervisors. Wolfe said that it is not clear which methods of service are unacceptable and that the City Commissioners and Judge Nicholas D'Alessandro, who upheld the Commissioners' decision, should explain which methods were violations and why. "It is important that if we did do something wrong they tell us what," Wolfe said.

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