TALLAHASSEE — A Leon County circuit judge is giving state Rep. Paula Stark one last chance to convince him that she was wrongly kept off the November ballot, despite hearing testimony from state elections officials that raised doubts about her credibility.
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Judge Joshua Hawkes ruled against Stark’s request to be placed on the ballot but allowed the St. Cloud Republican seven more days to convince him she should be able to stand for election again this year, in an order issued Wednesday night.
If she doesn’t respond, he will dismiss the case. Then she can plead her case to an appeals court.
Stark, first elected to the Florida House District 47 seat in 2022, did not immediately respond to a voicemail requesting comment on her plans.
After the two-term lawmaker failed to qualify in her bid for a third term, Stark sued the state claiming a disturbance at the elections office in Tallahassee caused confusion at the time her treasurer Joel Davis was filing her paperwork. That confusion caused the clerk to return the Form 6 financial disclosure paper to Davis without filing it, alleged Davis, who is also Stark’s partner.
Failure to file the required Form 6 is what kept Stark off the ballot, state officials said.
But Hawkes didn’t buy the Stark campaign’s argument, after four clerks and their supervisor during an online court hearing Wednesday contradicted Davis about the timing of the incident.
Davis said the disturbance occurred just after 11:30 a.m. June 12, around the time he submitted his paperwork. But the clerks all said the disturbance occurred about three hours earlier, not before the noon deadline of the qualifying period.
“The Court finds that the incident happened early in the morning and would not have served as the distraction that Mr. Davis suggests it would have before closing,” Hawkes said in his 3-page ruling. “The Court also finds that the timing discrepancy of this incident severely undermines Mr. Davis’ credibility.”
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Hawkes noted that the Division of Elections lawyer provided evidence of Stark’s history of filing campaign reports late and racking up thousands of dollars in penalties for lack of compliance.
“However, as indicated at the hearing, the Court does not base its credibility determination on Petitioner’s past foibles with DOE, such as fine or compliance notices,” he said.
Hawkes also noted the clerks all said that they were instructed after 11:30 a.m. to accept and time stamp all documents handed them to speed things along, an effort to make sure everyone got their paperwork in on time. “The streamlined, no-review, process was to ensure those that wanted to qualify could before the noon deadline,” Hawkes said.
It is more likely that “Davis thought the Form 6 was not needed because he had submitted it the day before to the Florida Commission on Ethics,” Hawkes said. “Mr. Davis attributed this line of thinking to the clerk in supposedly handing him back the Form 6, but it is much more likely that he thought this and did not actually turn in the Form 6.”
If Stark wins her case, it would throw the August primary election into chaos, the election supervisors of Orange and Osceola counties told the judge.
The only two candidates to qualify are both Democrats, making the primary for that seat open to all registered voters, not just Democrats. And the elections offices have already printed up the ballots and sent them to overseas and military voters.
Putting Stark on the November ballot would force them to scrap the ballots, print and mail out new ones and close the election to registered Democrats only, the winner of which would face Stark in November.
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