TALLAHASSEE — Rep. Paula Stark, a St. Cloud Republican who served two terms in the Florida Legislature, will not appear on the November ballot, despite her plans to run for reeleciton.
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Leon County Circuit Judge Joshua Hawkes has denied her efforts to join the race after she failed to qualify because of missing required candidate paperwork.
In an earlier ruling, Hawkes had refused to put her back on the ballot but gave her a week to submit more information to support her contention that she had done everything properly. Her attorney filed a motion for Hawkes to reconsider his first ruling, but the judge denied that, saying it was an “extraordinary remedy” and not the proper vehicle to rehash the case.
Stark’s campaign treasurer said she would not appeal the ruling.
With Stark off the ballot, voters in that Florida House district will have to choose between the two Democrats who did qualify for the election, as no other Republican was in the race. The Aug. 18 primary election is now open to all voters, not just Democrats, because it will decide who represents District 47, which covers a sliver of Orange County and a chunk of Osceola County.
Stark’s lawyer, Anthony Sabatini, a former state lawmaker, argued in the motion for reconsideration that the state Division of Elections made an “unwritten policy change” that after 11:30 a.m. clerks would accept all paperwork without checking for accuracy. As a result, Stark received no warning that she had not filed the required Form 6, a financial disclosure document.
But Hawkes ruled later that the streamlined, no-review process was implemented to ensure all those that wished to qualify could get their documents filed before the noon deadline.
“This procedure balances the Division’s need to qualify before the noon deadline and the statutory duty to make reasonable efforts to notify the candidate of potential defects,” Hawkes wrote.
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Stark, seeking a third term, failed to submit all the required paperwork by the candidate qualification deadline June 12, state elections officials said. She waited a week to sue to be put on the ballot, and then claimed a disturbance at the elections office in Tallahassee caused confusion and chaos at the time her treasurer and partner Joel Davis was filing her paperwork, which led to her financial disclosure form not being filed.
The mayhem caused the clerk to return the financial disclosure form to Davis without giving it a time stamp, Davis alleged.
But Hawkes didn’t buy his argument, after four clerks and their supervisor contradicted Davis during a court hearing, saying there was a disturbance but hours before Davis was in the office.
“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. “The Court also finds that the timing discrepancy of this incident severely undermines Mr. Davis’ credibility.”
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,” which is a different body than the elections office, Hawkes wrote in his original ruling. “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.”
Election supervisors in Orange and Osceola objected to adding Stark to the ballot just weeks before the election, noting they’d already spent money to print ballots without her name and some had already been mailed to military and overseas voters.
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