Erie Dixon, Esq. PO Box 7748 North Bergen NJ 07047 Tel. 917-696-2442 BricDixonLaw@ gmail.com April 12, 2016 By E-Mail to All Parties; By Overnight Mail To The Division of Elections New Jersey Division of Elections 225 W. State Street, 5" Floor Trenton, NJ 08608 Mailing Address: P.O. Box 304 Trenton, NJ 08625-0304 Re: Penna v. Kasich 8th District Delegates OAL DKT NO. STE 05344-16 To Whom It May Concern: This exception filing is made on behalf of Petitioner Sue Ann Penna opposing in part the Initial Decision issued earlier today in the aforementioned matter. Petitioner opposes the Initial Decision with respect to rulings to uphold and allow each of the previously-challenged petition signatures on the subject nominating petition for delegates and alternate delegates from the 8" Congressional District pledged to support John R. Kasich as the candidate for the Republican Party nomination for President. Petitioner agrees with the balance of the Initial Decision rulings invalidating a total of 41 signatures Petitioner contends that certain factual findings of the Hon. Imre Karaszegi, ALJ, are either manifestly unsupported by or inconsistent with competent, relevant and reasonably credible evidence. Furthermore, while the Initial Decision relies heavily on the New Jersey Supreme Court decision in Stone v. Wyckoff, 102 N.J.Super. 26, 34 (App.Di 1968), certif, denied, 52 N.J. 254 (1968), it actually contradicts the Supreme Court Stone. That is because the signer’s reporting of information made contemporaneously with and accompanying his/her petition signature, to wit, residence address, acts as an admission of where he/she presently resides. And Stone provides as follows:“Once the matter reaches a judicial tribunal, a signature consistent with that of the registered voter, of one residing in the recorded address of the registrant, must be deemed prima facie evidence that of the registered voter.” Stone, at 34. That passage equates the "registered voter" with "one residing in the recorded address of the registrant.” That must support the inference that one who no longer resides in his or her recorded address is someone who signs a petition while admitting to residing at a different address, and therefore is not validly signing the petition. The state election law further requires that "[EJvery voter signing a petition shall add to his signature his place of residence, post-office address and street number, if any.” NJLS.A. 19:13-6. "Place of residence" is not optional. itis not discretionary; itis preceded by the word "shall" (as opposed to the word “may”) and it is mandatory. The distinetion is made between a valid petition signature and the valid voter registration. Afier all, a person's signature may be invalid without the invalid signature compromising, the person's right to vote or even his or her registration. Voter registration neither depends on the validity of a petition signature nor is lost by an invalid signature. The reverse is not true, however; an invalid or nonexistent registration precludes a valid petition signature. That distinction is useful to debunk any worries and the often-abused claim that any election law enforcement action somehow "disfranchises" voters. This action does not challenge anyone's valid registration, but only whether one single petition signature by certain individuals is valid. That is, a signature can be invalid yet the signer can simultaneously be validly registered to vote. Henceforth, a voter's affirmative admission via petition signature that he does not reside where he, at some point in the past, used to reside and from where, presumably, he registered to vote, does not deny the voter the franchise, but it does mean his signature does not comply with N.J.S.A. 19:13-6 and thus is invalid. This is the issue presented by the signers of the petition at R2, 1 and R2, 26, Vincent Cuseglio and Debra Cuseglio, respectively. Each signed the petition and provided an address, thereby admitting they live at 26 W Sth Street, Bayonne NJ. However, no record of either person at that address appears in the State Voter Registration System (“SVRS”) Defendants contend that these people were registered at a different address of 54 Linnet Street, Bayonne NJ. However, these signers admitted to residing elsewhere, there is no evidence nor certainty that they are the same persons registered at the 54 Linnet Street address, and therefore their signatures fail to comply with the state election law which requires that a signer place his residence address -- not the address where he is registered ~ on the petition, And the Stone case cited by Judge Karaszegi called for the "signature consistent with that of the registered voter, of one residing in the recorded address of the registrant...” and neither Vincent Cuseglio nor Debra Cuseglio gave such a signature. Stone, at 34. These signers do not lose their right to vote, but their signatures on this petition are invalid,One signature belonging to a voter was kept as a valid signature despite the address being outside the district. The signer (R2, 3) named Dionisio Cortes listed an address of 629 Kennedy Boulevard, Bayonne NJ. That address was re-verified as being in the 10th Congressional District in reliance on the website maintained by the Division of Elections available at http://njgin.state.nj.us/state/NI_CongeessionalDistricts/. The address also appears to be fully two blocks west of the boundary separating the 10th and 8th Districts. ‘The signer's own contemporaneous providing of his own address is his edmission of where he lives, By any standard, this must be the strongest evidence of where he lives, and that address is outside the 8th district. It must be invalidated. We then note the Initial Decision's third parenthetical-headlined section for one main category of deficiencies warranting signature invalidation titled: "(3) Names and addresses do not match the records of the SVRS." The Defendants’ petition contains challenged signatures, upheld as valid, as to which the names and addresses do not match the records of the SVRS (State Voter Registration System). Two such signatures signatures reflect the names of "Ashley D’Onoftio" (R5, 2) and "Rebecca Weitman" (R9, 9). The signatures are admissions of what a signer's real name is -- and not what it might have been or what someone else wishes it to be for petition purposes. Facts are stubborn creatures. Those two names do not correspond to the address in the 'SVRS that can be tied to either signer, respectively. Yet they were upheld on conjecture ~ - not fact -~ consisting of the assumption that the challenged signatures belonged to voters with admittedly different names who, under one possible theory, might have gotten. married without thereafter changing their registration. Those rulings imply that any other voter with a common FIRST name only may be used as the factual predicate for claiming the signer of a different name is a valid signer, and that the two are one and the same person. This is a dangerous principle and opens the door for much mischief with future voter registrations and petition drives. It compromises the integrity of elections and risks diluting the votes of every valid voter. The flaw in these rulings is that each ruling relies on no facts and instead chooses to ignore the available facts on the face of the petition in favor of what are assumptions, with not one item of evidence to substantiate the theory. The absence of evidence is more striking because the challenged signatures were identified in Petitioner's offer of proof, filed April 8, 2016. Despite the opportunity to obtain and provide proof to substantiate an affirmative defense, Defendants did not -- they chose not to ~ produce any marriage certificate or even an affidavit from the signer. All available evidence (if it existed) would have been in the possession and control of Defendants. The absence of any such evidence, any documentation, any testimony, in light of the opportunity to secure it, supports -- if not compels -- the inference that the theory is untrue, and that the signatures are not valid, Certainly, Defendants cannot be held to prevail on a preponderance of the evidence standard, when they have no evidence! Moreover, if one theory is to be entertained and accepted as valid, other alternativetheories should and must also be entertained. These names could just as readily belong to other family members (¢.g.. sisters, mothers, nieces, etc.). Most importantly, the OAL’ erred by conflating an unsupported theory with inconvertible fact, that is, the one fact with both signers Ashley D'Onofrio and Rebecca Weitman is that those names do not appear in the SVRS. To the extent other people with different names are registered in the district, and now claimed to be the same person as the signer, there is no proof of that theory and the absence of that proof should - in fact, it must - be used to support an inference that the claim is untrue or unsupported by any valid evidence. The signatures of Weitman and D'Onofrio cannot be upheld. The same issue arises regarding a serious discrepancy between a purported signer’s printed name (R4, 3) which appears as "Michelle MeCue-Gargiulo," and the SVRS record of a “Michele Gargiulo-McCue.” There can be no certainty that the signer is the same person as the registrant, particularly in light of three facts: The accompanying address was crossed out; © The first name is spelled differently; and ‘© The last name reverses the surname and middle name. On their face, each irregularity supports an inference that a person other than the registrant signed the petition, That inference is only stronger when the three irregularities are considered in the aggregate. ‘The foregoing cited examples are the most egregious discrepancies, deviations and otherwise unexplained irregularities which raise serious questions as to whether the actual signer was the same person as the person purported to have signed. Petitioner also opposes the legal conclusions and rulings in the Initial Decision and. reserves the right to oppose same upon appeal. For these reasons each of the six (6) itemized signatures identified above must be invalidated, the Initial Decision must be rejected in part insofar as the number of invalid signatures must be revised and increased in light of these at least six irregularities, and as these invalidations reduce the Kasich petition’s total of valid signatures to under 100, the entire petition must be invalidated and the Kasich-affiliated delegates and alternates stricken from the 8" Congressional District Presidential Primary ballot. Sincerely fe Dixon, Esq. NJ Attorney ID 001771996 CC: Hon. Imre Karaszegi, ALJ (email) Defendants via Brian Nelson, Esq. (via email) Division of Elections, Donna Barber (via email)