One day before ballots for the June primary are scheduled to print, a judge ordered a last-minute hearing on whether to include an aspiring City Council candidate who’s suing election officials on the ballot.
District 5 hopeful Shakeel “Sam” Carpenter filed a lawsuit against Stockton’s City Clerk and the San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters on March 12, court documents show, alleging they didn’t give him the time he’s legally allowed to fix problems with his candidate nomination petition.
On Thursday, a judge scheduled a hearing in Carpenter’s case for 9:30 a.m. on Friday, March 27 at the Superior Court in downtown Stockton.
In addition to seeking office, Carpenter also sits on Stockton’s Salary Setting Commission, which makes recommendations about how much to pay the mayor and councilmembers.
His lawsuit is at least the third filed since 2024 against city and county election leaders claiming a candidate was wrongly disqualified from the ballot.
During the March 2024 primary, former Councilmember Ralph Lee White sued after officials allegedly informed him 25 minutes before the deadline that some signatures on his nomination petition were invalid. Last week, a judge overruled city and county officials’ request to dismiss White’s latest complaint in the lawsuit, according to the judge’s order.
In 2024, Councilmember Mariela Ponce also sued election officials after they determined she wasn’t a registered voter, disqualifying her from running. A judge ordered Ponce to be put on the ballot, with the city’s former elections chief acknowledging that the initial decision about Ponce’s voter status was “inaccurate.”
Now, Carpenter claims he turned in 24 nomination signatures to Stockton’s city clerk around 10 a.m. on March 5, one day before the nomination deadline, court documents show. Carpenter claims the signatures arrived at the county Registrar of Voter’s office to be checked at 11:25 a.m., documents show.
The registrar found that all but four of the signatures were invalid for various reasons, including some signers not living in District 5 or not being registered to vote, according to a copy of Carpenter’s nomination paper included in the lawsuit.
Carpenter claims officials didn’t inform him of the problem until after business hours on March 5. Although the nomination deadline was the next day, March 6, Carpenter couldn’t address the issue because City Hall was closed, he argued.
City Hall is closed every other Friday, according to the city calendar.
Meanwhile, election officials argued in court documents and before the judge Thursday that instructions provided to all aspiring candidates clearly stated that City Hall would be closed March 6, and that Carpenter had had ample time to turn in his nomination papers before that.
Thursday marked the second time Carpenter’s lawsuit was in court this week. On Wednesday, a hearing about a possible settlement fell through after the City Council didn’t announce a settlement proposition following their Tuesday night closed-session meeting.
In the courtroom Thursday, lawyers for Stockton and San Joaquin County argued that deliberating further over whether to add Carpenter to the ballot would delay the election process.
Ballots are scheduled to be sent to the printing company tomorrow, and the public has a right to a 10-day review period of the final version of the ballot, city and county lawyers said in court.
Allowing further delay “would be an order that would inherently cause (Registrar of Voters) Ms. (Olivia) Hale to violate that elections code,” Deputy County Counsel Valerie Washington told Judge Blanca Banuelos, who oversaw the hearing.
“The consequence of doing this is severe,” said Adam Bolt, a lawyer representing Stockton, adding that the ballot process “may be irreparably disrupted.”
Carpenter’s lawyer, Andi Burrise, countered that the prospective candidate had met the nomination deadline. “They don’t get to cause the error and then use it as a shield,” she said of the election officials.
Hale didn’t immediately return a call about when the original public review for the ballot took place, or how it would work if Carpenter were added to the ballot.
A 10-day review of arguments to be printed alongside proposed measures in the June ballot was scheduled for late February and early March, the county’s list of deadlines shows. Additional reviews of rebuttals to those arguments, and of impartial analyses of the measures, were scheduled for earlier this month.
A 10-day public review period of candidates’ Statements of Qualification was scheduled from March 7-March 16, according to the county deadlines.
Carpenter’s lawsuit will return to court at 9:30 a.m. Friday, March 27 in Department 10C of the Superior Court, Banuelos said.