Issue 07 | May 2026
Court Restores Candidate After Ballot-Access Challenge
This story is about ballot access: the Auditor's Office tried to keep a candidate off the ballot, and the court put him back on after a constitutional and statutory challenge.
Mike Solan filed to run for Pierce County Council District 7 on May 4, 2026. According to The News Tribune, he learned on May 7 that the county auditor was rescinding his candidacy based on a Pierce County Charter rule requiring council candidates to be registered voters in their council district for at least one year before filing.
Solan filed a lawsuit in Pierce County Superior Court against Pierce County Auditor Linda Farmer on May 8. He argued that the added one-year voter-registration requirement went beyond state law and violated equal protection because the county already had a one-year residency requirement.
Pierce County Superior Court Judge Shelly K. Moss ruled in Solan's favor. The News Tribune reported that the court directed the Auditor to restore Solan's filing, and Pierce County Elections confirmed he would be in the voter pamphlet and on the August 4, 2026 primary ballot.
The Center Square coverage adds the county's side: Chief Deputy Auditor Linda Kent said the office checked eligibility under the charter for all County Council candidates, had to reject the candidacy under that provision, and told Solan the remedy was to ask the courts to clarify the law.
The political undertone is hard to miss: this level of eligibility vetting appears to have been applied to Solan in a way that has not been publicly shown for every other candidate. If the office is going to scrutinize candidate eligibility this aggressively, voters can fairly ask whether the same standard was applied across the board.
The fair, sourced takeaway: this was not a minor typo or a theoretical dispute. A candidate was removed, sued the elected Auditor, won in Superior Court, and was restored to the ballot. For an election office, having a judge put a candidate back on the ballot is a significant public-record event.