Groton — The Republican registrar of voters will decide whether Gretchen Chipperini's name will appear on the ballot as a Republican candidate for Town Council or if she is disqualified from running, according to a spokesman for the state secretary of the state.

Chipperini collected 183 signatures to run for council and filed the paperwork with the registrar of voters on Aug. 12, which met the required minimum of 5 percent of the eligible town Republican voters, Town Clerk Betsy Moukawsher said said.

A day after Chipperini's candidacy was announced, the town Republican Party issued a statement saying it would not have endorsed her. 

Dean Antipas, town councilor and chairman of the Republican Town Committee, said that after he learned Chipperini was running, he went to the registrar's office to see that all paperwork was in order.

"It's no secret that we didn't choose her for the ballot," he said. "A petitioning candidiate is so uncommon, almost a hypothetical in this town. It's natural to go take a look at it."

He said he didn't expect to find anything, but saw what he thought was a "rather glaring error" and asked the registrar about it.

Republican Registrar Kristen Venditti confirmed Wednesday that Chipperini was notified that her petition had been disqualified on a technicality after the petition initially had been verified.

But Venditti said the decision isn't final and she is discussing it with the secretary of the state's office.

Av Harris, spokesman for the secretary of the state, said the office doesn't make these kinds of decisions. 

"Our office made no determination as to the validity of Ms. Chipperini's primary petitions in Groton," he said in an email.

"It's easy to hide under the cover of the secretary of the state's office," he said during a phone call Wednesday. "But really the decision is up to the Republican registrar. We're not fact finders. We're not investigators."

Chipperini was unavailable to comment Thursday, but she said earlier she expected the party to reject her. She said she didn't need its endorsement.

If her petition is accepted, her name would appear on the ballot along with the endorsed Republicans, because there are nine open seats for council and the Republicans endorsed eight candidates.

Moukawsher said Chipperini filed her signature petition pages with Venditti at about 1 p.m. on Aug. 12, and the registrar verified them.

At about 2:30 p.m. — before the 4 p.m. deadline — Moukawsher said she received the last page of the paperwork. 

It requires a signature of the person who circulated the petitions, and Chipperini asked if she could sign the page and have her signature notarized, so Moukawsher called the registrar to verify what was needed and provided the notary service.

Then Moukawsher asked Venditti, the registrar, if she needed the original of the last page returned, or if Moukawsher, the town clerk, should keep it since the registrar would be sending the remaining pages over later anyway for permanent record keeping.

Moukawsher said she had only the one original page and was told to hold on to it.

After the petitions were filed, Antipas walked in to the registrar's office to take a look at the complete petition, and saw that a single, final page with an original signature was missing.

On Tuesday, Moukawsher asked Bernard Liu, a staff attorney with the secretary of the state's office, in an email, what to do.

"The entire petition was given to the registrar and she verified the signatures," Moukawsher wrote. "She signed off that 183 signatures were acceptable. I didn't receive the attached page until after the registrar verified the signatures. Please let us know how to proceed as soon as possible."

Liu replied that from the facts given to him, "it would seem that the petition pages were not filed with the registrar at 4 (p.m.) on the 12th. Therefore the pages should not be accepted; however, if I am wrong in this assumption and the (registrar) did receive the pages before 4 (p.m.), then the pages should be accepted."

The town clerk wrote back that the person circulating the petition was the same as the candidate, and the candidate's signature already had been verified.

She said she and the registrar confirmed that the final page was done by the 4 p.m. deadline "but didn't see the need to rush it back to her (the registrar's) office because she was going to be sending all of the petition signature pages to me later. Once the registrar sends me the petition pages, I will have the entire petition on file for three years," Moukawsher wrote. "The registrar clearly did her job..."

Liu replied the signature and certification pages are technically one document, which strengthens the view that they were not correctly filed.

But he wrote, "As the facts seem to change, I would leave it to the town attorney and the municipality as to the timeliness of the petition."

"The decision to accept or reject primary petition pages rests solely with the local registrar of voters," Harris wrote in his email to The Day. "Our role is to advise the local election officials what the state law says, and then they are empowered to make the decision. The same is true in this case."

d.straszheim@theday.com

Twitter: @DStraszheim