Pea-green "Official Republican Ballot" forms mailed by Pennsylvania Senate candidate Lisa Paolino list two choices in the 17th District Senate primary: Paolino and "not endorsed."

The ballots, which arrived in Montgomery County mailboxes yesterday, bore a substantial resemblance to the Montgomery County Republican Committee's pea-green "Official Republican Ballot" - which lists Lance Rogers as the endorsed candidate and Paolino not at all.

In the Norristown courthouse yesterday afternoon, Rogers and attorney Robert Kerns - who is unopposed in a May 8 election to lead the county Republican committee - persuaded Common Pleas Court Judge Richard J. Hodgson to block Paolino's campaign from mailing the sample ballots.

He ordered that all unsent ballots be seized and ruled that no more be made. The judge said the ballots looked so much like the Montgomery County Republican endorsement ballot that confusion was inevitable.

"Any voter reading this would think that she's the endorsed Republican in Montgomery County," Hodgson said.

Rogers also requested that constables stationed at every polling place in the district be ordered to confiscate the Paolino-produced green ballots if campaign workers tried to hand them out, but Hodgson declined to make that part of yesterday's temporary restraining order.

Kerns said he would ask for the constables to be given confiscation orders during an injunction hearing Monday.

"The fraud that this perpetuates could be astoundingly difficult for Lance Rogers to overcome," Kerns said.

Paolino did not attend the hearing and could not be reached for comment.

Mary R. Auchincloss, her attorney in yesterday's hearing, asked Hodgson to decline to issue a restraining order in the last days of the heated primary.

"The effect upon the campaign would be totally chilling," Auchincloss said.

The 17th Senate District, in which Rogers and Paolino are vying for the nomination to try to replace retiring Sen. Connie Williams, a Democrat, is in Montgomery and Delaware Counties.

A similar temporary-injunction hearing is scheduled for this morning in Delaware County.

Throughout the race, the candidates have attacked each other's Republican credentials in television commercials also posted to YouTube, and Rogers has denounced a Paolino flyer with attached car-wash coupons as vote-buying.