Ballot Access Reform

The NYS Attorney General should review New York's election laws and rules and regulations to see where any unnecessarily restrictive laws could be challenged in court as unconstitutional.

As a private citizen and voter, I commenced an action four years ago to try to have two main restrictions overturned, but the 3 judge federal court (led then by now U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor) denied me any relief. If the NYS Attorney General brought such an action in state court, there is the possibility that the two restrictions could be eliminated.

Here are the two Restrictions on Ballot Access:

First: Under the New York Elections Law, it is illegal to pay a person gathering signatures on a petition as little as one cent per signature, but it is not illegal to pay the same person $1,000,000 per week. Because candidates and small parties such as the Green Party and the Libertarian Party are not allowed to pay petition gatherers, say, $2 per signature, the cost of gathering 30,000 signatures needed for a statewide office (such as when running as an independent candidate for NYS Attorney General) would cost $60,000, but if the candidate has to pay a petition gatherer by the day or week the cost of getting the 30,000 signatures can be 5 times as high, or $300,000. This higher costs keeps good candidates from running for office and prevents political parties from putting candidates on the ballot.

Second: Under the New York Elections Law, a "party" is defined as a group that ran a candidate for NYS Governor during the most recent general election (which was in 2006) and obtained at least 50,000 votes for such candidate. If the organization (such as the Green Party) ran a candidate for all statewide offices (Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Controller, U.S. Senator), obtaining more than 50,000 votes for Attorney General would not suffice and the organization would lose its status (or not gain status) as a "party", so that during the next general election (in 2010) the organization would not have its members retained on the records of the Board of Elections; the organization would have to gather 15,000 signatures (meaning 30,000, just to be safe) to be able to put its candidates on the ballot during 2010; and a candidate getting 25% or more of the vote of the nominating convention of the organization, but not actually winning the convention vote, would not be able to challenge this outcome in a primary. This happened to me. I got 40% of the vote of the nominating convention in 2006 but the Green Party was not a "party" under the New York Election Law and I was not able to contest the outcome with a primary.

These are ballot access issues. There are various other restrictions that make it difficult if not impossible for third parties (such as the Green Party and the Libertarian Party) from fielding candidates or winning elections. They have to spend so much time and money on getting on the ballot that they have no time or money to win the election.

Another ballot access issue is that signatures cannot be obtained over an extended period of time. The law gives only 43 days for the signatures to be obtained, and if the signatures are not obtained during this 43-day period (in the middle and heat of the summer), then the petition effort fails and the party or candidate will not be on the ballot.

Gerrymandering is another ballot access issue, with the incumbents rewriting election districts so that the specific addresses that would and did vote for them are included in their district and the others are given to some other district.

We have go to create better ballot access if we expect to have elected officials who will work for voters instead of for the wealthy contributors, now including large corporations from all over the world, thanks to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Carl E. Person
Candidate for NYS Attorney General - 2010

We have to