On November 7, the voters of Lewis County, New York, elected a member of the Independence Party, Randall LaChausse, to the county legislature, district 2. The election is partisan. LaChausse was also the nominee of the Democratic Party. See this story.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
…LaChausse was also the nominee of the Democratic Party…
LOL. It’s funny when third-party advocates brag about electing a major party candidate.
His opponent had multiple ballot lines, too. Anybody know where to find the results broken out by how many votes each got from which party affiliation?
You could look to see if their county board of elections has a website with a report posted. So far as I have seen, each New York county election report will show how many votes are on each line.
Randall L. LaChausse (DEM, IND)
382 62.21%
DEM 325 52.93%
IND 57 9.28%
Brenda Lee Chartrand (REP, CON, PAC)
232 37.79%
REP 192 31.27%
CON 36 5.86%
PAC 4 0.65%
Write-in: 0 0%
Total 614 100.00%
325 DEM 57 IND
192 REP 36 CON 4 Peoples Choice
The headline would more accurately note that Two Democrats were elected to the county legislature. 7 of 8 Republicans elected were unopposed, and D’s have a 2:1 registration advantage.
Thanks! So the Independence line wasn’t an “un-spoiler”, I guess.
I read the article more carefully and see that LaChausse originally registered as a Democrat when his community college instructor suggested that anyone wanting to work for the state government register with the governor’s party. He switched to the Republican party in 2000 following Ronald Reagan’s presidency (sic). He flipped to the Independence Party in 2011 after being dissatisfied with the major parties.
In New York, you have to receive permission of another party to seek their nomination, which in LaChausse’s case was granted.
A Democratic petition would have required about 18 signatures (5% of 348 Democrats).
@ Jim Riley. Not quite true on a person needing permission to seek nomination of another party. A person can get enough signatures from members of that party to have what’s called “an opportunity to ballot” during the primary. The person’s name wouldn’t be listed on the ballot but people can write that name in therefore giving him the nomination if he/she outpolls the party’s pick.
Fusion stuff is more mindless junk.
PR and AppV
@SMZ, “Ballot” in Opportunity To Ballot” (OTB) is a verb. So the phrase is actually party members seeking a chance to vote on a nomination. If there are no candidates or one candidate for nomination, New York does not hold a primary. OTB forces a primary to be held. New York puts a write-in space on all ballots, so OTB is a way to force ballots to be printed so write-in votes can be cast. In some cases it is used to enable a candidate to capture and extra line, in case they lose there primary. In other cases it appears to be an actual chance to nominate by party voters. In essence party voters can authorize a candidate from a different party to be their nominee by voting for him.
There were no primaries in Lewis County so it appears all nominations were uncontested.
How long has NY had the mindless fusion stuff ??? —
part of the official primary stuff – circa 1890 ???