The court battle over the question of the identity of the legal officers of the New York Reform Party is not over. See this story.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
The court battle over the question of the identity of the legal officers of the New York Reform Party is not over. See this story.
The Unity Platform
“Non-Aggression Principle (NAP)” By Mark Herd [Libertarian] for Governor of California, USA
“Term Limits” By Miss Joy Waymire [Anarchist] for President of the USA
Also
“Immediate Labelling of All Foods” and “Restore Glass-Steagal Act”
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April 21st and 22nd, 2018 Candidate Conference/Debate
Monterey Bay Park, Del Monte Avenue, Monterey, California, USA, Earth
UCC Candidates:
Candidates for Governor of California, USA (November 2018)
Mark Herd [Libertarian]
Stasyi Barth [Republican]
Candidate for Lt. Governor of California, USA (November 2018)
Gail McLaughlin [Independent]
Candidate for US Congress CA CD 2 (November 2018)
Andy Caffrey [Ecotopian Democratic]
Candidates for President of the United States (November 2020)
Donald Trump [Republican]
Miss Joy Waymire [Anarchist]
Adam Kokesh [Libertarian]
Candidate for Mendocino County Board Of Supervisors, California, USA (November 2018)
Pamela Elizondo [Green]
Candidate for Chairman of National Patriot Party of Ghana (2018)
Alhaji Abubakari Abdul Rahaman [NPP]
Candidate for US Congress LA CD 3 (November 2018)
Verone Thomas [Noble People of Conscious]
Candidate for Prime Minister of Canada (October 21st, 2019)
Raphael Louis [National Coalition Party of Canada (NCPC)]
* * *
This is illustrative of the problem with states that permit parties to “organize” by petition. There is no evidence that the party exists.
Is the alleged party composed of martians, russians, chinese, etc. ???
Nickolas Wildstar [Libertarian] for Governor of California accepts election of his name to the United Coalition of Candidates (UCC).
All are welcome. We all can strive for unity under pure proportional representation (PR), paper ballots cast as proof, the 7th California Parliament Election of 2018.
http://www.international-parliament.org/ucc.html
Jim Riley what do you mean by organize? NYS parties retain their ballot placement through a vote test after initially petitioning during a gubernatorial year. But they still have to maintain party officers.
ALL the clubby party hack stuff (officers, etc.) is moronic — late DARK AGE stuff —
EQUAL ballot access via nominating petitions or filing fees.
The clubby hacks can meet in an old phone booth in a museum and issue their platforms which are ignored by the public and media.
@Clay,
In New York State, new parties organize after they have gained ballot access. The Women’s Equality Party, petitioned to place Andrew Cuomo and three others as their nominees, even though Cuomo was already the nominee of the Democratic (and Working Families) nominee. Meanwhile Rob Astorino was the nominee of the Stop Common Core as well as Republican (and Conservative) party. In New York, petitioning candidates can have the name of a “party” or a slogan. Some local candidates also petition in case they lose a primary. The party lines of gubernatorial candidates can qualify the party.
After a “party” qualifies, the “officers” can submit rules and temporary officers. In case of conflicting efforts, the endorsement of the nominees determines which were legitimate. There were three different efforts to organize the Women’s Equality Party, including one apparently by Republicans. But they eventually decided to give control to one group.
The Stop Common Core party organized by giving control of the state central committee to associates of the candidates who had to endorse the organization, and they renamed the party to Reform Party. But they set some conventional rules, which had the central committee elected at the primary. Getting on the primary ballot for a microparty can be real easy since the signature requirement is based on the number of enrolled party members, with no minimum. You could enroll with the Reform Party, sign your petition, and become the nominee (if there is only one candidate for nomination, there is no primary, but the candidate is nominated). A bunch of individuals encouraged by Curtis Sliwa were elected to the state central committee and took over the party. An amusing sidelight was that the rules provide for a committee of about 400 persons (one male, one female from each assembly district/county), and there was a question of whether a quorum could be achieved. A judge ruled that it was not a requirement to have several hundred state committeepersons when there were less than 1000 members.
In New York, there is something called Opportunity To Ballot (OTB). In this phrase, ‘ballot’ is a verb, meaning the party members would like an opportunity to vote on nominees. Ordinarily, if there is zero or one candidates, the primary is cancelled. But OTB forces the nomination contest onto the ballot. New York always has a write-in space. So you could have someone enroll in the party, file an OTB petition, and then vote for the nominee as a write-in. This happened in 2016, where there were Republican candidates, who were cross-nominated by the Women’s Equality Party.
The Reform Party only has 1600 members, three years after “their” candidate got 50,000 votes.
I still don’t see what the problem is.
@Clay,
You wrote:
“what do you mean by organize? NYS parties retain their ballot placement through a vote test after initially petitioning during a gubernatorial year. But they still have to maintain party officers.”
What you wrote is fiction.
The Women’s Equality Party and Stop Common Core Party did not petition in 2014. There were NO persons associated with those parties, they did not have any organization, and they did not have any bylaws. The Cuomo and Astorino campaigns circulated petitions saying that the “Women’s Equality Party” and “Stop Common Core Party” were nominating the same four statewide candidates as the Democratic and Republican parties. Someone signing a petition was not saying that they were joining the parties, but rather they wanted Andrew Cuomo, etc. to be on the ballot. They were already on the ballot as the nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties.
After the two fictional parties received 50,000 voters for their gubernatorial candidates they became qualified to make nominations. But they still did not exist.
Cuomo could not make nominations for them, because he was still a Democrat. Astorino could not make nominations for them, because he was still a Republican. Prominent female politicians such as Kathy Hochul, Christine Quinn, Kirsten Gillibrand, Hillary Clinton could not make nominations because they were not willing to quit the Democratic Party.
So instead anyone could enroll in the fictional party and claim that they were the interim officers of the party. The only way to resolve any dispute is to have certification by a majority of the fictional party’s candidate that they were the legitimate officers of the party.
Since there aren’t really any significant number of enrolled members in the fictional party, the only way they can continue to exist after the next gubernatorial election is to permit a Democratic or Republican candidate to seek the nomination of the party (ordinarily, only enrolled members of a party may seek nominations, but the officers may permit a member of another party to seek the nomination of the fictional party).
Some of us in New York are currently trying to get signatures for our petition to get the Stop Common Sense Party on the ballot.
DEMS, GOP SUE NEW PARTY (Albany) The Democratic and Republican Parties of New York have sued to prevent the Stop Common Sense Party from gaining ballot access, claiming that voters will be confused by the name. Party leaders said the two parties had spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars cultivating their party names as virtual brands for a lack of common sense.
Any Common HACKS Party in NY City or NY State ????