In February 2019 the New York legislature passed a bill to reduce the number of signatures for primary petitions in 2019 only, but that temporary liberalization did not apply to New York city. That bill was S2862/A2570, signed February 20.
In March, the legislature passed another bill on this subject. The formula for the number of signatures in primaries in New York has always been somewhat complex. The requirement is a percentage of the number of registered voters in a particular party, but also there is a maximum number of signatures, and the actual requirement is the lower of the two. The new bill lowered the percentage, whereas the first bill had not. Whether this makes any concrete difference in 2019 depends on whether the party has a very large number of registrants, or whether it is a minor party with a small registration. The new law, S4350/A5979, was signed on March 25.
But the new bill also added Erie and Nassau Counties to the list of places in which the new laws don’t apply, whereas the older bill only exempted New York city. The new bill is very confusing, and it is unclear whether the new bill actually makes the number of signatures in Erie and Nassau Counties higher for major party members than under the older bill.
Some Erie County major party candidates are suing in state court over the number of signatures in their county. Reese v Cuomo, Supreme Court, Niagara County, 167989-2019. The case will be settled very soon because the petitioning period is almost over. Attorneys for the state government have filed a brief insisting the number of signatures in Erie County did not actually rise, and they are also arguing that the lawsuit has procedural flaws, and that Niagara County isn’t a proper venue. There is one office, Judge of the Supreme Court, that includes both Erie and Niagara Counties, and the drafters of the new law don’t seem to have thought about that. See this story.
Here is the text of the new bill. One wonders, if the new bill didn’t actually increase the number of signatures in Erie and Nassau Counties, why did the bill even mention them? Thanks to Joe Burns for this news.
The gerrymander hack MORONS do NOT care if *** THEIR *** moron laws make any sense whatever.
Courts try to sort thru each rotted law mess — while the HACKS ignore all court cases.
MORE JAILS for the HACKS ASAP.
Saner State consts do NOT permit *local* acts
— does N-O-T apply in INSANE RED communist NY State regime ???
The February bill reduced the caps by 1/4. The March bill reduced the percentage by 1/4 to 3.75%. The March bill said that the February bill was still in effect. It is a strained reading to suggest that the February bill had been overridden, when the March bill specifically says it was in effect.
I found an article that said the Erie and Nassau counties wanted to be excluded, but for reasons that were not clear to a legislator from Albany County, but they went along to get something passed. The March bill was only signed a couple of weeks before the filing deadline. Another article attributes the exclusion to House Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes who is from Buffalo.
Remember that in New York, a state of con-fusion, that party bosses can put candidates on the primary ballot. Challengers must petition, or there is no primary. Peter Reese who filed the lawsuit appears to be a persistant critic of the Erie County Democratic Party leadership. He also filed his petition this week. I don’t know whether he filed 2000, the old standard, or 1500, the new standard.
Generally, percentages and caps don’t make sense. They may decide that 5 of 100 is reasonable for some hamlet, but realize that 50,000 out of a million is a lot. So they set a cap of 10,000. But that still leaves 5,000 of 100,000 or 10,000 of 200,000. But if 10,000 of 1,000,000 is reasonable, 10,000 of 200,000 is ridiculous.
The simple solution is to use 0.1% and do away with caps entirely, and get rid of partisan nominations.
Does the Law that temporarily reduced the number of petition signatures apply to Independent ballot access
No.