On December 12, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed A2047/S5974. The bills had passed the legislature on June 20. They make it legally impossible for a qualified party to change its name. Previously, newly-qualifying parties were permitted to change their names, and the law was silent about whether old parties could change their names. Here is the text. Thanks to Joe Burns for this news.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
How soon before only the TYRANT DONKEYS Party is allowed in NYS ???
This seems ripe for a constitutional challenge. If the argument is ‘the state runs elections so it can set rules like this’ consider too that the states charter corporations and other companies but I can’t imagine a court upholding a state law that said once a company picked a name it could never change it. It is not unheard of for a company to change its name – not legally dissolving the old company and creating new legal one – just changing its name.
What a dumb idea. Why shouldn’t a party be able to change its name?
how many minor parties want a new name?
How about change the name of the *State of New York* to *State of Tyrants* ???
@EB,
In 2014, the gubernatorial candidates set up shadow parties to garner extra votes under New York’s system of con-fusion. Women’s Equality Party nominated Mario Cuomo. The Stop Common Core Party nominated Rob Astorino. Both parties received more than 50,000 votes and became qualified parties.
In bizarro-world-New York a party does not organize until after it qualifies. Groups of individuals write bylaws and designate an executive committee, and present their credentials to the SBOE to determine which is legitimate. You can imagine that any women who have achieved any sort of authority in the Democratic Party would want to quit that party to lead a new party. Voters would not want to join a party that would limit their voting in primaries.
So you end up with a self-appointed state executive committee, and a set of rules for electing state executive committee members. The Stop Common Core Party changed its name to Reform Party. Curtis Sliwa organized voters to change their registration to Reform Party and get elected to the executive committee with just a few votes. Reform only got up to 2315 registrants after four years (“reform” does not have positive connotations in NY. They would do better with “grifter” or “fixer”).
The new law may be directed at the SAM party.
LAWSUIT TIME!