On October 13, the person who had challenged the ballot placement of Republican nominees for New York Supreme Court Justice in the 5th district (the Syracuse area) dropped that challenge. The challenger had filed the challenge, based on supposed irregulaties in the Republican Party convention that had nominated them. See this newspaper story. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link. The newspaper reporter was unable to find out why the challenge had been withdrawn.
You are garbling the story. New York uses the weird system upheld in Lopez Torres for nominating candidates to its Supreme Court (which isn’t actually a supreme court), in which voters choose delegates in the primary to a judicial convention where the nominees are actually chosen. Lopez Torres had argued that voters had no clue who they were voting for, since the judicial candidate they might favor would not be listed on the ballot, it was difficult to get supporting slates to run for these limited purpose offices, and even the elected delegates didn’t always show up for the convention, which were often held with little notice or publicity.
In this particular case, there were actually 3 Republican judges seeking the nomination (for two open seats) from all parties. The Republican and Independence parties nominated McCarthy and Tormey, while the Conservative party nominated McCarthy and Hafner.
The Democratic party convention also nominated McCarthy and Hafner. It was this Democratic convention that was challenged. From the newspaper articles it is unclear who was behind the challenges. It does seem a bit odd for the Conservative and Democratic parties to endorse the same Republicans.
Under New York’s (con)fusion ballot system voters will choose two candidates. McCarthy will appear on the line(s?) of 4 parties (D, R, I, C), while Hafner will be on the line(s?) of two parties (D and C) and Tormey will be on the line(s?) of two parties (R and I).
a third of the electorate have no voice in the selection of state trial judges — SCOTUS basically considered the constitutional equal protection but agreed to keep the status quo — since only enrolled party members can sign designating petitions for judicial convention delagate slates and all parties including the IPNY exclude non-enrolled voters from participation in the primary election for this party office