On October 26, at another hearing in Credico v New York State Board of Elections, U.S. District Court Judge Raymond J. Dearie kept his own stay intact. This means Randy Credico will be listed on the ballot only once, even though he is the nominee of two parties, the Libertarian Party and the Anti-Prohibition Party.
Attorneys for the state convincingly argued that it is impossible for all the ballots to be reprinted in time for the November 2 election. Last week Judge Dearie had said that it is highly likely that the state’s discriminatory policy on fusion is unconstitutional. It seems extremely likely he will issue a declaratory judgment in the near future, invalidating the policy that won’t let a candidate nominated by two unqualified parties (each with their own separate line) have his or her name on the ballot in two places, yet does allow this for the nominee of two qualified parties, or even the nominee of one qualified party and one unqualified party.
Not surprisingly, the Judge continued the stay of his decision, buying BOE’s argument of the lack of time to change the ballots.
Nevertheless, it was important to bring the action, challenging a clearly unconstitutional statute which acts to bar fusion candidates of independent bodies in New York.
I was proud to be a co-plaintiff in the action and to be so ably represented by Gary Donoyan and Len Weinglass.
Mark Axinn
Chair, LPNY
but the best part of this fusion fiasco election law scam is that Bill Powers & Co. with the Tax-cut Now Party aka “Freedom Party” aka “Pataki Party” esentally bought a third line on the ballot in 1994 with Bill Powers the GOP state chairman AND also the eventual state chair of the newly minted Freedom Party having gotten 50K votes for Gov in 1994.
Fusion must be forced to confort to the equal protection of total font size on the electronic ballot. If the IPNY wants to endorse Cuomo, fine, just have the total font size of the several lines on the ballot equal the Green Party (Hawkins) or LPNY line or whatever single candidate line.
phony fraud Fusion would disappear in a flash in NYS.
Although fusion is useful in rare instances it causes more problems than it solves. I’m convinced more and more all the time that we would actually have stronger parties in New York without it.
Fusion is especially problematic at the local level. in my experience, Albany City politics are particularly messy because of it. Who really wants to see a candidate courting the Conservative, Working Families, and Democratic parties?
If we don’t get rid of fusion we need to at least make changes in the other direction: Open primaries would be nice. I also wish the amendment to the ballot access law that was proposed earlier this year would gain some traction next session. Or we could at least bring the party enrollment timeline for primaries up a bit. Our state’s election laws are so stupid, and kind of paradoxical.
Jimmy McMillan sucks.
the enrollment lock-box closed October 8th for next months. — except for carpetbagging politicians and illegal aliens.
The beauty of having any New York election law declared unconstitutional is that it forces the legislature to pass some sort of bill fixing the problem. Often when a legislature is forced to pass a bill on part of a problem, it is possible to get other improvements into the same bill.
New York needs a strong movement to give each candidate an equal chance to be listed first on the ballot. That outcome would have big effects in that state.
I disagree about fusion. With over 2.5m independent voters, it gives them the ability to select a candidate with out selecting a major party. With enough votes, it will give a candidate a chance to understand the needs and wants of non party issues. Yes, in many cases the minor party is just another part of the major parties and that is wrong. But it can be a useful way to get a moderate message heard.
@Mark, thanks for coming forward to force this issue.