On June 19, the New York Libertarian Party won its lawsuit over the 2010 ballot. Here is the 45-page decision, Credico v New York State Board of Elections, 10cv-4555, eastern district. New York election law lets two parties jointly nominate the same candidate. If a candidate receives the nomination of two qualified parties, his or her name is listed twice on the ballot, once in each party’s column.

But if two unqualified parties jointly nominate the same candidate, the candidate can’t be listed twice, and must tell election officials which party’s line he or she wants to appear on. In such cases, even though the candidate is listed only once on the ballot, and voters can only vote for him under one label, both party labels are printed in that single space.

This is a rare case in which a minor party won on the basis that the law is discriminatory. Generally when minor parties and independent candidates win ballot access constitutional lawsuits, the basis is the First Amendment. The decision acknowledges that the burden on minor parties, under the challenged law, is not severe. No voter is prevented from voting for any particular candidate. Nevertheless, even though the burden is not severe, the law is unconstitutional because there are no valid state interests. The state claimed two state interests: (1) preventing a candidate from appearing twice on the ballot was an attempt to prevent using the ballot for “campaign advertising”; (2) the law avoids voter confusion. The court said reason (1) can’t be valid, because the state already lets candidates nominated by multiple qualified parties do the same thing. The court said reason (2) is not valid because the law actually causes more confusion than it prevents. The law required Randy Credico, nominee for U.S. Senate of both the Libertarian Party and the Anti-Prohibition Party, to choose one of those lines, even though both parties had nominated him. Therefore, one of the two parties would be forced to have a blank space on the ballot in its column, yet its name would appear in tiny print for that one office in another party’s column, something that is very confusing.

The decision is long because the state raised so many procedural objections to the lawsuit, insisting that the lawsuit was moot because the Anti-Prohibition Party no longer exists, and insisting that some of the plaintiffs weren’t properly in the lawsuit. The decision dismissed these procedural objections.