This New York Times story explains the difficulty of collecting signatures for Republican primary candidates in New York city. With only 470,000 registered Republicans in the city, even mainstream Republicans have difficulty collecting 3,750 valid signatures of party members. As the story says, normal petitioning on the street barely works, and petitioners find they must first get a list of registered Republicans and then try to find them at home.
This is why the new legislation in Arizona, HB 3605, is so devastating to Arizona’s minor parties. The bill requires over 5,500 signatures of party members (or registered independents) and the Green Party only has about 6,000 registered members in the state.
News like this is especially upsetting when you consider that many of those enrolled voters have moved, or they don’t support the candidate, or they have a family member who will slam the door in your face, or they didn’t fully understand what they were doing when they selected the party on the registration form, or…
New York and NYC has a residency requirement for signature collectors, right?
Who will be the LAST Elephant in New York City ???
i.e. how many subgangs of leftwing Donkeys can there be – trying to get power in the regime ???
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. — even in 1 party regimes.
The Libertarian Party will be the offical opposition soon. N.Y.C. is not a social conservative place (Staten Island excluded).
yes. Only New York residents can circulate petitions.
Very interesting. I published a new article on this:
http://www.democracychronicles.com/signature-campaigns-independent-candidates/
Why doesn’t somebody file a law suit to get the out-of-state petitioner ban thrown out in New York? These bans have been thrown out in other places via law suits.
Duh, it’s New York City. They don’t need dummies from the stupider parts of the country (everywhere else) to come in.