Congressman Dan Maffei of upstate New York, a Democrat, is also seeking the Working Families Party nomination, so he filed a petition to be on the Working Families Party primary ballot. That petition has been challenged on the grounds that the circulator, Kane Miller, is not truly a New York state resident. See this story. Miller is registered to vote in New York state and is enrolled in the Working Families Party, but the challenger will attempt to show that he is really domiciled in Georgia.
Although the challenge probably won’t reach the constitutional issue of New York’s ban on out-of-state circulators, it might. Bans on out-of-state circulators have been invalidated by courts in Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Also, California, Michigan, and D.C. repealed their bans after they were sued. Both Arizona and Virginia tried to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their appeals on that issue, but the U.S. Supreme Court turned down both states.
The issue here is whether Kane Miller is a member of the WFP.
Since Maffei is a Democrat, it might be OK for him to hire a out-of-state contractor to get him on the Democratic primary ballot. He would be acting as the agent of a Democratic candidate to get Democratic voters to sign a Democratic party petition.
But would it be OK for Maffei to have a fellow Democrat gather signatures to get on the primary ballot of another party? Isn’t that interfering in the internal affairs of another party?
What if there were a genuine grass-roots effort by WFPers to elect one of their own?
Would it be OK for Republicans to circulate a petition for Ursula Rozum to be the WFP party candidate, or if permission of the candidate is required, someone more willing?
It does seem a bit suspect that Miller would more to Syracuse to run the campaign of a Democrat, and then register in another party.
In your heart, you know what the solution is.
Hopefully this will result in the stupid, unconstitutional out-of-state petition circulator ban in New York being thown out.