On Wednesday, September 14, the Second Circuit reversed a U.S. District Court and said New York is not required to hold a new Republican primary for U.S. House in the 3rd district. Pidot v New York State Board of Elections, 16-3028. The decision was delivered from the bench, and there is still no written opinion filed.
The three judges on the Second Circuit are Dennis Jacobs (a Bush Sr. appointee), Barrington D. Parker (a Bush Jr. appointee), and Debra A. Livingston (Bush Jr.). The U.S. District Court had ordered the new primary because one of the two Republicans who submitted enough valid signatures to be on the primary ballot was omitted from the ballot. The omission was because the state believed one of the candidates, Philip Pidot, did not have enough valid signatres. When Pidot proved he did have enough valid signatures, the State Board of Elections and the state courts said this discovery came too late to do anything about it.
The Second Circuit ruled orally that federal courts should not have intervened in this case, because Pidot had already lost in state court.
Pidot always had enough signatures. Part of his problem were the delays to get the court to acknowledge this fact. He came up with a timing issues: meeting the MOVE act date, and already printed ballots. Then the Federal Court had to get a MOVE waiver for sending Military/Foreign U.S. voters their absentee ballots.
On a different topic, but still pertaining to NY, the website for NYSBE now says that the status of Kahn’s and Fuente’s filings are “invalid.” So it appears now that there will only be four presidential candidates on the NY ballot.