On February 9, the New York Assembly passed A4686. It lowers the number of signatures for independent candidate petitions, for district office, for 2021 only. The bill cuts the requirements in half. The bill does not affect the statewide petition requirement of 45,000, although there are no scheduled statewide offices up in 2021 anyway. The chief impact of the bill is for Supreme Court elections (which are district elections in New York state), and local office.
The vote was 144-4. The four “no” votes were cast by three Republicans (Christopher Friend, Karl Brabenec, and David DiPietro) and one Democrat (Charles Barron). Thanks to Joe Burns for this news.
Does this affect all local offices throughout the state or only certain ones?
That 45,000 valid signatures in about 6 weeks requirement for statewide minor party and independent candidates in New York is going to be an extremely difficult barrier to get through. They should either lower the signature requirement back down to 15,000 valid petition signatures, or at the very least, triple the amount of time allotted for gathering those signatures. If it is currently 6 weeks, they should increase it to 18 weeks.
Brandon, all local offices.
So, for example, if someone was running for an upstate city’s Water Board, their number of signatures is now half?
Is that a partisan office?
Yes it is a partisan office
Then yes.