Mary Jo Tamberlin has filed paperwork, listing herself as the State Chair of the Women’s Equality Party. She is the clerk to the Niagara County Legislature, and in the recent past has been a leader of the local Republican Party. It is not known if she has changed her registration to list herself as a member of the Women’s Equality Party. There are now three individuals, each seeking to be recognized as the state chair.
New York election law says when a group gets 50,000 votes for Governor, thereby becoming a fully-qualified party, the party’s statewide nominees should decide who the state officers are. The problem in this case is that the party had four nominees for statewide office in 2014, and only two of them have recognized anyone as state chair. Because two is less than a majority of four, there are no party officers who meet the legal standard. New York state could avoid this problem if it required unqualified parties filing general election petitions for Governor to identify their state officers before the election is held. The law could potentially require such groups to list their chair on the petition, an idea is use in some other states. Thanks to Michael Drucker for this news.
Even better would be have “parties” demonstrate that they were parties before the election, adopting Top 2, and jettisoning con-fusion.
Censorship by those who claim to represent the voters is only feeding the failures of democracy for the whole.
One more reason NOT to have ANY robot party hack stuff — to drive the judges even more crazy than they are already.
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Ballot access ONLY via equal nominating petitions.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
Riley’s idea would severely injure not just “parties” like Women’s Equality, but also relatively strong, independent third parties like the Green and Libertarian Parties. Top Two is a menace, and the only reason why third parties haven’t completely disappeared in CA yet (yet at this rate) is because CA doesn’t solely use vote totals as a criteria for party establishment like most other states do, including New York (50k votes in the GENERAL election).
Although I do agree with him that fusion is a rather flawed electoral device. The 2014 election in New York showed how easily it can be abused.
changed voter registration today to the Natural Born Citizen Party — New York State Committee
in enrollment black box until after general election
Joshua H,
The only reason for a high initial demonstration of support for political parties is to justify the cost of state-sponsored primaries. Top 2 eliminates the primaries.
California’s muzzling of candidates who have a preference for small parties is unconstitutional.
Richard:
Has New York’s other new party, the Stop Common Core Party having the same issues as the Women’s Equality Party?
“Has New York’s other new party, the Stop Common Core Party having the same issues as the Women’s Equality Party?”
Supposedly the SCCP is now the state affiliate of the Reform Party.