On January 14, the SAM Party of New York filed a lawsuit against the new law that removes parties from the ballot if they fail to poll at least 130,000 votes for President, or 2% of the presidential vote, whichever is greater. The new law went into effect last year even though the legislature did not pass any bill on this subject. It became law because the legislature empowered a new Commission to write new election laws. Here is the Complaint.
The case is SAM Party v Cuomo, s.d., 1:20cv-323. UDATE: it is assigned to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, a Clinton appointee. It points out that the SAM Party does not desire to nominate anyone for president in 2020. It therefore seeks a ruling that requiring a party to run someone for president in order to retain qualified status violates the U.S. Constitution. The only other states that absolutely require parties to make a certain showing for president, to remain on the ballot, are Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, and Washington. Also Tennessee requires a showing for president in years when no U.S. Senate race is on the ballot. New Mexico law is ambiguous.
Most parties that are ballot-qualified in even a single state tend to want to run someone for president, so no lawsuit like this has ever before been filed.
The new law provides that if any part of it is held unconstitutional, then all of it is void. Thanks to Joe Burns for the news.
Parties — supposedly based on issues in platforms —
NOT monarch personality cults.
What regime has the most EVIL LAWLESS monarch —
USA
NY State
New York city ???
—
Each election is NEW – regardless of the SCOTUS HACK MORONS.
—
How many seconds before the NY Ct Apps [NY supreme court name] gets the Comm mess —
and ENDS the Cuomo LAWLESS monarch TYRANNY ???
see 1922 Italy – Mussolini
1933-1934 Germany Hitler
etc.
The requirement is 2% or 130,000 whichever is greater. In 2016, this would be about 155,000.
Working Families received about 140,000 votes in 2016. They received 115,000 in 2018 narrowly missing 2%.
The Cuomoission was tuning the threshold to exclude Working Families.
It would be more honest to set the threshold at Working Families vote x 110%.
The rationale for the the higher threshold was extremely pretextual.
The New York public financing scheme does not limit private funding of candidates who receive public funding. So you can dump as much money as you want into a race, and then go around and tell people that if they will donate up to $250, but no more that New York will provide a generous match (about 10 to 1)
Ah, that puts everything in quite a different perspective. I read about this recently elsewhere and my initial impression was that the complainants have no case, but if this change was not made directly through legislation then I think they have an open/shut case.
I agree with the Commission’s decision. The 50,000 vote threshold and determination of party status only once every four years is obsolete, but the legislature is the place to make the change.
When I see the name SAM Party of New York, it makes me think of the Son of Sam murders in New York City from years ago. Bad name for a political party, in my opinion. Even without the Son of Sam murders, it is still a dumb name for a party. It is almost as bad as American Shopping Party.