On August 11, the New York Working Families Party nominated Joe Biden for president. This means he will be on the New York ballot twice, and voters can vote for him either as a Democrat or as a Working Families Party candidate.

In 2016, when the WFP nominated Hillary Clinton in New York, the party polled 139,840 votes for her, which was 1.83%.

The April 2020 new law on party status requires the greater of 130,000 votes, or 2%. So unless the new law is eventually declared unconstitutional, it is tough to predict whether the WFP can meet the new standard later this year.

On June 19, 2020, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo signed H7901. It lowers the number of signatures for all petitions (primary and general) for both houses of Congress, for 2020 only. This is old news but BAN had not previously reported it. The bill lowered U.S. Senate petitions from 1,000 to 500. It lowered U.S. House petitions from 500 to 250.

Despite the new lower requirements, for 2020 only, no Republican got on the ballot in U.S. House district one. No minor party candidates got on for any congressional race. Two independents for U.S. House in the First District did get on.

On September 11, the SAM Party, a ballot-qualified party in New York, asked the Second Circuit to expedite its lawsuit against the new definition of a qualified political party in New York. Here is the brief, which does not a great deal about the merits, but instead focuses on why the case should be expedited.

Because the party has no presidential candidate this year, it is obvious that it will go off the ballot in November 2020 unless it wins judicial relief. The new law, passed and signed April 3, 2020, requires a qualified party to poll the higher of 130,000 votes for president, or 2% of the total presidential vote. Under the old law, there was no vote test for party retention in presidential years.