They think that every vote should be counted for Democrats and nobody else.
Posted on 08/01/2020 6:29:59 PM PDT by TBP
In a rider passed in the last state budget, the legislature upped the ante for minor parties in New York. So, two of those minor parties, the Greens and the Libertarians, are suing.
In the past, to achieve ballot status, minor parties needed to earn 50,000 votes for their gubernatorial candidates. In other words, they needed 50,000 votes to qualify for the ballot every four years – rules that have been in place for decades.
The new rules are far more restrictive. They require that minor parties garner 130,000 votes or two percent of votes cast. Additionally, they demand that qualifications occur every two years, rather than four, at the gubernatorial and presidential elections.
The change was reportedly the brainchild of Jay Jacobs, chairman of the New York State Democratic Party, who was appointed to a commission to review parts of New York State’s election law by Governor Andrew Cuomo.
As the New York Times reported last year, Jacobs proposed quintupling the number of votes that a political party needs to guarantee a spot on the ballot, from 50,000 votes to 250,000.
When asked about the threshold changes, Jacobs told the Times the proposal was aimed at reducing voter confusion and rooting out corruption.
Some in the Working Families Party scoffed at that explanation, instead, arguing that the proposal was an effort by Governor Cuomo to shut down the more progressive wing of the Democratic party, represented by the WFP.
You may recall that the governor and the WFP have had a fraught relationship since 2014 when the governor promised party leaders that, in exchange for their endorsement, he would work to win a Democratic majority in the State Senate. That didn’t happen, setting off fireworks within the more progressive wing of the Party.
Four years later, when the WFP initially backed Cynthia Nixon against Cuomo in the primary, they essentially sealed their fate. After the election, the governor called for an end to fusion voting which allows candidates to run on multiple lines.
Politico reported in 2019 that after speaking with seven prominent people in state politics, all of them said the governor discussed wanting to undermine the WFP.
The governor’s spokespeople have denied any personal animus toward the party.
Personal or not, the creation of the Public Financing Commission after the 2018 election led to the ballot access constraints that the Greens and Libertarians are now taking to court.
Both parties filed a federal lawsuit today in the Southern District of New York to invalidate the new provisions. According to a press release, the complaint “alleges infringement upon First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to organize, identify, and vote for minor parties under the United States Constitution, and that the new voter and petitioning requirements are therefore unconstitutional.”
The Liberal Party lost ballot status in 2002 when its gubernatorial nominee abandoned the campaign and the party failed to get the required number of votes.
That candidate? Andrew Cuomo.
The new vote standard would leave only the Democrat, Republican, and Conservative Parties, eliminating five others, including the Working Families and Green Parties.
They wanted to eliminate cross-endorsement, too, but the legislature wouldn't go that far yet. Expect them to keep trying. All part of a plan to guarantee Democrat victories in EVERY election.
Can you change the qualifications months away from an election to prevent the inclusion of parties that otherwise would’ve qualified under the old standard?
Seems like the Rat Machine is trying to stop losing voters to International Green Party, CPUSA, Socialist Party, Workers World Party, Socialist Workers Party et al.
I’m thinking that most states have cross-endorsement?
WFP was Joe Crowley’s hope to stop AOC...he turned it down.
Yeah, and the rats are stupid enough to think that will win the hearts of those voters.
The dems must be desperately afraid of the results of this year’s election to be resorting to tactics such as this.
It tells us that all the media is telling us is lies and the dems know better what a precarious position they are in with voters.
Nothing that happens in New York matters anymore. Especially New York City and I live there. It will never vote Republican again and it is a lost cause. But I love Staten island and I love my neighborhood and I’m not moving for anybody or for any reason.
Like I said in another post I was driving around Staten island yesterday and I saw so many American flags outside.
This is my home. This is where I’m staying
Even a lot of Democrats are repulsed by DeBlasio and his criminal friends. I’m not sure a Giuliani-type Republican wouldn’t have a shot.
They think that every vote should be counted for Democrats and nobody else.
The WFP was stuck with Crowley, and vice versa. There are only three ways to get a candidate off the line: if the person moves out of state or dies, or is nominated for another office.
Crowley just refused to campaign, so he got a nominal vote total. Caruso-Cabrera will get a similarly nominal number of votes in November, as she’s on a couple of the minor-party lines.
Numerous states have cross-endorsement, or as it’s called, fusion, but only New York and two others hve what’s known as “disaggregated fusion,” which means that if you get more than one party’s endorsement (say, Republican and Conservative), your name appears separately on both lines (but the vote total is added together.)
The unofficial alliance between Italians and Orthodox Jews from Staten island and Brooklyn would not be enough to overcome the liberals anymore
The 1990s might as well have been a million years ago my FRiend
But I will pray you are right
Leftists always overplay their hand. It’s a matter of when.
The blue-collar outer-borough Democrats aren’t going to want to put another DeBlasio type in office.
De Blasio is a piece of garbage and he won by almost 40 or 50%. I hope you are right bur I would be very shocked
As Lindsay led to Koch, as Dinkins led to Giuliani...
A candidate who is seen as capable of restoring order should have a chance.
It must have been more common back in the day
(1896: Bryan ran on Democrat and Populist lines - as far as I could figure it was quite a few states).
Explanation from Wikipedia:
Electoral fusion was once widespread in the United States. In the late nineteenth century, however, as minor political parties such as the Populist Party became increasingly successful in using fusion, state legislatures enacted bans against it. One Republican Minnesota state legislator was clear about what his party was trying to do: “We don’t propose to allow the Democrats to make allies of the Populists, Prohibitionists, or any other party, and get up combination tickets against us. We can whip them single-handed, but don’t intend to fight all creation.”[3] The birth of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party made this particular tactical position obsolete. By 1907 the practice had been banned in 18 states; today, fusion as conventionally practiced remains legal in only eight states, namely:
California (Presidential elections only)
Connecticut
Delaware
Idaho
Mississippi
New York
Oregon
South Carolina
Vermont
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