Stainton’s Signatures
News from they Stainton campaign: They did collect the needed 1,500 signatures to get on the ballot, but just barely. Those signatures will be subjected to intense scrutiny by Brooks and Minarik, who will attempt to disqualify as many as possible.
“Of course we’ll look at them,” Minarik said. “We look at everybody’s petitions.”
No doubt Brooks and Minarik will deploy a small army of Republicans to go over every single signature, and will challenge signatures based on the flimsiest of justifications. Or maybe they’ll object to the binding, or to the cover sheet of the petition. Welcome to the byzantine world of petition challenges, where potential candidates are put through a bureaucratic and legal wringer.
From a report from the NY Attorney General (Spitzer):
The rules have invited considerable administrative challenge, litigation, and cost to all concerned, without necessarily serving well the state interests in ballot clarity or administrative efficiency. No other state imposes such hurdles on ballot access.
Mayor Bloomberg summed it up nicely in ‘04, when he said:
“It’s become a whole cottage industry…you don’t have to beat the other guy based on positions or your ability to serve, all you gotta do is beat him because you got a better lawyer who can get him thrown off the ballot, I think it’s time to end this ‘gotcha’ kind of technique, where lawyers comb petitions to find some technical violation.”
Remember that one “bad” signature invalidates that whole sheet. (Anyone know for sure?) When we spoke to Stainton early in the campaign, he was aware of this, and stated that he was planning to record only four or five signatures per sheet. Let’s hope that his volunteers got the word.
If you’re a total geek, here’s the NY Election Law.
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the point of collecting signatures is to get eligible voters to get you on the ballot. it is hard work, but only because it is tedious. maybe an invalid signature should not disqualify other valid ones, but without this system the ballot could turn into a joke. people like anthony giordano show up at a festival and ask anyone to sign. this creates all sorts of issues. and usually you try to double the amount needed so that people like minarik don’t even bother to try to knock you off.
“anthony giordano show up at a festival and ask anyone to sign.”
I don’t see what the problem is with this.
Double check your info about a bad signature invalidating the whole sheet - I believe this is no longer the case. The only time a whole sheet gets thrown out is when the signature collector has made a mistake in signing the sheet.
That would be good news, and you’re right: I was going on memory about that.
Didn’t Stainton say that he would have a couple thousand signatures? What happened? Did he lie to RT? Or was he just being overly optimistic?
It is never easy collecting signatures.
But why would the Repos put any effort in stopping Stainton…what would they be afraid of? Does simply having a challenger scare the pants off Maggie and Minarik? Gee, the issues might get discussed…and they wouldn’t want that, would they?
They’ve always done the petition scrutinizing thing. To them, it’s a contest to see if they can break the number from the year before, and see how many they can knock out of the race. From what I’ve heard, it’s Minarik’s obsession.
It’s actually much harder than people anticipate/imagine to get signatures. I’m sure it wasn’t a lie, just an overestimate.
I had my own view of this at the Gates blog - a call for elction reform: http://www.democratandchronicle.com/blogs/gates/2007/08/ballot-access.html
For independent candidates, I would think the most worrisome aspect of this process (aside from trying to collect so many signatures) is the fact that Reps and Dems make the final call at the BOE, since only these two parties have commissioners. I’d like to think that the two parties would treat others fairly, but then again, there are reasons why we only have two major parties. Its for both sides to know who their competition will be.
“Its [nice] for…”
I guess I see both sides of the coin. From one perspective, I’ve seen some pretty questionable candidates arise from both major parties over the years. Besides, if a candidate stinks, will you vote for them? So, what are you worried about?
On the other hand, how do we handle 100 names on a ballot?
In California, to get on the ballot even for governor requires only 65 signatures. They seem to manage.