petition and boe watcher
08-15-2005, 12:03 PM
POLITICS & POWER
andidate frustrated with petition process
Rick Brand
Suffolk County Deck And Fence
Il Classico
Pool Mart
Katie Dalys
Gold Coast
Action Fitness
Crazy Dog
Smile Design Studio
Grover Home Headquarters
Long Island Opticians
August 15, 2005
When Islip town board member Christopher Bodkin thrice ran with Republican backing, he would collect 40 names on petitions and rely on the party committee to get thousands more to qualify for the November ballot.
Dumped by his own party, Bodkin this summer lost 10 pounds going door to door in sweltering heat to personally get 600 names. With friends, Bodkin got 4,407 signatures, double the 2,000 minimum needed to get on the primary ballot to keep his job.
But the Suffolk Board of Elections tossed him off the ballot and the grueling, and so far unsettled, gauntlet to get the courts to reinstate his petitions has left the veteran shaken.
"I thought the hard part would be getting the signatures," said Bodkin, because he opposes his party's efforts to alter the voter-approved term limits. "But this is far more upsetting."
Bodkin is not alone. More than three dozen courtroom battles are being played out in Nassau and Suffolk over election petitions. And in most cases, technicalities rather than substance rule. In Bodkin's case, three days of legal arguments centered not on the legitimacy of signatures, but whether his lawyer gave proper legal notice by taping court papers at his opponent's front door.
Experts, like Rachel Leon, executive director of New York Common Cause, call New York's ballot access laws "extremely archaic," designed to protect party-backed candidates and keep challengers off the ballot.
"Petitions should be simply a showing that a candidate has some level of support," she said. "But here it is a blatant means to keep people off the ballot rather than a standard you need to meet to get on."
Jeremy Creelan, of New York University law school's Brennan Center of Justice, agreed: "The requirements are nonsubstantive and meant to ensnare the nonprofessional candidate who cannot afford a good elections lawyer."
Backers maintain that petitions are intended to limit the field to candidates who can make a legitimate showing of support. They say mandating proper notice applies to everyone and is intended only to assure all sides get legal papers in time. Even critics say rules have loosened in the past decade. "It used to be be if you used the wrong color cover page it was rejected," said Leon.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) thought New York's elections laws were so bad that in 2000 he referred to Gov. George Pataki as "Comrade Pataki" and the state GOP "as the last vestiges of communism" when they tried, unsuccessfully, to deny him a place on the 2000 presidential primary ballot.
Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News, a San Francisco-based newsletter, said New York has the worst ballot laws, followed by Illinois and Pennsylvania.
Two-thirds of the states require no petitions, just a fee to assure that candidates are serious, he said. Others mandate just a handful of names with a system in which state officials check to see whether those who sign petitions are voters with no challenge process. Some combine the two.
In California, Winger said, candidates can run in district elections by gathering 40 signatures or 65 signatures for statewide office. Also required is a fee of 1 percent of the annual salary for a legislative office, 2 percent for a statewide post.
But what is most unsettling, Winger said, is that there seems to be so little interest in New York in changing its Byzantine system. "I'm struck by the resistance of people in power," he said, "It's [requiring fewer names or no petitions at all] the dominant system in the rest of the country; Canada does it and so do the British. But I get the impression that no one there even thinks about it."
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
andidate frustrated with petition process
Rick Brand
Suffolk County Deck And Fence
Il Classico
Pool Mart
Katie Dalys
Gold Coast
Action Fitness
Crazy Dog
Smile Design Studio
Grover Home Headquarters
Long Island Opticians
August 15, 2005
When Islip town board member Christopher Bodkin thrice ran with Republican backing, he would collect 40 names on petitions and rely on the party committee to get thousands more to qualify for the November ballot.
Dumped by his own party, Bodkin this summer lost 10 pounds going door to door in sweltering heat to personally get 600 names. With friends, Bodkin got 4,407 signatures, double the 2,000 minimum needed to get on the primary ballot to keep his job.
But the Suffolk Board of Elections tossed him off the ballot and the grueling, and so far unsettled, gauntlet to get the courts to reinstate his petitions has left the veteran shaken.
"I thought the hard part would be getting the signatures," said Bodkin, because he opposes his party's efforts to alter the voter-approved term limits. "But this is far more upsetting."
Bodkin is not alone. More than three dozen courtroom battles are being played out in Nassau and Suffolk over election petitions. And in most cases, technicalities rather than substance rule. In Bodkin's case, three days of legal arguments centered not on the legitimacy of signatures, but whether his lawyer gave proper legal notice by taping court papers at his opponent's front door.
Experts, like Rachel Leon, executive director of New York Common Cause, call New York's ballot access laws "extremely archaic," designed to protect party-backed candidates and keep challengers off the ballot.
"Petitions should be simply a showing that a candidate has some level of support," she said. "But here it is a blatant means to keep people off the ballot rather than a standard you need to meet to get on."
Jeremy Creelan, of New York University law school's Brennan Center of Justice, agreed: "The requirements are nonsubstantive and meant to ensnare the nonprofessional candidate who cannot afford a good elections lawyer."
Backers maintain that petitions are intended to limit the field to candidates who can make a legitimate showing of support. They say mandating proper notice applies to everyone and is intended only to assure all sides get legal papers in time. Even critics say rules have loosened in the past decade. "It used to be be if you used the wrong color cover page it was rejected," said Leon.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) thought New York's elections laws were so bad that in 2000 he referred to Gov. George Pataki as "Comrade Pataki" and the state GOP "as the last vestiges of communism" when they tried, unsuccessfully, to deny him a place on the 2000 presidential primary ballot.
Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News, a San Francisco-based newsletter, said New York has the worst ballot laws, followed by Illinois and Pennsylvania.
Two-thirds of the states require no petitions, just a fee to assure that candidates are serious, he said. Others mandate just a handful of names with a system in which state officials check to see whether those who sign petitions are voters with no challenge process. Some combine the two.
In California, Winger said, candidates can run in district elections by gathering 40 signatures or 65 signatures for statewide office. Also required is a fee of 1 percent of the annual salary for a legislative office, 2 percent for a statewide post.
But what is most unsettling, Winger said, is that there seems to be so little interest in New York in changing its Byzantine system. "I'm struck by the resistance of people in power," he said, "It's [requiring fewer names or no petitions at all] the dominant system in the rest of the country; Canada does it and so do the British. But I get the impression that no one there even thinks about it."
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.