Using the Courts and the CFB Rules to Win Elections

Every year in an annual ritual, scores of candidates, many running for the first time are denied a chance to compete in the electoral process or have their campaign efforts severely harmed by the obstacles of ballot access. New York’s election law is among the most stringent in the nation. It poisons the democratic process and is kept in place by incumbents and a political machine which gain advantage by those that it harms. Sometimes more than half of a challenger’s time and resources (for those that make it through the petitioning process), are used up to get through the obstacles put in place to deny them ballot access. Many races are decided in the courts or by Campaign Finance Board (CFB) rules, not the ballot box. It not just the petitions system that machine-backed candidates use to block ballot access, the CFB rule which allows a candidate who challenges his opponent(s) petitions to receive matching funds, but not the candidate(s) he is challenging, has become a weapon to gravely weaken ones challenge(s).  read more »

For over five years, since the passage of the "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA), New York State has been behind schedule in doing anything. Today, we took a step forward.

Under a federal court ruling, the State Board of Elections (SBOE) was required to approve voting systems that would allow disabled voters to vote independently. From the list approved by the SBOE, county boards (and here the NYC Board of Elections) will pick a system. At least one disabled-accessible system must be in each polling place this fall.

Yesterday, the SBOE was supposed to meet to decide which system(s) to approve, but things didn't go smoothly. There are four Commissioners, two Democrats and two Republicans. The R's wanted to approve a machine by Liberty Voting that not only fails to meet NY state law but is also banned in Liberty's home country of The Netherlands. They refused to come into the meeting room at the start time of 11:00, and stayed out until 5:30 in the evening, at which point nothing got done.

Today, in Saratoga, the SBOE finally met and approved three systems, none of which is the Liberty system. All three involve paper ballots and optical scanners; none is a DRE.

And the winners are:  read more »