One assertion from insurgents and the press about New York politics is that our hyper-technical election laws required candidates to get at least twice or three times the number of required signatures to get on the ballot.
That has never been my experience. While it’s obviously better to have more signatures than less, I’ve seen candidates removed after submitting petitions with more than 3 times the requirement and others stay on the ballot with much less than double.
I’m hopeful that this story about the Republican Primary contest for Putnam County Executive will get people to stop repeating the urban legend about how many signatures are really needed.
The insurgent candidate submitted 1,316 signatures when 1,000 were required and the Board of Elections kept her on the ballot!
http://www.lohud.com/article/20100803/NEWS01/8030323/Leibell-is-taking-Putnam-ballot-battle-to-court
State Sen. Vincent Leibell, R-Patterson, is headed to state Supreme Court
in a further effort to remove his Republican opponent for Putnam County executive from next month's primary ballot.
The county Board of Elections ruled last week that county Legislator Mary Ellen Odell, R-Carmel, had submitted enough valid signatures to remain on September's GOP ballot for county executive. Leibell argued that many of the signatures on her nominating petitions were false or invalid — contentions that will be continued Wednesday in Carmel in front of Justice Francis Nicolai.
Election officials last week determined that 228 of the 1,316 signatures were invalid — leaving Odell with slightly more than the needed 1,000 valid signatures. Leibell's campaign challenged about 500 of them in what Odell called "backroom legal maneuvering," claiming they were either duplicated, improperly signed or inadmissible as registered Republicans.