There was a hearing this afternoon at 1:30 PM before the New York City
Board of Elections.
All of my candidates were kicked off the ballot today because the
Subscribing Witnesses were not enrolled in the Republican Party.
However, they did not check the upstate registrations. They just checked
the New York City Voter Registrations.
Thus, if it can be established that enough of my subscribing witnesses were
registered Republicans in Upstate New York, I can file a court case within
three days to get back on the ballot.
The other proposed grounds for my proposed court case are that the
signature of the objector, Sal Caruso, is substantially different from his
signature on his voter registration card. I can file suit against him and
subpoena him into court. If he defaults and does not come or if he admits
that he did not sign the objections then I and my candidates are back on
the ballot.
The requirement that the subscribing witnesses must be in the same party as
the candidate is unreasonable and unconstitutional. With Republicans being
extremely rare in New York City it places an unreasonable burden on
outsider candidates that they must find only Republicans to circulate their
petitions.
A New York Daily News article says that the petitions for a rival
Republican candidate, John Burnett, were accidentally shredded by the Board
of Elections. He was allowed to reconstruct the shredded signatures and get
back on the ballot. In view of this, perhaps they shredded some of my
petition signatures too and we should be allowed on the ballot.
The basic rules are unfair because the deck is stacked in favor of the
insider candidates and outsiders such as my list of candidates find it
impossible to get on the ballot.
I will need to file a court case on these issues within three days and I
will need to hire a process server to serve Sal Caruso. In this situation,
objectors often go into hiding so that they cannot be served and I will
need to find out where he is.
Sam Slolan