* UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT*
* SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK*
* ________________________________________*
* Samuel H. Sloan, **15 CV 6963*
* Plaintiff,*
* COMPLAINT*
* -against-*
*Michael Michel, Jose Miguel Araujo, Ronald Castorina Jr., John Flateau,
Maria R. Guastella, Michael A. Rendino, Alan Schulkin, Simon Shamoun,
Gregory C. Soumas, Michael J. Ryan, Bianka Perez, Steven Howard Richman,
Jerry H. Goldfeder, Stanley Kalmon Schlein, Venancio Benny Catala, Daniel
Szalkiewicz, Stephen Edward Kitzinger, Douglas Arthur Kellner**, Kimberly
Galvin, Kathleen O'Keefe, Board of Elections in the City of New York, New
York State Board of Elections,*
* Defendants*
* _________________________________________*
*STATE OF NEW YORK :*
* : SS*
*COUNTY OF NEW YORK :*
*The plaintiff Samuel H. Sloan states:*
*1. **The plaintiff herein is filing a summons and complaint and is moving
by Order to Show Cause bringing a motion for an injunctive relief directing
Board of Elections in the City of New York to restore 11 candidates
including Sam Sloan for judicial delegate and one candidate for Civil Court
Judge back on the ballot for the Primary Election for Judicial Delegate on
September 10, 2015 as Democratic candidates for Judicial Delegate and Judge
and for an order declaring the entire Board of Elections to be an
unconstitutional and illegally formed body which therefore is declared
disbanded and null and void.** No prior application has been made in this
court for the relief requested herein.*
*2. The jurisdiction of this court and plaintiffs right to bring this
action are found under 42 U.S.C. S 1983, 1988 First Amendment right to
political association and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process and
equal protection of law.*
*THE PARTIES*
*3. Samuel H. Sloan, the plaintiff herein, was in 2014 a Candidate for US
Congress and later the same year was a candidate for Governor of the State
of New York. This year, in 2015, the plaintiff is one on a list of
candidates for Judicial Delegate for the primary to be held on September
10, 2015. Plaintiff is best known for winning a case in the United States
Supreme Court which he argued orally before that court which declared
securities trading suspensions by the United States Securities and Exchange
Commission to be illegal, invalid and null and void. SEC v. Samuel H.
Sloan, 436 US 103 (1978)**. Plaintiff is a book publisher who has written
or published more than 650 books and for playing at the World Championship
level Chinese chess, Japanese chess and other chess-type games. Plaintiff
resides at 1664 Davidson Ave., Apt. 1B, Bronx NY 10453, tel. 917-659-3397
and 917-507-7226, email: samhsloan@gmail.com <samhsloan@gmail.com> *
*4. Michael Michel, Jose Miguel Araujo, Ronald Castorina Jr., John Flateau,
Maria R. Guastella, Michael A. Rendino, Alan Schulkin and Simon Shamoun are
Commissioners in the Board of Elections in the City of New York. Michael J.
Ryan is Executive Director, Bianka Perez is Secretary and Steven Howard
Richman is General Counsel of the Board of Elections in the City of New
York. Gregory C. Soumas is a former commissioner who resigned under fire
last year.*
*5. Jerry H. Goldfeder, Stanley Kalmon Schlein and Daniel Szalkiewicz are
attorneys whose legal practice consists of supporting the insider approved
candidates and keeping them on the ballot while throwing the non-approved
non-insider candidates off the ballot. Jerry H. Goldfeder resides at 360
Central Park West, New York NY 10025. His law office is STROOCK & STROOCK
& LAVAN, 180 Maiden Lane, NEW YORK, NY 10038-4925, Stanley Kalmon Schlein
resides at 481 King Ave, Bronx, NY 10464-1228, Daniel Szalkiewicz resides
at 280 Riverside Drive, New York NY 10025. Mr. Stanley Schlein is known as
being the most powerful power broker in New York if not the USA. He has
advised important people like the Clintons and has been instrumental in
getting them elected by having all their opponents ruled off the ballot.
The New York Times says about him, “For years he has been a vital cog in
the Bronx Democratic machine, defending incumbents and knocking insurgents
from the ballot in the merciless tradition of city politics.” See The New
York Times for July 26, 2005 “Bronx Lawyer Is a Power Behind Several
Thrones”*
*6. Venancio Benny Catala is a former district leader of the Bronx
Democratic Party County Committee and serves as a nominal “objector” to
knock off all not approved candidates from the ballot. Catala resides at
316 E. 164th St., Bronx NY 10456.*
*7. Stephen Edward Kitzinger is an attorney with the New York Department of
Law who conspires with the above named defendants to knock off the ballot
all would-be candidates who are not approved by the insider controlling
group thereby insuring that few primary elections are ever held as only the
insiders can get on the ballot.*
*8. Douglas Arthur Kellner is Chairman of the New York State Board of
Elections. His office is at 470 Park Ave South STE 7N, NEW YORK, NY
10016-6819.*
*9. Kimberly Galvin is the Republican Party representative on the NEW YORK
STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS at 40 Steuben St., Suite 5, Albany, NY 12207-2108.
Kathleen O'Keefe is the Democratic Party representative on the New York
State Board of Elections. Their jobs are to ensure that only the insider
approved candidates get on the ballot and thus the outsider candidates such
as the plaintiff here never get a fair chance to contest the elections in
New York State. Their address is 40 N. Pearl St., SUITE 5, ALBANY, NY
12207-2729*
*The Facts*
*10. Petitions were duly filed on July 8, 2015 nominating Sam Sloan and 10
other candidates for Judicial Delegate and one candidate for New York Civil
Court Judge. A copy of that petition is annexed hereto. However, even
before any notices had been sent to the candidates or to their vacancy
committee or any hearings had been held, these 12 candidates had been ruled
off the ballot by Defendant Steven H. Richman. On July 23, 2015, upon
learning that all 12 candidates had been thrown off the ballot even though
hearings had not yet been scheduled for another week, Plaintiff-Petitioner
filed a Petition to Validate in the New York Supreme Court. This all
happened because the above named defendants are engaged in a massive
conspiracy so as to make it impossible for practical purposes for any
outsider non-approved candidate to get on the ballot to contest the choices
of the insider established and incumbent candidates and because they are
targeting Sam Sloan even though he was just one of 12 candidates on the
list. The defendants have implemented starting in 2014 what they call “The
Sloan Rule” under which the Board of Elections can browse the petitions
filed by any candidate and search for defects in the petition and since
invariably every petition contains a defect somewhere they can just throw
that candidate off the ballot even though no specific objections have been
filed. In this latest petitioning period, at least two other slates of
candidates had their petitions thrown out under this “Sloan Rule”. The
Board of Elections makes the assertion that it need not follow New York
Election Law by citing a case this same petitioner lost last year: Sam
Sloan vs. Kellner, Appellate Division, Third Department, decided August 21,
2014, **Sloan v. Kellner**, 120 AD3d 895 (3d Dept. 2014).** What is going
on here is the Board of Elections is doing a line-by-line objection when no
proper objection by a voter has been filed. The Board of Elections is not
itself allowed to do line by line objections. They are required to act only
of a voter makes objections and as there were none made here the candidates
must be reinstated. *
*11. The plaintiff's First Amendment constitutional right will suffer
irreparable harm if the candidates including himself are not restored to
the ballot.*
*12. There is a likelihood of success on the merits for the plaintiff to
put these candidates back on the ballot so these voters can exercise their
constitutional rights to vote for a candidate of their choice.*
*13. The primary election is to be held on September 10, 2015, so the
plaintiff is moving for injunction relief because of the short time in
question for them to seek their protected rights under the United States
Constitution.*
*14. If the election were to go forward without the relief requested, this
would be an irreparable damage to plaintiffs' constitutional First
Amendment right to vote and upon information and belief, the Democratic
voters would have no choice in their primary. It is well known fact that
the winner of the Democratic Primary in this District will have the power
to appoint a judge of the New York State Supreme Court and civil courts.*
*15. The right for a candidate to appear on the ballot is integral to the
right to vote and is a right protected by the united states constitution.*
*16. Plaintiff has no plain or adequate remedy in any other court and
timely relief can be obtained by plaintiff only through the granting of
Writ of Mandamus by this court.*
*17. Incorporating herein as evidence is the youtube video of the of 2014
and 2015 proceedings linked at
http://www.elections.ny.gov/2014Meetings.html
<http://www.elections.ny.gov/2014Meetings.html> which shows that the Board
of Elections clearly violate the due process clause of the 14th amendment.*
*18. It is clear from the videos of the 2014 and 2015 meetings that it was
not on the calender to remove these candidates from the ballot and these
names were not on the list of names read by the Commissioners of candidates
to be removed from the ballot.*
*19. There was never any objections of specifications filed in either 2014
and 2015 against Sam Sloan and required by NY election law 16-102 and 6-154
which states “the written objection to such petition may be filed within
three days after the filing of such party certificate or the making of such
party nomination. When such an objection is filed, specifications of the
grounds of the objections shall be filed within six days thereafter with
the same officer or board and if specifications are not timely filed, the
objection shall be null and void.”*
*20. The videos illustrate that there was no witness at the hearing as
requited by NY state evidence law as to the insufficiency of the petitions.
The Board of Elections never even reviewed the petitions.*
*21. On July 8, 2014, four volumes of petitions were filed nominating Sam
Sloan as a Democratic candidate for Governor of New York State in the
Democratic Primary to be held on September 9, 2014.*
*22 These petitions had four volumes. **Volume 1 starts with page One and
ends with page 807. Volume 2 starts with page 1 and ends with page 659.
Volume 3 starts on page 1 and ends on page 1197. Volume 4 starts on page 1
and ends on page 1402. Thus there are 807 + 659+ 1197 + 1402 or a total of
4065 page numbers on the petition.*
*23. These petitions were marked valid as appeared on the Board of
Elections website at
http://www.elections.ny.gov:8080/reports/rwservlet?cmdkey=whofiled
<http://www.elections.ny.gov:8080/reports/rwservlet?cmdkey=whofiled>*
*24. **However, on August 4, 2014, nearly one month later, the Board of
Elections changed them from valid to invalid. The Board of Elections did
NOT throw these candidates off because of objections and they were not on
the list of candidates read by Commissioner Kellner at the meeting on
August 1, 2014 who were thrown off because of objections. Rather, Sam Sloan
was thrown off the ballot without any legal basis at the oral request of
Kimberly Galvin, the Republican Party Counsel on the Board of Elections.*
*25. Board of Elections did not have a right to review of the petitions
because they had the appearance of validity and there were no specific
objections.*
*26. In July 2015, Defendant Stanley Schlein filed or attempted to file
so-called specific objections against a list of 12 candidates one of which
was Sam Sloan. The named objector was Defendant Venancio (Benny) Catala.
These so-called specific objections were not sufficiently specific in that
they were not line-by-line objections and lacked the specificity necessary
to review them. They did not state how many signatures the plaintiff had
nor how many were required. As a result, CRU or Candidates Record Unit of
the New York City Board of Elections ruled that no specific objections had
been filed. A copy of this obviously invalid “Specific Objection” is
annexed hereto.*
*27. Because no specific objections had been filed the CRU did not direct
the Bronx Board of Elections to produce a Clerk's Report. The Clerk's
Report is normally done to help determine the validity of the specific
objections. After the clerk's report is prepared the candidates are given a
copy and they can agree or disagree with the clerk's report. However, in
this case, because there were no specific objections there was no clerk's
report.*
*28. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that no clerk's report exists,
defendant Stephen Edward Kitzinger stated in verbal non-written statements
to the New York Supreme Court and to the Appellate Division that there was
a clerk's report showing only 431 valid signatures. In fact, no such
document exists. It is a figment of the imagination. The number of 431
signatures is a purely hypothetical or invented number they came up with.
Plaintiff has repeatedly demanded production of this supposed clerk's
report and none has been produced. Plaintiff has also search the records of
the Bronx Board of Elections and has questioned the staff of the Bronx
Board of Elections and they are unaware of the existence of any clerk's
report.*
*29. In spite of the fact that no valid specific objections were ever
filed, Stanley Kalmon Schlein was on July 28, 2015 twice allowed to address
the Commissioners of Election to have Sloan and the other candidates thrown
off the ballot. It is well established that under the law of the State of
New York including Section 16-102 of Election Law if a candidate files
facially valid petitions and there are no objections filed then the
candidate goes on the ballot. There are specific rules about objections in
Section 6–154 such as that General Objections must be filed within three
days and Specific Objections must be filed within six days more.*
*30. Here there were no specific objections filed that complied with the
rules of the Board of Elections in the City of New York and with State Law
in that the so-called specific objections did not specify the number of
signatures on the petition, the number of valid signatures, the number of
invalid signatures and the number required for a valid petition.*
*31. The so-called “Specific** Objections” were obviously not in compliance
with New York Election Law. The so-called “objections” are exactly one
sentence long. It states, “The number of signatures in the totality of this
petition is less than the 500 signatures that is required for the
designation of the candidates for this Party position as set forth on the
schedule of respondents”. In the box for “Number of Signatures” it puts ?
In the Box for Number of Invalid Signatures on Petition it puts N/A.*
*32. For this reason, the staff of the CRU or Candidates Record Unit of the
New York City Board of Elections informed Petitioner Sam Sloan that no
specific objections had been filed. Plaintiff was informed of this several
times by Matt Graves, by Jimmy and by William all of whom are clerks in the
Board of Elections in the City of New York. Petitioner was informed by the
CRU of the Board of Elections that no Specific Objections had been filed by
Benny Catala or by anybody else for that matter.*
*33. However, a youtube video appeared entitled *
*7-9-15 Coversheet Review*
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Inc-fqTl-lA
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Inc-fqTl-lA>*
*It starts at 13:09 and continues at 14:20*
*34. This video shows Steve Richman, General Counsel of the New York City
Board of Elections leafing through pages of the 200 plus page petition at
15:11 and ends at 17:40*
*35. It was obvious here that Steve Richman is not doing a cover sheet
review. He is doing a general search of the petition. This is not allowed.
His compatriot even says at one point there is no problem with the cover
sheet. It is with the content of the petition.*
*36. Seeing this obviously improper activity taking place, petitioner
rushed down to the courthouse to file this petition to validate even though
he had not yet been informed that he was off the ballot.*
*37. Opposing Counsel Representing the Board of Elections states in his
brief and stated several times at the hearing that there was a Clerk's
Report filed with the board stating that there were less than the number of
required signatures. This was not true. There was no clerk's report. The
reason there was no clerk's report is that the clerk's report is produced
after great labor by the Board of Elections staff in which it compares the
specific objections with the petition. However, if there is no specific
objections in the required format then no clerk's report is prepared. That
was the case here. *
*38. **In 2014, Plaintiff Sam Sloan attempted to run for US Congress
against incumbent Congressman Jose Serrano. Because Congressman Serrano was
out of favor with Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., Congressman
Serrano, a 20-year incumbent, had to collect his own signatures. The result
was almost none of his signatures were valid for reasons such as not
registered to vote, bad address, illegible signature, same handwriting and
obvious forgery. Congressman had no where near to the required number of
signatures.*
*39. When this matter came to a hearing before the New York City Board of
Elections, Serrano was represented by Jerry Goldfeder, author of
Goldfeder's Modern Election Law.*
*40. What happened can be seen on youtube.com <http://youtube.com> at by
searching for “4-24-14 Designating petition hearing for the June Federal
Primary” which reaches the youtube video at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3fSC2xtGNM
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3fSC2xtGNM> or more easily by searching
https://www.youtube.com/user/VoteTheNewWayNYC
<https://www.youtube.com/user/VoteTheNewWayNYC>*
*41. When this case was called, both Jerry Goldfeder and Sam Sloan stood
up. Then, Board of Elections General Counsel Steven H. Richman objected to
Sloan speaking even though Sloan was the aggrieved candidate and thus had
the right to speak. Then Goldfeder stated that Sloan's objections had not
been served on Serrano but had been served on Goldfeder instead and Serrano
himself had been served one day late. Sloan replied that the objector had
called Goldfeder pointing out that Serrano was in Washington DC on that day
attending a Congressional hearing on Internet security and thus could not
be personally served. To this, Goldfeder had replied to the objector to
serve him instead at Goldfeder's residence on 360 Central Park West.*
*42. At the hearing before the New York City Board of Elections, Goldfeder
started to reply with the words, “I did have a conversation with him but I
can say ... ” He was addressing the statement that the Objector, Mr. Vega,
had called him and asked about the address for service of process of the
objections and that Mr. Goldfeder had given his own home address as the
place for service. Just at the moment that Jerry H. Goldfeder was
addressing that question, the President of the Board, Gregory C. Soumas,
interrupted Goldfeder saying “Nothing has been said” and thus Mr. Goldfeder
was not allowed to complete his sentence. All this can be heard at 6:01 on
the youtube.com <http://youtube.com> video. These hearings are now required
by law to be posted on youtube.com <http://youtube.com> and therefore it is
proper to cite them.*
*43. It can be clearly seen on the youtube video that at just the moment
Goldfeder was going to reply to the question of whether he had agreed to
accept service of the line-by-line objections against his client Serrano,
the President of the Board of Elections interrupted him and told him not to
speak and ruled in his favor.*
*44. So, one of the best known election lawyers Jerry Goldfeder was
interrupted from speaking so that he would not have to admit that he had
agreed to accept service.*
*45. Had Serrano not been favored by the Commissioners, then Goldfeder
would have had to admit that he had agreed to accept service and since
Congressman Serrano had almost no valid signatures he would have been
thrown off the ballot and Sloan would have been the sole Democratic Party
candidate. Since the Democrats always win in the Bronx and the Republicans
do not even bother to run candidates, Sloan would have been elected to US
Congress. This is an example of how improper and illegal actions by the
Board of Elections caused a candidate to be elected to US Congress who
would not otherwise have been elected.*
*46. In 2013, plaintiff attempted to run for Mayor of New York City as a
Republican. Plaintiff collected more than enough signatures. Objections
were filed by attorney and defendant Daniel Szalkiewicz. The objections
were purportedly signed by one Caruso, an elderly man in the most remote
section of the Bronx. However, the signatures were obvious forgeries. It
was obvious that the forger was Daniel Szalkiewicz. Other than the first
letter of each name there was no similarity between the signature on the
objections and the signatures on the buff cards filed with the Board of
Elections. Caruso was never produced. Nobody has ever seen this man.
Nevertheless, on July 31, 2013, all of these candidates were thrown off the
ballot after a hearing by the New York City Board of Elections.*
*47. Here the so-called Objections by Stanley Kalmon Schlein is discussed
on the youtube video which can be seen by searching for*
*7-28-15 commissioners' hearings - Queens and Bronx*
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Qlw-G0lOc
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Qlw-G0lOc>*
*The discussion starts at 1:07:00 and ends at 1:09:59*
*48. The Board clerk says at 1:07:34 in the video "there was no line by
line objection submitted the Bronx Borough Office Staff Counted.”*
*49. The rule in New York State has long been that the boards of elections
do not count the signatures. It is up to the objectors to count the
signatures. The objectors normally submit a page by page tabulation of
objections showing how many signatures appeared on each page and which are
valid or not. The specific objections are usually thick, about 50 to 200
pages long. Then, having that been done, the clerk goes to work and issues
a clerk's report. The clerk's report is provided to the candidate and to
the objector. They then argue over whether this or that signature is valid
or invalid. If they are not able to agree, then the matter is submitted to
the board and they vote and after that it may or not go to the courts.*
*50. That is what happened in all the other cases heard that day of July
28, 2015. In one case, the clerk had found 497 valid signatures, three less
than the 500 that was required. However, the candidates pointed out three
other valid signatures. The board then voted and by a vote of 7-2 the
Commissioners gave the candidate two more signatures, still leaving one
short. However, the objector conceded one more signature so he could file
against them in court.*
*51. This is the way it is supposed to happen. However, in the case
presented here the board took a short cut and without specific objections
being filed straight away started counting signatures and did not notify
the candidates or their vacancy committee of the results of their count.
This is why in the youtube video shows Mr. Sloan at 1:07;20 being befuddled
and not knowing what is going on because his name and the names of the
other candidates had not been called he had never been notified of any
specific objection or any count taking place or the results of that count.*
*52. What is going here is the Board of Elections is trying to make a new
law or a new legal rule. They are trying to say that the Board of Elections
has the inherent power to search through any petition that has been filed
and search for mistakes and defects. If it finds mistakes it can rule the
candidate off the ballot even if no specific objections have been filed.
Thus, the Board claims it need not follow a provision of election law. **Here
is what that provision states:*
*6–154.*
*Nominations and designations; objections to*
*1. **Any petition filed with the officer or board charged with the
duty of receiving it shall be presumptively valid if it is in proper form
and appears to bear the requisite number of signatures, authenticated in a
manner prescribed by this chapter.*
*53. The Board of Elections makes the assertion that it need not follow New
York Election Law by citing a case this same petitioner lost last year: Sam
Sloan vs. Kellner, Appellate Division, Third Department, decided August 21,
2014, **Sloan v. Kellner**, 120 AD3d 895 (3d Dept. 2014). **Since the
appellant was involved, here is what happened:*
*54. Petitions were filed nominating Sam Sloan for Governor and other
candidates for Lieutenant Governor, Comptroller and Attorney General.*
*55. No objections were filed as to Sam Sloan for Governor and as to the
candidate for Lieutenant Governor. It became apparent that the incumbent
governor, Andrew Cuomo, did not have one of his minions object because he
wanted a weak candidate he felt he could easily beat running against him,
and this would also split the other outsider candidates.*
*56. However, general objections were filed against Geeta Rankoth solely on
account of her age and against Neil Grimaldi for Attorney General.*
*57. Neil Grimaldi, seeing that the Republican candidate for attorney
general had filed objections against him, decided to withdraw. However,
later the Republican candidate for attorney general withdrew his
objections, so Grimaldi decided to reinstate his candidacy. However, the
court ruled it was too late to get back in the race.*
*58. All this time, there was no objections to Sloan. However, at the
meeting of the New York State Board of Elections, Kimberly Galvin, the
Republican Party representative on the Board of Elections, moved that all
the Sloan candidates be removed from the ballot. This was accepted without
any discussion by the board. Mr. Grimaldi, who certainly would have
objected had he been present, could not be there that day because he was in
the Bronx Supreme Court that day representing paying clients all of whom
were being thrown off the ballot by Stanley Kalmon Schlein, the same
objector here.*
*59. On appeal, Sloan, who was represented by Grimaldi, and Grimaldi also
represented himself, stated that since there were no objections as to
Sloan, he should be on the ballot. The Board of Elections stated that in
reviewing the objections to Grimaldi they had found that there were less
than 15,000 signatures, even though those objections had been withdrawn.
Thus, all the candidates named on that petition were off the ballot even
though there had been no objections to the other candidates.*
*60. Also, the Third Department apparently decided that even though no
specific line-by-line objections had been filed, the petitioner had to name
the objectors in his petition even though they had only filed general
objections, not specific objections.*
*61. Appellants asked for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals. At the
Court of Appeals, instead of arguing the case, Mr. Grimaldi spent his whole
time before two judges of that court telling jokes and talking about the
time he tried to run for District Attorney four years ago. He never once
mentioned the case before that court where he was supposed to be
representing clients as well as himself. In view of his insulting behavior
before that court, naturally his application was denied. Mr. Grimaldi has
since been arrested on unrelated charges and evicted from his home-office.
His bar registration has been delinquent for several years as he has not
paid his fees. Few of his former clients will be asking him to represent
them in the future.*
*62. What has happened here is without any objections being filed, neither
specific nor general, the staff of the Board of Elections apparently
decided to count the signatures. They claim that any time anybody claims
that there are not enough signatures, they must start counting the
signatures, not validating the signatures. However, that cannot be the rule
because if it was the rule then everybody would claim that their opponent
did not have enough signatures, putting the staff of the Board of Elections
to the task of counting all the signatures. The attorney for the Board of
Elections has said that any time an objector alleges that there is an
insufficient number of signatures, then the Board of Elections must count
the signatures. **However, this is not the rule. The rule is a candidate
cannot be kicked off the ballot for insufficient signatures unless someone
has filed specific objections to the number of signatures. There are a
number of cases that support this. The rule is the Objector must count the
signatures and inform the board of elections how many signatures there are.
Then the Candidate can do his own count and the matter will be resolved at
a hearing. In any event the Board of Elections never does any counting. **If
it were otherwise, then every objector would routinely allege that the
number of signatures is insufficient, requiring the Board of Elections and
the tax payers to do all the work.*
*63. Another issue concerns the claim that the cover sheet was attached to
the petition in violation of the rule of New York City that the cover sheet
may NOT be attached to the petition. Mr. Kitzinger did not raise this issue
when appearing before the Supreme Court and this issue was not raised in
the hearing on July 28, 2015 before the Board of Elections either, but he
brought it up in the appeal before the Appellate Division First Department
so it needs to be addressed here.*
*64. The Rule of New York State is that the Cover Sheet MUST be attached to
the petitions. However, the rule of New York City is the opposite and the
cover sheet may not be attached to the petitions.*
*65. Since Miss Quinones had in the previous year filed with New York State
in Albany and did not know about this special rule in New York City, she
naturally bound the cover sheets to the petition in secure velo binding.
However, when Jimmy, the Clerk for the Board of Elections at 32 Broadway,
pointed out the error, she immediately pulled out a complete duplicate set
of cover sheets, signed them and submitted them too, so two complete sets
of identical cover sheets were received at the same time. *
*66. Petitioner believes that this is the reason why this question about
the cover sheets was not brought up at the hearing before the Commissioners
on July 28. Probably the commission staff did not tell Mr. Kitzinger about
the second set of cover sheets.*
*67. Another issue concerns page numbering. Here Stanley Schlein said, "I
am getting to that I am getting your work done for you. The pagination of
that petition was to say the least bizarre it went from 2, 4, 6, 8, 27, 93,
it was like the secret code from the CIA and it was within that pagination
issue that notification was sent out and no response to that notification
occurred thereby mandating its placement on the prima facie.”*
*68. Commissioner Umane responds, "That would be a legitimate reason for
being there ..."*
*69. Again Stanley Schlein interrupts him saying, "Well I was jumping to
answer your question."*
*70. Now, Steve Richman starts speaking saying that page numbering is
mandated by statute and they had to check all the pages to see which ones
were out of order. *
*71. All this was improper. Stanley Schlein did not object on the ground of
page numbering. His only objection was one sentence long and all said was
there were not enough signatures. He should not have been permitted to
bring up other issues not raised previously. He is one of the most
experienced litigators in Board of Elections cases and has made his career
from knocking candidates off the ballot, so he knows the rules.*
*72. Secondly, he is wrong on the facts. The petition pages were all
numbered in sequence. They went 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 20, 20, 22, 24,
26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, etc.*
*73. It is true that there was a mistake in that number 16 was missing and
there were two pages numbered 20 but such a trivial error has never been
enough to throw a two hundred page petition off the ballot thereby negating
the hundreds of hours it took to collect those signatures.*
*74. On this point, Commissioner Frederic Umane, the almost only
commissioner with experience because all the other commissioners are new
this year, said **at the hearing on July 28 at 34:35:*
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Qlw-G0lOc
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Qlw-G0lOc>*
*"I am a little surprised to see this on the prima facie calender for
technical defects. If there were not enough signatures normally what we
would do is wait for someone to file an objection. This is not something we
would not do ordinarily including in a prima facie something that don't
have the number of signatures on them for a prima facie defect as long as
there were signatures filed for that and as for the weight test you don't
normally get into these technical details, you wait for an objection, so
although Mr. Sloan seems to have joined the Dark Side Petitioner am just
curious why we are seeing this on prima facie."*
*75. Here Stanley Schlein interrupts Commissioner Umane from speaking and
says:*
*"I can elaborate since Mr. Richman is a little slow on the uptake here
today the case was ..."*
*76. **This case unless overturned by this court overthrows a large body
of election law and practice because the Board of Elections citing the
decision last year in what they call the Sloan case **Sloan v. Kellner**,
120 AD3d 895 (3d Dept. 2014)** claims the right to browse the election
petitions and if it finds some defect to throw a petition off the ballot
without any notice or opportunity for a hearing. This gives the board the
discretionary authority to put anybody on the ballot it likes, such as the
candidates of Mr. Schlein, and to throw anybody off the ballot it dislikes,
such as the 12 candidates on the petition here. This cannot be allowed.*
*77. At the different hearings that can be played on youtube the
Commissioners and the General Counsel repeatedly show bias against the
Plaintiff and against other outsider candidates and in favor of the insider
candidates represented by Stanley Schlein. In the Cover Sheet Review of
July 9, 2015, Steve Richman says at 15:45 "The person who filed this is Mr.
Sam Sloan has a habit of litigating against the board on the ground that we
usually discriminate against him and that we single him out for special
treatment". Actually, plaintiff did not file the petition and was not even
in New York. Plaintiff was just one of the candidates on the list. The fact
that Richman keeps mentioning Plaintiff's name shows the prejudicial
attitude of the board. Then Richman did not have the prima facie notices
sent either to Sloan or the head of the vacancy committee as is normal but
had them sent to a homeless shelter at 1921 Jerome Avenue known as "Susan's
Place" with more than 200 residents, by waiving the signature requirement
the Board of Elections has made it impossible to determine who received
this NSN notice or what happened to it. It would have been better to serve
it both by regular and certified mail or to serve the head of the Vacancy
Committee who is a well known elections personality who maintains an office
on Tremont Avenue. Then at the different hearings, every time Sloan tries
to speak Richman yells at him saying things such as, “You are not allowed
to speak”, “Are you a member of the bar?”, “You are already off the ballot
and cannot appear”, whereas Richman is simply general counsel to the board
and has no right to speak unless a member of the board asks him to. It can
be seen by playing the youtube video that Mr. Stanley Schlein repeatedly
interrupts the commissioners while they are speaking and fights with Steve
Richman over several issues. Every time Commissioner Umane is saying
something in Plaintiff's favor, and there are several instances of this,
Stanley Schlein interrupts him and does not allow him to continue. Most
importantly, when the board is being polled to see whether these candidates
get on the ballot or not, Stanley Schlein interrupts and we cannot hear the
vote. At 55:50 Steve Richman arrives at a case where the clients
represented by Stanley Schlein were thrown off the ballot for reasons
including that the petitions were modified with stickers after the
signatures had been collected. Here Steve Richman says that many of these
petitions do contain stickers but the objector, Egidio Sementelli (the same
person who is on the vacancy committee in the case before this court) does
not allege "with particularity" how these stickers were attached to the
petitions and thus the objections to them were invalid.** Here it is
obvious that Mr. Schlein and the board is showing favoritism to Mr. Schlein
as when a sticker is attached to a petition with no way to determine
whether the sticker was attached before or after the witness signed it is
obviously invalid. Steve Richman's statement that the Board would not
normally rule on this type of allegation is simply not true. It is just
plain common sense that the stickers that were attached changing the
addresses of the candidates must have been attached after the petitions
were signed because otherwise the petitions would simply have been
reprinted with the correct address on them. Thus the petitions submitted by
Stanley Kalmon Schlein were obviously invalid and yet the board passed
them.*
*78. The Supreme Court Judge Carter said that he could decide this case
without viewing the youtube videos. This itself is reversible error as
Petitioner insisted that the two videos be watched. The videos are now
required to be kept and if he had viewed them he would have realized that
his decision was wrong in several respects.*
*79. Counsel for the Board of Elections claims that this case was moot
because Petitioners did not get a second index number and file a new second
case against the hearings before the Commissioners of Election and serve a
new order to show cause. However, this cannot be the rule because the
hearing before the Commissioners of Election concluded on July 29, 2015 and
Petitioner would have three days after that to serve a new order to show
cause, so the date for service would have been Monday, August 3, 2015 at
12:00 midnight. However, by then the objector had already intervened and
appeared in this case. It would have been ridiculous to send a process
server out to the remote area of City Island in an attempt to serve him
when he was already in court at a hearing before Judge Carter. *
*80. Petitioners contend that this case should be set for a fact hearing.
Petitioners will show that for years the Board of Elections has been
abusing its authority by throwing perfectly qualified candidates off the
ballot. Because the Commissioners of Elections are appointed by the
Democratic and Republican Party State and County Chairmen, who are not
elected officials, these party bosses have a vested interest in protecting
their favored candidates and preventing any insurgents from within the
party such as the candidates here or from outside from getting on the
ballot.*
*81. Petitioner spent seven years fighting cases against the United States
Securities and Exchange Commission and lost many times but then finally won
The Armageddon, the decisive battle before the United States Supreme Court.
SEC vs. Samuel H. Sloan, 436 US 103 (1978)*
*82. Plaintiff contends that under many court decisions including The **Board
of Estimates vs. Morris**, 489 US 688 (1988)** the entire set-up is
unconstitutional. The standard is “one man one vote“ and is the
established law of the nation, **Gray v. Sanders, **372 U.S. 368
(1963)**, **Reynolds
v Sims,** 377 U.S. 533 (1964)**; **Baker v. Carr, **369 U.S. 186
(1962)**; **Gaffney
v. Cummings, **412 U.S. 735 (1973)**; **Seaman v. Fedourich**, 16 NY 2d 94**;
**Moore v. Ogilvie,** 394 U.S. 814 (1969)*
*83. The **Board of Estimates vs. Morris**, 489 US 688 (1988)** governs
this case rather than the much earlier decision of **Sailors et al vs.
Board of Education of Kent et al**, 387 US 105 (1967)** because the New
York State Board of Elections is much more similar to the Board of
Estimates of the City of New York and the fact is that the Board of
Estimates case is later.*
*84. Petitioner contends that the New York State Board of Elections is an
Unconstitutional Body and this case best demonstrates why it is
unconstitutional. The New York State Board of Elections consists of four
Commissioners. Two are appointed by the State Democratic Party Chairman and
the other two are appointed by the State Republican Party Chairman.*
*85. Where are the attorneys for the Green, Conservative, Working Families
and Independence parties? Why cannot the millions of voters with no party
affiliation be allowed to have some say in who is allowed to run for
election?*
*86. The New York State Board of Elections violated the equal protection
clause and One Man One Vote of the Constitution as clearly specified by the
US Supreme court in Baker vs. Carr, 361 US 186, Reynolds vs. Sims, 377 US
533, Board of Estimate of City of New York v. Morris 489 U.S. 688 (1988),
Avery v. Midland County, 390 U.S. 474 (1968)*
*87. By being selective as it is has the same basic constitutional
violations as the basis of the board of estimates because one voter in
Richmond county has same leverage as a voter in Kings County.*
*88. The New York State Board of Elections gives equal weight pursuant to
Republican Party and Democratic Party voters although there are more
hundreds of thousands more Democrats than Republics and violates the
constitution not giving to representatives of millions of voters in groups
not in existence when state constitution was written giving candidates who
got over 50,000 votes party status. Also, more non party voters should have
more status than Republicans.*
*89. All this violates one man one vote*
*90. Board of Elections operates in basic violation of democratic process
in that New York City election inspectors are chosen by the board in a
prejudicial way because of their party statue which insures that they are
prejudiced. They are expected to vote for the candidates selected by the
Republican or Democratic chairman making it virtually impossible for a non
selected person to win an election. This violates fundamental fairness and
the constitution.*
*91. This case fundamentally violates the rights to those who signed
petitions for the slate of candidates by the way the board of elections has
operated as aforementioned.*
*92. Because the Board of Elections composition is intrinsically violative
of the United States Constitution Equal Protection Clause and One Man One
Vote it should be held unconstitutional as under Board of Estimates vs.
Morris, supra because*
* a) In New York City Richmond has a board member as does the more
populace Kings County.*
* b) The board does not represent minor party voters who have ballot
access such as the Green Party, Independence Party, Conservative Party and
Working Families Party.*
* c) The Board does not have representation for independent votes
although they are more numerous than Republican Party voters.*
* d) The New York State Constitution which established representation
for the Republican Party and Democratic Party was written many years ago
and does not reflect voting reality nowadays*
* e) The Board gives equal representation to the Republican Party and
the Democratic Party although the Democratic voters are much more numerous*
*93. The New York State Board of Elections has judicial hearings deciding
which candidates are to be on the ballot and this is violative of
procedural due process of the Fourteenth Amendment because the Board is
selected by the Republican Party Chairman and the Democratic Party Chairman
which makes them inherently prejudiced and unfair.*
*94. The local boards of elections in New York hires party loyalists as
election inspectors who have fraudulently been hired to vote for the chosen
party candidates and are not independent inspectors to voting and have
acted fraudulently because their paid job depends on their being loyal to
the party chairmen of the Republican and Democratic Parties which
undermines the fairness of the democratic process and is flagrantly
violative of the constitutionally protected elements of fair elections.*
*WHEREFORE, the plaintiffs seek the following remedy:*
*l. **Sam Sloan and the other 10 candidates be placed back on the
ballot as Judicial Delegate in the Democratic Primary to be held on
September 10, 2015.*
*2. **The New York State and City Board of Elections should be
declared unconstitutional and disbanded.*
*3. **That the attorney for the plaintiffs be paid legal fees for this
case*
*4. **That the plaintiff be paid damages and all the costs.*
*5. That this court take all such action it deems just and proper.*
*Dated: Bronx, New York*
*September 2, 2015*
* ….........................*
* Sam Sloan, Petitioner*
* 1664 Davidson Ave 1B*
* Bronx, New York 10453*
* 917-507-7226*
* 917-659-3397*
* samhsloan@gmail.com <samhsloan@gmail.com>*
*STATE OF NEW YORK*
*COUNTY OF NEW YORK*
*VERIFICATION*
*Sam Sloan, being duly sworn, deposes and says that he is the plaintiff
herein, that he has read the foregoing petition and knows the contents
thereof that the same is true as to his own knowledge except as to those
matters alleged upon information and belief and as to those matters he
believes it to be true.*
* _____________________*
* Sam Sloan*
*Sworn to before me this 2nd*
*day of September 2015 *
* ______________________*
* NOTARY PUBLIC*