*Response to Report of Referee Nina Rusnak*
*Dear Miss Rusnak,*
*I strongly disagree with your report on several grounds.*
*Unfortunately, when your report arrived in my email box it contained a
note saying “suspicious message” and that it is of the type to gather
information and may contain a virus. Also, the report was untitled.
Therefore, I did not open it. *
*Fortunately, Mr. John Segreti called and left a message on my voice mail
machine that the hearing had been posted until Wednesday. That is how I
found out about the hearing. Otherwise, I would have missed the meeting
again. I am deeply thankful to Mr. Segreti for that call.*
*As I understand it, there were specific instructions from Judge Carter for
you to count the signatures. He did not ask you to verify the signatures,
just to count them. It appears you did not do that, that you just relied on
the count by the Board of Elections.*
*However, under New York Election Law, the law I cited in my previous
affidavit, the Boards of Elections are not to count the signatures. They
are to let the objectors count the signatures and then they may check the
work of the objectors. However, if there are no specific objections then no
counting is to be done and the petition passes.*
*In this case there were no specific objections filed. This is shown by the
youtube video which it appears you did not watch. This can be seen by
searching for *
*7-28-15 commissioners' hearings - Queens and Bronx *
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Qlw-G0lOc
*Steve Richman says at 1:07:34 in the video "there were no line by line
objections submitted” *
*I was also 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.*
*It is simply not acceptable and is a violation of New York Election Law
for the Boards of Elections to start counting signatures especially in a
case like this where the petition was more than three hundred petition
pages long. *
*I do not know what has happened about the claim by Stanley Schlein that
his client filed objections but since the CRU told me that no specific
objections had been filed, it must have been that they were filed late or
not in proper form or not filed at all. In either of those cases the
objection is invalid and also Mr. Stanley Schlein has no standing to appear
as objector in this case.*
*Regarding the prima facie issues where Mr. Steve Richman found technical
defects in the petitions or the cover sheets, *
*at the hearing on July 28*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Qlw-G0lOc
*Here Stanley Schlein interrupts Commissioner Umain from speaking and says:*
"I can elaborate since Mr. Richman is a little slow on the uptake here
today the case was"
Here Stanley Schlein and Steve Richman interrupt each other back and forth
and Stanley Schlein says:
"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.
Commissioner Umane responded, "That would be a legitimate reason for being
there ..."
Again Stanley Schlein interrupts saying, "Well I was jumping to answer your
question."
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.
Sloan speaks and says, "As I understand it these pages were handed out to
different volunteers with the page numbers already on them to keep track of
which volunteer had which pages."
Now the commissioners appear to take a vote at 36:59 but the unlike several
other votes taken that day it is not clear which commissioners voted or
which way they voted. It is clear from his comments that Commissioner
Frederic Umane did not agree that this was a prima facie matter but which
way he and others voted is not clear from the video.
Again Stanley Schlein interrupts the commissioners before they have
finished the report of the vote. Stanley Schlein says at 37:25 "I need to
say something appropo to Mr. Sloans last statement that these petition
pages were distributed to different people to give out if I may remind this
honorable board this petition was witnessed by a single individual one
subscribing witness to the entire petition which kind of debunks what Mr.
Sloan may have just ..."
After that Steve Richman goes on to another case on the calender.
However, Sloan who is still at the podium says at 38:40, "I have just one
more thing. I would like to see proof of service. I asked for proof of
service yesterday and I have not received it. The contact person says she
never received anything."
Steve Richman says, "I will show it to you".
However, Steve Richman did not show it until several hours later after the
hearing was over and when he did show it, it said "signature waived".
Since the address of the contact person is 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 NSO 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.
*It can be sen by playing the youtube video (and I suggest that you play it
several times, that Mr. Stanley Schlein repeatedly interrupts the
commissioners while they are speaking and fights with Steve Richman over
several issues. Every time Commissioner Umain is saying something in my
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.
They get back to my case at 1:07:07 naming Carleton Curry as he was the
first judicial convention candidate on the list.
*Stanley Schlein says, "This is for lack of a better word the Sloan
petition".*
At this point I did not come up because I did not realize that this
involved me as my name had not been mentioned. Also, the names of the
candidates was not read out in contrast to all the other hearings that day.
One of the other candidates was in the room and would have come forward had
she known that she was involved. However, Stanley Schlein started speaking
and when he mentioned my name I started paying attention.
I came forward and said "As far as I know there were more than a thousand
signatures on the petition" but Steve Richman says at 1:09:10, "Mr. Sloan
you are no longer a candidate so you cannot appear." This refers to the
fact that I had been knocked off the ballot a few minutes earlier. When I
complain that I have not received specifications of objections Steve
Richman replies at 1:09:40 that there is no obligation to provide me or the
other candidates on the petition with the specifications of objections.
The only issue discussed at the hearing was the pagination issue. The
explanation offered by Mr. Sloan is that all the pages are numbered before
being handed out to the volunteers who collect the signatures. By doing
this they avoid the problems that many other petitioners have. I am aware
of no court decision that says this is improper. The only thing the law
says it that all the pages have numbers so they can be identified and here
they all had numbers.
*7-9-15 Coversheet Review*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Inc-fqTl-lA
It starts at 13:09 and continues at 14:20
Steve Richman is leafing through pages of the 300 plus page petition at
15:11 and ends at 17:40
It is 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 poing there is no problem with the cover sheet.
It is with the content of the petition.
Steve Richmon 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, I did not file it. I was not even in New York. I was just one of
the candidates on the list. The fact that he keeps mentioning my name shows
the prejudicial attitude of the board against me.
For all of these reasons you should withdraw and reconsider your report and
do a proper job this time.
Mr. Stanley Schlein is known as being the most powerful power broker in New
York is not the USA. He has advised important people like the Clintons and
has been instrumental in getting the m 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”
However, I hope to bring his nefarious career of knocking candidates off
the ballot to an end as I intend to file an ethics complaint against him.
Perhaps he can join Sheldon Silver in a nursing home.
Sam Sloan