Jane.Goldberg@...>, "jgoldfeder@stroock.com" <jgoldfeder@...>,
Daniel Szalkiewicz <daniel@...>, Marissa Soto <
marissa.soto.esq@...>, "Orsland, Chlarens (Law)" <corsland@...
Summary Statement of the Case
This case arises because the State and City Boards of Elections have
repeatedly thrown candidate Sam Sloan off the ballot without following
their own rules and procedures. They require candidates to follow specific
procedures while at the same time not following the New York Election Law
which governs their activities.
For example, they say that a candidate may not attach a cover sheet to a
petition whereas the state board of elections in Albany has the rule that
the candidate MUST attach a cover sheet to the petitions.
Now the Board of Elections has made a rule that they call “The Sloan Rule”
under which the Boards of Elections may peruse any petition that has been
filed and examine it in detail and if something however trivial is found
wrong with it the entire petition is thrown out.
That is what has been happening here. In the election of 2013 there was a
very obvious forgery on the objections by one Caruso and the Board ignored
this and threw a slate of candidates including two unopposed candidates off
the ballot who would have been elected without this forgery.
In 2014 The Board of Elections allowed Congressman Serrano to run even
though he definitely did not have enough valid signatures to be on the
ballot because he was opposed by the Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz.
The board protected Congressman Serrano, a 20-year incumbent, from having
his signatures questioned.
Also in 2014, Candidate for Governor Sam Sloan and his slate of Candidates
were thrown off the ballot on the motion of Kimberly Galvin, Republican
Party representative to the Board of Elections, even though no objections
had been filed against Sloan. Later in Court Kathleen O'Keefe, Democratic
Party Representative to the Board of Elections, played a dirty trick by
presenting a photo reduced and minimized pile of paper to the court which
she claimed were the original petitions, but they were not the real
petitions, and she claimed that this small stack of paper could not
possibly contain enough signatures, whereas they had been falsified and the
real petitions was a much larger stack containing four times as many
signatures on the real petitions.
Then in 2015 as can be seen on the videos on you tube, Steve Richman,
General Counsel to the Board of Elections, threw Sam Sloan off the ballot
as candidate for Judicial Delegate immediately after the petitions were
filed without waiting for the usual notice and hearing. You can see on the
video on the 9th that Steve Richman browsed through the 300 pages of the
petition searching for errors claiming that there were Sam Sloan's
petitions who always makes trouble, whereas actually I had nothing to do
with that petition. The petition was prepared by Richard Soto who runs
candidates every year and he had just asked me for my permission to include
my name.
It is noteworthy that almost the entire New York City Board of Elections is
new this year because the old commissioners were thrown off due to
allegations of corruption and arrests by the FBI of their bosses. Several
other candidates and Party Bosses have been arrested by the FBI. However,
this has not helped because as long as the same staff remains including
especially Steve Richman remains the same corruption will continue.
Plaintiff maintains that this problem is not curable. It exists because the
entire structure is fundamentally corrupt because the party bosses appoint
the commissioners and even when they are arrested and sent to prison they
just appoint their successors.
Plaintiff has filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for US
President and in view of the possibility that he will not be elected
president will attempt again to run for Congress in which case he will face
the same corrupt board that are now named as defendants to this suit.
It is obvious that the same board will throw him off the ballot in the
coming year too, given the broad discretion the board claims it has that
enables them to throw anybody it dislikes off the ballot.
Accordingly, the Board of Elections must be declared unconstitutional and
disbanded. A new election law should be passed which gives the state
legislature and not the party bosses the power to decide who gets on the
ballot.
Sam Sloan