On May 28, S8007 was introduced in the New York State Senate. It liberalizes the definition of a qualified political party. The existing definition says a qualified party is a group that polled at least 50,000 votes for Governor. The bill changes this, so that it is a group that polled at least 50,000 votes for any statewide office in a gubernatorial election year. If this bill were law now, the Green Party would be ballot-qualified, because in 2006 it polled 117,908 votes for Comptroller, and 61,849 votes for Attorney General, and 55,469 votes for U.S. Senate. Governor is the only race in which the Green Party did not receive 50,000 votes.
On June 1, the bill was transferred from the Election Committee to the Rules Committee. According to an employee of the New York legislature, this is a good sign for the bill, because “Rules is a stronger committee than Elections.” The bill’s author is the Rules Committee itself, so the bill is likely to pass the Rules Committee.
Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us 
No comments:
Post a Comment