The New York Libertarian Party won its lawsuit (Credico v New York State Board of Elections, 10cv-4555, Eastern District) over the 2010 ballot.
New York election law lets two parties jointly nominate the same candidate. If a candidate receives the nomination of two qualified parties, his or her name is listed twice on the ballot, once in each party’s column.
If two unqualified parties jointly nominate the same candidate, the candidate can’t be listed twice, and must tell election officials which party’s line he or she wants to appear on. In such cases, even though the candidate is listed only once on the ballot, and voters can only vote for him under one label, both party labels are printed in that single space.
The state claimed two state interests:
1. Preventing a candidate from appearing twice on the ballot was an attempt to prevent using the ballot for “campaign advertising”
2. The law avoids voter confusion.
The court said reason 1. can’t be valid, because the state already lets candidates nominated by multiple qualified parties do the same thing. The court said reason 2. is not valid because the law actually causes more confusion than it prevents.
The law required, Randy Credico a nominee for U.S. Senate, of both the Libertarian Party and the Anti-Prohibition Party, to choose one of those lines, even though both parties had nominated him. This caused one of the two parties being forced to have a blank space on the ballot in its column, yet its name would appear in tiny print for that one office in another party’s column, something that is very confusing.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!
Michael H. Drucker
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