A coalition of Democratic candidates seeking to run in the upcoming June primary are urging Governor Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers to suspend the requirement that they must collect signatures in order to appear on the ballot, citing the risk posed by COVID-19 as infections run rampant across New York.
While the state legislature has passed a bill that would reduce the number of signatures required, and pushed back the date to begin collecting them, hundreds of candidates and thousands of their volunteers still must engage in person-to-person interactions that run counter to public health guidance to reduce exposure during the pandemic. The bill has been sent to the governor but it has not yet been signed.
“This is a superspreader event in the making and it doesn’t have to be that way,” said CIty Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer, a member of the coalition and a candidate for Queens Borough President.
The group was initially organized by Lauren Trapanotto and Erica Vladimer, both Democratic County Committee members from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and Corey Ortega, a candidate for City Council representing Northern Manhattan, who sent an open letter Wednesday to Cuomo, legislators, and state Democratic Party leaders.
“Collecting signatures for a successful designating petition creates an unacceptable risk of exposure to COVID-19 for candidates, their staff and volunteers, and political club members through what are essentially hundreds of thousands of mandated, non-socially distanced interactions,” the letter states. It also points to recent accommodations made in other states, including New Jersey and Rhode Island, to move the petitioning process online.
The governor’s office has not yet responded to the letter or a request for comment from Gothamist / WNYC.
Under current law, candidates must begin next month collecting hundreds, in some cases thousands, of signatures, depending on which office they are seeking. For citywide offices like mayor, comptroller, and public advocate, the current signature requirement is 7,500 valid signatures (the new legislation would cut it down to 2,500).
Even for unpaid party positions—such as judicial delegate, county committee or district leader—candidates still need upwards of 150 valid signatures.
For practical purposes, though, candidates collect several times the required number to take into account non-valid signatures and possible challenges from a rival’s campaign. In competitive races, it’s not uncommon to comb through each other’s petitions to try to challenge the validity of signatures and boot a candidate off the ballot.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams called the continued signature requirement “hypocritical” and “irresponsible” if the priority of city and state officials is to protect public health. He urged the mayor and governor to come up with alternative ways for candidates to qualify, suggesting they consider whether a candidate qualifies for matching funds through the New York York City Campaign Finance Board’s public finance program as criteria.
For a candidate for City Council, that would mean having raised at least a dollar from 75 contributors within that district.
It’s an idea that has been proposed before. In 2010, attorney Jerry Goldfeder, serving as chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Election Law Committee, made the same recommendation in a report and he said he still supports it.
“Petitioning is an anachronistic 19th century process to stop people from running for office. And we should make it easier for people to get on the ballot,” Goldfeder told Gothamist / WNYC, adding that “if somebody qualifies for matching funds, they obviously have support.”
