“OPPORTUNITY TO BALLOT” REMEDY AVAILABLE WHERE SIGNATURES ON A NOMINATING PETITION INVALIDATED FOR A TECHNICAL DEFECT AND THE PARTY WOULD BE LEFT WITHOUT A CANDIDATE (FOURTH DEPT).
The Fourth Department determined, pursuant to the “opportunity to ballot” remedy, 24 signatures on a nominating petition should not have been invalidated because the signatures had appeared on a prior nominating petition for a candidate who had withdrawn:
… [T]he equitable remedy of opportunity to ballot is appropriate here … . The remedy of an ” opportunity to ballot' . . . was designed to give effect to the intention manifested by qualified party members to nominate some candidate, where that intention would otherwise be thwarted by the presence of technical, but fatal defects in designating petitions, leaving the political party without a designated candidate for a given office”… . Here, the Board determined that 24 of the signatures on petitioner's nominating petition were invalid because the signers had previously signed the nominating petition of a candidate who later withdrew from the race. Although the fact that a voter has previously signed another candidate's petition is typically a substantive defect … , we conclude that such a defect is a technical one where, as here, the candidate with a prior nominating petition withdrew that petition prior to the voters signing the second nominating petition … . We thus conclude that the registered voters of the Republican Party should be afforded an opportunity to ballot for the office at issue, and we therefore modify the order accordingly. Matter of Trevisani v Karp, 2018 NY Slip Op 05966, Fourth Dept 9-5-18
ELECTION LAW (“OPPORTUNITY TO BALLOT” REMEDY AVAILABLE WHERE SIGNATURES ON A NOMINATING PETITION INVALIDATED FOR A TECHNICAL DEFECT AND THE PARTY WOULD BE LEFT WITHOUT A CANDIDATE (FOURTH DEPT))/OPPORTUNITY TO BALLOT (ELECTION LAW, “OPPORTUNITY TO BALLOT” REMEDY AVAILABLE WHERE SIGNATURES ON A NOMINATING PETITION INVALIDATED FOR A TECHNICAL DEFECT AND THE PARTY WOULD BE LEFT WITHOUT A CANDIDATE (FOURTH DEPT))