The founder of a group that supports this year's referendum on whether the state should hold a constitutional convention filed a lawsuit against the state's Board of Elections Thursday in an effort to put the convention question on the front of the ballot.

Oliver Parini

Evan Davis, senior counsel at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and the founder of the Committee for a Constitutional Convention, filed a lawsuit in Albany County Supreme Court arguing that the convention question on the back of the ballot “suggests that the constitutionally mandated convention question is of lesser importance than the local races that will appear on the front of the ballot.”

“The requirement that electors decide the Convention Question necessarily obligates the Election Board to submit that question in a manner that effectively presents it to the voting for public decision. Absent such an effective submission, the electors are stripped of their right to decide the Convention Question, and the Election Board has failed to fulfill its constitutionally-mandated duty,” Davis, former counsel to the late Gov. Mario Cuomo, argued in the lawsuit.