Anyone who travels is familiar with the “Hop On, Hop Off” buses that cruise the capitals of so many countries, providing the opportunity to easily get around a new city and see the major sites. In New York, the term is a good metaphor for how our ballot access rules should work, but do not: It should be relatively easy for candidates to get on the ballot, and, if circumstances warrant, to remove one’s name. After all, the voters should have a full panoply of choices, and, at the same time, should not be confused by having candidates on a ballot who are no longer actually competing. Instead, although the state’s laws have been liberalized over the years, there remain picayune requirements to earn a place on the ballot and difficult procedures for removing a candidate’s name from it.

I have been writing about this for over 35 years, my first published essay appearing in Newsday in 1985 titled Reforms To Take Election Law Out of Its Present ‘Wonderland’. The reference of course was to Alice in Wonderland, where everything is not exactly what it seems to be. This is what I meant: The way a political hopeful gets to run in an election is to obtain a certain number of signatures of registered voters (and in a primary, enrolled party members), supposedly to show support and not overcrowd the ballot with so-called frivolous candidates. But the signatures must be written just-so (no initials please!); addresses of the signers must be complete (is it East 9th Street? Or South, West or North? and is it Boulevard, Avenue, or Street?); corrections of the information provided must be initialed (a strike-over to correct a date will not do!); and a voter cannot sign a petition for more than one candidate running for the same office. These are just some of the arcane, hyper-technical rules that lead to challenges of a candidate’s petitions in an attempt to knock them off the ballot. And, reflecting the Lewis Carroll classic, Board of Elections staff, Judicial Referees and Judges often have inconsistent views as to whether a candidate has complied with these rules, and, therefore, is eligible to run.

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