Stuart Amoriell, center right, a restaurant owner in Lake Placid running in New York’s 21st Congressional District, is just one of numerous candidates across the state who have face ballot petition challenges.
Stuart Amoriell
ALBANY — With New York’s primary elections six weeks away, candidates are gearing up to be their party’s preferred choice in various state and federal election districts. But first, they need to get on the ballot.
Across races that will determine candidates for Congress and the state Assembly to state comptroller, more than 100 lawsuits have been filed challenging a candidate’s eligibility to be placed on June’s primary ballot, either through claims of invalid petition signatures or questions about their place of residence. A candidate may fail to make the ballot if a board of elections or state court find the number of valid signatures falls below the number needed to qualify.
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Such challenges nominally exist to prevent fraud, but political candidates or party operatives often take advantage of them to target their opponents in primary races. Candidates with less experience and resources must rely on volunteers to gather signatures, increasing the likelihood of petition errors; a challenge forces them to navigate the complex system of New York’s election laws — a system that can heavily favor established incumbents against upstarts.
In the Democratic primary race for New York’s 21st Congressional District, Stuart Amoriell, a Lake Placid restaurant owner who describes himself as an “independent Democrat,” is facing off against Blake Gendebien, a dairy farmer with endorsements from several Democratic county committees within the district. Amoriell found himself subject to a ballot challenge, with three plaintiffs arguing their names had been put on petitions without their knowledge.
In April, Amoriell held a press conference addressing the challenge, where he accused Gendebien’s campaign of orchestrating the maneuver.
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“They’re trying to circumvent the democratic process so that the voters don’t have a choice, so that their will cannot be expressed on election day,” Amoriell said. “The courts and the board of elections have clearly indicated that the will of the people is more important and is superior to the hopes and ideas of the Democratic establishment.”
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A review of the ballot challenge by the state Board of Elections found Amoriell’s petition contained 489 invalid signatures. But the remaining 1,527 signatures were cleared, well more than the 1,250-signature threshold needed for Amoriell to appear on the ballot.
Gendebien campaign responded by saying there were genuine reasons to question some of Amoriell’s signatures.
“If Mr. Amoriell’s petitions are all valid and he did not submit fraudulent signatures, then he has absolutely nothing to worry about,” the campaign wrote in a statement. “This challenge is happening because his petitions gave voters legitimate cause to bring it. North Country voters deserve a fair democratic process that ensures their voices — and only their voices — are heard.”
It isn’t the only race this election season with a ballot challenge. Over the past month, there have been dozens of lawsuits filed against candidates for both state and federal office in New York over objections to a candidate’s validity. The civil actions have targeted Democrats and Republicans alike from all corners of the state.
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‘Something that’s played out regularly’
There have been objections filed against 17 congressional candidates and 39 candidates in state elections, according to the state board of elections. Those numbers don’t include candidates from the New York City area, where objections are filed with the city’s Board of Elections instead of to the state board. The Times Union found at least 100 lawsuits related to ballot objections filed in State Supreme Court.
Jeffrey Wice, a professor at New York Law School who specializes in Election Law, said the use of objection challenges against opponents is a fairly common occurrence in New York election cycles.
“Candidates will try to knock challengers off the ballot so as to make their own chances better, depending on who they’re trying to eliminate,” Wice said. “This is something that’s played out regularly as part of the campaign season.”
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A certain number of valid signatures are required in order for a candidate to earn a spot on the ballot. The number of signatures needed ranges from 500 for the state Assembly to 1,250 for U.S. Congress, up to 15,000 for State Comptroller. Wice said candidates are generally advised to get at least twice the number of signatures required to hedge against a challenge. Candidates themselves do not collect the signatures, which are gathered by paid staff or volunteers.
In order for a signature to be valid, the signer must be a registered voter in the electoral district and a member of the political party of the prospective candidate, and must not have signed another candidate’s petition.
At his April press conference, Amoriell said those data points can be difficult to verify.
“When a person carrying a petition asks for a signature, they don’t ask for ID; they don’t have a way of verifying that information,” he said. “What they do is they ask the person: Are these three things true? (And) if they are, are you willing to support our candidate to get on the ballot?’”
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Wice said the process of gathering signatures and surviving potential ballot challenges can also favor established political incumbents, who have the finances and experience to employ professionals to gather petition signatures. But newcomers to the world of politics often have to rely on less-experienced volunteers, leading to a higher probability of errors.
In the event of a petition challenge, a candidate must also then navigate the thorny legal process of clearing their name.
“You’ve got to have some level of quality control,” Wice said. “Some candidates who can afford it will go to professional petition-gathering operations and have it done by people they can rely on. A well-organized candidate will have the people power behind them to challenge signatures. That’s a very painstaking and lengthy process, but it’s something that an artful candidate will always do if they want to knock their opponents off the ballot.”
Other contested races
A candidate can also face a challenge over claims their own address isn’t within the electoral district they’re running in. In New York’s 18th Congressional District — covering all of Orange County and portions of Ulster and Dutchess counties — Republican primary candidate Sharanjit Thind dealt with a complaint filed with the Board of Elections by Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck, whose filing noted that Thind had a Long Island mailing address.
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But although politicians are free to label their opponent as a carpetbagger or interloper, congressional candidates in New York have no residency requirement: A candidate can live outside the congressional district even after an election as long as they reside within the state. The challenge against Thind was dismissed in state Supreme Court in Albany on May 1, but by then he had already dropped out of the race.
In the neighboring 17th Congressional District in the lower Hudson Valley, Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler has objected to the ballot signatures for his Democratic challenger Effie Phillips-Staley. A state Supreme Court justice in Rockland County found that Phillips-Staley had more than 500 invalid signatures stemming from a fraudulent canvasser, but more than 2,000 valid ones, which allowed her to stay on the ballot.
“Although fraud has been established, the petitioners have not introduced a single piece of evidence to indicate that candidate Phillips-Staley, her campaign, or the Democratic Party in whose primary she aspires to participate, personally engaged, knew, or should be chargeable with knowing in any fraudulent activity,” the judge in the case wrote.
That ruling didn’t stop Lawler from continuing to call for further investigation into the case, even earning a response from President Donald J. Trump, who called for further investigation in a post on Truth Social endorsing Lawler.
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“Justice should be sought, and the fraud should be investigated,” Trump wrote in the post.
In the state comptroller’s race against incumbent Democrat Thomas DiNapoli, the state Board of Elections found that 11,225 signatures submitted by primary challenger Adem Bunkeddeko were invalid, disqualifying him from appearing on the ballot. Bunkedekko subsequently challenged the finding in state Supreme Court in Kings County, but was rejected by the judge, who said the burden fell on Bunkedekko to establish “that each challenged signature was improperly invalidated.”
The state board also found that another candidate running against DiNapoli, Raj Goyle, had more than 15,000 invalid signatures, but had enough valid ones to appear on the ballot.
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At the state level, incumbent Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar, a Queens Democrat, was sued by primary challenger David Orkin, who alleged his own supporters’ signatures had appeared on Rajkumar’s petitions. A state Supreme Court justice dismissed the case, saying Orkin’s legal team had not followed proper procedure for challenging ballot signatures. Orkin’s team has appealed.
“The legal system is expansive, but the signature thresholds for most offices are not that high,” said Paul Newell, an attorney representing Orkin’s campaign. “A credible campaign should be able to get there without fraud.”