Ballot Access in New York State: Three Times Harder than in Putin’s Russia’s

It is currently nearly impossible for the Green Party of New York to place statewide candidates on the ballot and then enough votes for Governor or President to acquire ballot status. Green candidates for offices that are voted on statewide (President, US Senator, Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller) today have to file an independent nominating petition with 45,000 valid signatures collected within a 42 day window.

That is three times the 15,000 signatures in 42 days needed before 2020, which the Greens had been able to do before we had permanent ballot status for four years after the 1998, 2010, 2014, and 2018 gubernatorial elections. The Greens had ballot status for 1999 to 2004 and for 2011 to 2020 because we received over 50,000 votes for Governor in the previous election. 

The new standard for ballot access under the election law adopted in 2020 is 130,000 votes or 2% for President or Governor, whichever is greater. That meant over 173,000 votes in 2020 — 3 and 1/2 times greater than the old standard — and the Greens lost their ballot line. The only Green candidates who have passed that threshold in the past were Ralph Nader for President in 2000 (244,398 votes, 3.58%) and me for Governor in 2014 (184,419 votes, 4.84%).

The new election law also means that the Greens must re-qualify every two years, every presidential and gubernatorial election, instead of every four-year gubernatorial election as before 2020.

Andrew Cuomo pushed the new election law change through during the Covid lockdown in April 2020 when the legislature was voting online remotely and the election law bill was attached to the must-pass budget bill. As a result, only Democratic and Republican candidates were on the ballot for the 2022 gubernatorial race and the 2024 presidential election for the only times since government-printed secret ballots were introduced in 1891 (with the exception of the post-war 1946 gubernatorial election).

Jill Stein spent some $300,000 and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent over $1 million dollars paying for petitioners in unsuccessfully attempting to qualify for the 2024 presidential ballot. So New York was the only state in the nation which only had Harris and Trump on the ballot. 

Harris and Trump were on twice due to fusion law in New York where candidates may be nominated by and on the ballot line for more than one party. So Harris had the ballot line of the Working Families Party (WFP), which routinely cross-endorses Democrats, and Trump had the ballot line of the Conservative Party, which routinely cross-endorses Republicans. The WFP and Conservatives got over the 2% threshold to keep their ballot lines in 2020, 2022, and 2024 by putting a major party candidate for President or Governor on their ballot line.

The current requirement is three times the requirement of 15,000 signatures in 45 days for statewide offices in Putin’s Russia – they have three more days to collect their 15,000 signatures than we used to have in New York State. Statewide in Russia here refers to “federal subjects” — republics, krais, oblasts, cities of federal significance, and autonomous okrugs — that elect their own governors and representatives to the State Duma, or national congress. I have sarcastically told state legislators that Greens would be satisfied to at least get back to the Putin standard we had before. They chuckle and concede that I am right, but proceed to do nothing about it, including the DSA Democrats in the state legislature.

The Libertarians also lost their ballot line in 2020 after achieving it for the first time in 2018. So Greens and Libertarians have joined in lawsuits for relief from unconstitutional burdens on our political speech rights. So far the judges have been indifferent and simply incompetent, not even responding to our arguments in our briefs in their vacuous decisions. We continue to pursue relief by legislation and litigation.

It is infuriating that there will be no Green in 2026 to challenge the corrupt neoliberal governor Kathy Hochul who has gutted the implementation of the limited climate legislation New York has and is pursuing $33 billion in subsidies for four nukes that cannot run profitably and has economically insane plans to build more nukes. She refuses to raise taxes on the rich, which are needed for NewYork City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s reforms in New York City, among many other pressing social and economic needs in New York State. Yet the DSA democratic socialists like Mamdani and AOC have endorsed Hochul for re-election. 

With Democratic “progressives” like these, who needs corporate Democrats or Republicans? With authoritarian corporate Democrats like Andrew Cuomo, who needs Putin? 

We need Greens, but we can’t even get on the ballot statewide this year to challenge this mess in the election. But we will make our views known in other ways and keep fighting for democracy. Our pro-democracy agenda includes not just the simple demand for fair ballot access, but also the transformative demand for proportional representation to replace our exclusive two-party duopoly with an inclusive multi-party democracy.