Bill Introduced to Establish New Standard for Invalidating a NYS Candidate’s Petition Found to Contain Fraudulent Signatures
By: Joseph T. Burns
Two New York State legislators have introduced a bill to establish a standard for permeation of fraud in a petition based on a percentage of the signatures on the petition being found to be fraudulent. This comes only weeks after a trial court in Rockland County found that while the designating petition of a Congressional candidate contained hundreds of fraudulent signatures, the petition could not be held to be permeated with fraud and invalidated because a nexus between the fraudulent signatures and the candidate could not be established.
The bill was introduced by Assemblyman Matt Slater and Senator Bill Weber. The Slater-Weber bill amends the Election Law to establish that a candidate petition is permeated with fraud when a court finds that twenty-five percent or more of the signatures on the petition are fraudulent. It goes on to require that when a court finds that at least twenty-five percent of all signatures on a candidate petition are fraudulent, the court must invalidate the whole petition.
This new standard for permeation of fraud is similar to the one advocated for by the Petitioners in the Rockland County case. In that case, the candidate for Congress needed 1,250 valid signatures on her Democratic designating petition. While she filed a designating petition with almost 2,900 signatures, it was stipulated that over 800 of those signatures were invalid because of fraud. This, however, left the candidate with over 2,000 valid signatures, more than the minimum required by the Election Law.
Even though the candidate could not be connected to the fraudulent signatures, the Petitioners suggested that the petition was, nonetheless, permeated with fraud and should be invalidated. The Petitioners, however, argued for a negligence standard that would require the invalidation of the designating petition if the court found that the candidate should have known about the fraudulent signatures on her petition. The Petitioners further argued that the court should hold the petition to be permeated with fraud and invalidated if 25% of the signatures on the petition were found to be fraudulent.
The court, however, rejected these arguments and allowed the petition to remain valid.
The Slater-Weber bill is currently in the Senate Elections Committee and the Assembly Election Law Committee. Should it become law, it would be effective immediately and, presumably, apply to all petition challenges occurring after it is signed into law.
