New York State’s Fourth Department Rejects Fraud Arguments, Candidates Remain on Primary Ballot
By: Joseph T. Burns
On May 13, 2026, New York’s Appellate Division, Fourth Department — the mid-level state appeals court covering parts of Western, Central and Northern New York — unanimously upheld two trial court decisions to keep candidates on the primary ballot. In Short v. Hoak and Torres v. Zellner, objectors sought to knock Democratic candidates off the primary ballot by claiming their designating petitions were “permeated with fraud.”
At issue were the Democratic designating petitions of 149th Assembly District candidate Karen Hoak and 61st State Senate District candidate Jeremy Zellner. The trial courts granted each candidate’s motion to dismiss before conducting a hearing. In dismissing each case, the courts were required to take every allegation made by the objectors as true. Even after looking at the objectors’ allegations in that light, the trial courts determined that the objectors’ arguments were insufficient.
In these decisions, numbers mattered. In Short, the signatures identified as fraudulent by the objector only amount to approximately 2% of the total obtained and filed by candidate Hoak. In Torres, the signatures identified as suspect by the objector only amounted to about 1% of the total obtained and filed by candidate Zellner.
Among the other fraud arguments made by the objectors was a claim that City of Buffalo commissioners of deeds had no authority to witness signatures outside the City of Buffalo. The Fourth Department also rejected this argument. The Fourth Department cited a 1987 decision that determined that this practice was permissible, and the Fourth Department also noted that this and other arguments do not constitute fraudulent representations by witnesses.
To invalidate a designating petition for being permeated with fraud, one must generally show one of two things: either the fraud was so widespread that it infected the entire petition, or the candidate personally directed or knew about it. In order to make this case, one needs actual, specific evidence; suspicion, inference, or a handful of bad signatures out of thousands is simply not enough.
It’s also worth noting that a mistake on a petition does not constitute fraud. A petition circulator who forgets to fill in a date or witnesses a signature he or she is not qualified to witness has not committed fraud. Courts distinguish between incompetence and deception; just because a signature is invalid doesn’t mean it was obtained by fraud. Challengers to petitions should understand that distinction.
In order to guard against these types of challenges, future candidates would be wise to collect far more signatures than is actually needed. A good practice is to obtain and file twice the minimum number of signatures required. Both candidates in these matters – Hoak and Zellner – were protected in part because the alleged fraudulent signatures were statistically trivial.
Campaigns should also be aware of what their petition witnesses are authorized to do. For instance, is the witness a notary public who can witness signatures for any party anywhere in the state? Or is the witness witnessing as a party member and can, therefore, only obtain signatures from enrolled members of that party? These are all important questions smart campaigns get the answers to early.
Invalidating a petition based on fraud is not easy, and those who would fund such a challenge should understand the likelihood of success before moving forward with one. Those making a fraud argument should come armed with specific facts, not just speculation and hunches. And when the fraud was not committed by the candidate or cannot be connected to the candidate, it becomes almost impossible to argue that a petition is “permeated with fraud” and should be invalidated.
Short and Torres are not likely to be remembered as major, far-reaching decisions. They merely reaffirm what those with experience in this field already know and remind candidates, party leaders, and their attorneys of how difficult it can be to convince a court to invalidate a candidate’s petition because of fraud.
