Federal judge orders all Republican candidates onto New York primary ballotBy Phil Hirschkorn/CNN
February 4, 2000
Web posted at: 6:47 p.m. EST (2347 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- All four of the candidates still competing for the
Republican presidential nomination will be listed on the primary ballot in
every congressional district in New York state next month, a federal judge
ordered Friday.
The decision means that New York's 3 million registered Republicans
could have the opportunity to vote for either Sen. John McCain of Arizona,
Texas Gov. George Bush, publisher Steve Forbes or former State Department
official Alan Keyes in the March 7 contest.
It's now up to each campaign to submit or resubmit its full delegate
slates to the state Board of Elections by next Thursday at 5 p.m.
In his order issued Friday afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge Edward
Korman directed that the delegate slates pledged to all four candidates be
placed on the ballot in all 31 districts.
"I do so because I find that the New York ballot access scheme as applied
to the presidential primary held by the Republican State Committee poses an
undue burden in its totality on the right to vote under the First Amendment,"
Korman wrote in his 15-page decision.
New York will send 102 delegates to the Republican convention, the
third-largest bloc after California and Texas.
Korman wrote that some technical ballot access requirements were
"unconstitutional" and a "trap." He singled out requirements that a petition
witness be a registered Republican or a public notary, and requirements that
petition signers and witnesses list their home town or city, in addition to
their street address.
The state Republican establishment, led by Governor George Pataki, is
backing Bush and gathered 150,000 signatures for his petition drive.
State laws require a presidential candidate to gather 5,000 signatures of
registered party voters statewide, including one-half of one percent of
registered party voters in each of the state's 31 congressional districts.
Korman said the ballot access rules "may further the interest" of the
state party, "as distinguished from the 3.1 million voters affiliated" with it,
and therefore "undermines the very purpose of a primary."
However, Korman did not order a change in the number of signatures needed
statewide or in each district.
Forbes submitted 85,000 signatures and McCain submitted 27,000, according
to the state election board.
But McCain and Forbes each faced questions about their petitions from
Bush-backed party officials -- McCain for insufficient signatures in half the
state, and Forbes for the type of technical violations criticized by Korman
in a few Long Island districts.
McCain initiated the federal lawsuit and Forbes and Keyes joined it.
Bush had faced removal from the ballot in one Bronx congressional
district where volunteers admitted forging some signatures. The decision
reinstates him.
Pataki late Thursday reversed his course and said the party
should stop fighting McCain's ballot access.
New York Republican Party Chairman Bill Powers said he disagreed with the
court's decision but would abide by it and drop the party's challenges.
He said the process ensures that every individual seeking the highest
office in the land develops "grass roots support needed to represent our
families in the fall election."
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