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Federal judge orders all Republican candidates onto New York primary ballot

By 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."

ELECTION 2000
Candidates fan out for other races after New Hampshire (2-2-00)

Bill Press: New Hampshire earns admiration (2-2-00)

Des Moines Register: GOP chiefs in Iowa, New Hampshire defend roles of their states (2-2-00)

NHPrimary.com: Voters: Happy with the process, choices (2-2-00)

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