Jessica Simmons ran unsuccessfully for the City Council from Brooklyn this year. In the Democratic Party primary election, she made it through three rounds of ranked choice voting before being eliminated, having received 1,577 first place votes out of approximately 36,000 votes. But this column is not about whether she won or lost.

I don’t know Ms. Simmons. I learned about her by reading a Kings County Supreme Court decision. She, like too many other candidates in New York, had to file a lawsuit to get on the ballot after the Board of Elections disqualified her. Why? Because, although she submitted well over the required number of voters’ signatures on her designating petitions, her “cover sheet” was not in proper form.