As the U.S. Supreme Court grapples with the most fundamental issue facing American politics—whether “partisan gerrymandering” can be so egregiously one-sided as to be unconstitutional—New York courts routinely confront the less profound but equally far-reaching issue of ballot access. After all, decisions as to which candidates can actually appear on the ballot shape our elections, and, with the advantages that incumbents generally have, such rulings can have a lasting impact. Opponents routinely scrutinize whether a candidate has met residency and other requirements to run for office; and they also review—in great detail—a candidate’s nominating petitions (to get on the ballot) and nominating certificates (issued by party committees) for hyper-technical errors. Some of these issues are disposed of by the Board of Elections. Often, however, they wind up being adjudicated in the courts.
In 2014, a Democratic Party primary opponent of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and an insurgent state Assembly candidate faced stiff challenges as to whether each met residency requirements. Although the evidence showed, at best, only a tangential relationship to New York while having significant contacts in other states, both the Brooklyn and Bronx trial courts, and the First and Second Departments of the Appellate Division, found that the candidates could run. Weiss v. Teachout, 120 A.D.3d 701 (2d Dep’t 2014); Jones v. Blake, 120 A.D.3d 415 (1st Dep’t), lv. to appeal den’d. 23 N.Y.3d 908 (2014). Central to the outcome in both cases was the long-standing rule that under the election law a candidate (or voter) could have more than one residence. Last year, however, the Court of Appeals limited this rule by blocking a candidate with two residences on the ground that he had voted outside the district. Conflating voting with residency, the Court of Appeals made it more difficult for candidates with multiple residences to run for office. Glickman v. Laffin, 27 N.Y.3d 810 (2016).
