Andrew Yang sues over New York’s shutdown of presidential primary

Authored by politico.com and submitted by Mapleyy

The New York State Board of Elections effectively canceled the presidential primary on Monday, when the two Democratic commissioners voted to strip every candidate, except former Vice President Joe Biden, off the ballot because they were no longer actively seeking the presidency.

The move infuriated supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, in particular. Sanders, like Yang, has also suspended his campaign but publicly said he wished to remain on the ballot for the remaining primaries so he could continue to be awarded delegates to sway the national convention.

The suit filed by Yang also argued that axing the Democratic presidential primary would hurt down-ballot candidates.

The lawsuit argued that canceling the presidential primary would be “suppressing voter turnout as voters will have less incentive to vote if they cannot cast a vote for the highest office in the land, and thereby negatively impact challenger candidates” such as Jonathan Herzog, who is running a longshot primary bid against Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler in New York's 10th District. Herzog is also a party to the lawsuit.

New York’s presidential primary was originally consolidated with the state”s other federal and state primaries on June 23. For the remaining primaries, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered that any New Yorker could vote absentee (typically, New York requires a valid excuse for voters to cast an absentee ballot), and that every voter in the state be mailed an absentee-ballot request form.

spazz720 on April 29th, 2020 at 00:32 UTC »

Update 4:15 p.m.: The Democratic National Committee released a statement calling out the state Board of Election's move to canceling the primary and giving all the delegates to Biden. "Any substantive change to a state's first determining step in allocating delegates like this one will need to be reviewed by the DNC's Rules and By-Laws Committee," David Bergstein, DNC spokesman, said in a statement. "Once the state party submits an updated delegate selection plan, the committee will review that plan and make a determination."

https://gothamist.com/news/bernie-sanders-calls-decision-by-ny-to-cancel-presidential-primary-a-blow-to-american-democracy

yfern0328 on April 29th, 2020 at 00:24 UTC »

Besides the fact that voting by mail should have been the preference instead of cancelling the vote outright, Yang is doing this to build the coalition he has started growing. This should be seen as the pro-democracy, pro-Progressive, and morally right thing to do.

Yang is pushing for things like UBI, ‘Humanity First’ principles, automation/data rights awareness, and solutions-based policy. Best way to push that kind of stuff is to elect people down ballot that support it as well as getting it in the party platform. All of that is hurt by not allowing people to vote. Yang is going to keep fighting for the things he believes in, and he has a strong case here.

edit: it’s pretty weird to cancel the Presidential primary when Cuomo already ordered there would be state-wide vote-by-mail. I know ink cartridges are expensive and adding a few more lines to the ballot costs a bit more, but c’mon—that’s the price of democracy.

qdqdqdqdqdqdqdqd on April 28th, 2020 at 23:25 UTC »

Do I have this correct? They are still having an election on that day, but they are removing the president's from it?