A federal appeals court should let New York’s Democratic presidential primary proceed on June 23 over the objections of the state, a lawyer for delegates said Monday.
Attorney Jeffrey Kurzon filed written arguments with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear the case Friday as lawyers for the state seek to overturn a lower-court decision that concluded the cancellation of the presidential primary was unconstitutional.
“To take the extraordinary action of cancelling an election, no doubt an election now in progress, would cause extreme harm to the belief in democracy in our country and that we are a republic,” Kurzon wrote.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan ordered the primary to take place on the same day other New York elections will occur, nullifying a decision by the Democratic members of the State’s Board of Elections to cancel the primary because of concerns about the coronavirus.
Kurzon said withdrawn Democratic presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders deserve a chance to gain delegates to the August Democratic convention.
He noted that Yang spent more than two years to qualify to be on the ballot and he deserved the chance to secure delegates and influence the platform that former Vice President Joe Biden is expected to campaign with once he is formally chosen as the Democratic nominee for president.
On Friday, lawyers for the state asked the appeals court to cancel the presidential primary, saying over 4,600 additional election workers would have to be hired in an unsafe environment, many of them in areas where the absence of contested races otherwise required few election hires.
Kurzon said canceling the presidential primary would depress turnout, cheating candidates in contested races for Congress and state offices of a robust number of votes.
He also noted that the primary was occurring anyway in the downstate region hit hardest by the coronavirus.
“Judge Torres’ well-reasoned decision must stand for reasons of law and equity, to protect the sliver of sovereignty awarded to each Citizen, the right to vote, as well as their guaranteed rights to free speech, due process and equal protection under the law,” the lawyer noted.
(AP)
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3 Responses
Interesting constitutional issue. Political parties are private bodies, and even if there is a state law governing primaries, it is still a matter of state law. In fact, primaries were only introduced in New York in the late 20th century. How is a Federal court allowed to rule on a state law issue, especially since the Supreme Court previously held that measures responding to epidemics are matters of state law. I doubt the Supreme Court will get involved in the limited time frame, especially as for the presidential race, the question is moot. The easiest solution would be for the state to change the law to allow a party convention to determine the delegates to the convention, as they did until recently
Yang and Sanders have both ended their campaigns and endorsed Biden. Why do they want to cause us to waste tax money and risk the lives of elections workers? Nobody reads party platforms anyway.
Akuperma, the state already changed its law to allow precisely this result, and now a rogue judge has presumed to overturn it because of some ridiculous “constitutional right”. There is no such right, the judge is wrong, and it needs to be corrected.
But as far as I’m concerned the more internal conflict the Dems have the better.