LI election controversy raises question: How does a person get on the ballot?

ALBANY – A surprising third-party candidate. A narrow outcome on Election Day. And now, a possible attorney general’s review.

The swirl surrounding the Huntington town supervisor race has prodded all sorts of questions about how 83-year-old Maria Delgado might have played spoiler by running as the Working Families Party candidate and how Democrats missed their chance to block her and perhaps win the race.

But it’s also raised questions about how a person gets on the ballot and the age-old political mischief of ballot hijacking. Here’s what to know:

How does a person get on the ballot?

Generally, a person may be nominated by a party that has a ballot-line in New York – think Democrat, Republican, Conservative or Working Families Party – or by filing a nominating petition. If you don’t have the party nomination, you must go the “independent petition” route.

What does that entail?

Your team or person helping you must gather enough signatures from enrolled members of the party for the ballot-line you want. In short, only Republicans can sign a Republican petition, etc. You must also gather the minimum number of signatures, as required by state election law, to appear on that party’s line in a primary. The number varies by office, from a large number for running for a statewide position such as governor to very small ones for running for local offices. Such as in the Huntington town supervisor race. Delgado ran in a WFP primary in June against Democrat-backed Cooper Macco. To get on the ballot, she needed signatures from 5% of the active enrolled Working Families Party members – 30 people, that’s it.

Who can carry petitions and gather signatures for a candidate?

A: The law sets rules – but they aren’t that onerous. Basically, a party member, a properly registered voter or a notary public can carry petitions, state law and veteran election-law attorneys say. The gatherer must sign a witness statement attesting he/she meets the criteria and actually saw the people signing the petition.

Must the candidate for, say, the WFP primary be a party member?

No, though running as a non-party member is complicated. Delgado initially told Newsday she thought she was a Republican and had no idea she was on the ballot. Records show she is a WFP enrollee, which would make it easy for her to appear on the ballot. If, say, a Republican wanted to have run, that candidate would need an authorization, known as a “Wilson-Pakula” authorization, a step well-known to election lawyers in any party. Basically, it means permission to run in someone else’s party primary. If that had been required in Delgado’s case, it seems election lawyers would have taken notice and maybe objected.

Democrats and WFP members claim Delgado was a straw candidate. Could they have stopped her?

Someone could have challenged the validity of her petitions back in the spring, but apparently didn’t, so Delgado was on the ballot for the June primary. They also could have run an aggressive outreach to get WFP members to vote for Macco. Instead, Delgado won the primary 109-26.

And we know what happened on Election Day.

Macco lost to Republican Ed Smyth, the incumbent, by 602 votes. Delgado garnered 1,195 as the third candidate in the race. Democrats and the WFP are crying foul because, in theory, a significant chunk of Delgado voters might have backed Macco if it were a two-person race, possibly giving the Democrats the victory. Democrats and WFP are often aligned and support the same candidates (just like Republicans’ alliance with Conservatives). But there’s no guarantee all 1,195 Delgado voters would have backed Macco – some party members might support only candidates listed on the WFP line, some might have decided to leave the supervisor race blank altogether.

Attorney General Letitia James’ office said it is looking into the matter. Isn’t it too late?

The time to have removed Delgado from the race passed long ago. Her petitions weren’t invalidated and she won the primary – importantly, courts say a ballot line doesn’t belong to a party so much as the members of a party and the members of the party chose Delgado in June. Even if the probe finds petition fraud was committed, law-enforcement action would likely target the witnesses or signers, not the results of the primary. One avenue is for the AG to pursue a “quo warranto” action when evidence shows the rightful winner of an election was denied office by a “usurper” or person not entitled to the office. The last time this apparently was invoked was in 2001 by then-AG Eliot Spitzer, but the circumstances were much different from Huntington. Then, evidence showed a malfunctioning voting machine reported a White Plains city council candidate received only 39 votes when it should have been well into the hundreds and well-ahead of his rival. After a lengthy court battle, the wronged candidate was installed in office.

By Yancey Roy

yancey.roy@newsday.com@yanceyroy