Due to some of the most difficult ballot access laws in the United States, the State of New York will have only two candidates on the ballot for President and Vice President of the United States this fall.
New York will be the only state with only two presidential candidates in 2024. Additionally, except for Oklahoma in 2004, 2008 and 2012, no other state has had only two presidential candidates between 1985 and 2024. Oklahoma eased its ballot access laws after 2012 and has five presidential candidates on its ballot in 2024.
There are many presidential candidates with policy positions substantially different than the two older party candidates, Libertarian Chase Oliver among them. But, New York voters can now only express their support for such candidates through write-in votes.
This situation came about due to the New York General Assembly, at the behest of disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo, passing a law in 2020 that tripled the number of signatures, from 15,000 to 45,000, to qualify a statewide candidate slate for the ballot and kept the petitioning period to only six weeks, which is the shortest legal petitioning period in the nation for presidential candidates.
Additionally, the petitioning period was shifted from early July to late August to mid-April to near the end of May. This makes petitioning much more difficult due to poorer weather conditions and many fewer outdoor events, which make for the best petitioning opportunities.
New York is also in a minority of states that only allows voters to sign a petition for one candidate for a given political office. As many voters only pay attention to politics after Labor Day, this is an unfair restriction on voter choices at the ballot box. It also means that candidates trying to get on the ballot have to gather many more signatures than they otherwise would to make sure they have enough unique signers of their petition.
It is also much harder for minor parties to stay on the ballot in New York. The 2020 election law changed the ballot access retention vote test from 50,000 votes for Governor every four years to 2% of the vote for President or Governor every two years to further reduce voter choices in the Empire State.
It is ironic that New York has become more hostile to minor party and independent candidates due to its rich history of electing such candidates. New York elected three minor party nominees for the US House in 1948 and 1949. No minor party nominees, who were not also major party nominees, have been elected to the US House in any state since then.
Also, New York City elected an Independent candidate for Mayor, Vincent Impellitteri, in a special election in 1950, and it reelected John Lindsay as Mayor in 1969, even though he was not the nominee of any party other than the Liberal Party.
The Libertarian Party of New York calls upon the General Assembly to return the state’s petition signature requirements to what they were prior to 2020 (or lower) and to return the vote test for political parties to remain on the New York ballot to 50,000 votes (or lower) for Governor.