Opinion ID: 788367
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: New York State's Voter Enrollment Scheme

Text: 5 New York law states that a political organization which supports candidates for public office shall be designated as either a party or an independent body. A political organization is designated as a party, with all of the benefits that accrue to such categorization, if at the last gubernatorial election such organization's candidate for governor received at least 50,000 votes. See N.Y. Elec. Law § 1-104(3). A political organization is designated as an independent body if its candidate for governor received fewer than 50,000 votes in the last gubernatorial election. See id. § 1-104(12). Both a party and an independent body under the election law refer to what are more colloquially known as political parties. For the sake of clarity, we will use the upper-case term Party when referring to a political party that qualifies for the designation of party under New York law, and political party or independent body when referring to an organization that fails to qualify for the party designation. 6 A number of unique benefits accrue to a Party. First, only a Party can automatically place a candidate on the ballot for statewide election without first undertaking the burden of a special petition drive in order to do so. See id. §§ 6-104, 6-138(1). Further, a Party may choose their statewide candidate in a closed primary election, while an independent organization may not. Id. § 1-104(9). A closed primary is an election in which only those voters enrolled as members of that particular Party are allowed to vote. For such an election to take place, the state, the Party, and the local boards of elections who administer primaries must be able to identify whether a voter is actually a member of a given Party and thus eligible to participate in the primary. New York's enrollment scheme allows registered voters to enroll in Parties, see id. § 5-210(5)(k)(vi), and requires the publication of voter enrollment information to facilitate such identification. See id. § 5-302(4) — (5). 7 When plaintiffs brought their suit (and still today with respect to any non-party to this suit), the voter registration form — which a voter must fill out in order to register to vote in New York — allowed those filling out the form to enroll as a member of a Party and included a box to check for each political organization that qualified as a Party. See id. § 5-210(5)(k)(vi). The form had an extra box for voters who did not wish to enroll in any Party. Id. The registration form noted that in order to vote in a primary election, a voter had to be enrolled in a Party. Id. § 5-210(5)(f). There was no box labeled other, or any other way for a voter to enroll in or express an affiliation with another political organization. 8 New York law further requires the local boards of elections to process the voter registration forms and to maintain and make available to the public registration lists indicating the names and addresses of all registered voters for each election district over which the boards have jurisdiction. Id. § 5-602. Local boards must also make enrollment lists available to the public, and such lists must include the voters' names, addresses and Party affiliation (or list the voter as non-affiliated). Id. §§ 5-602(1), 5-604(1). Currently, the enrollment lists do not indicate voters' affiliation with other political parties, and thus do not indicate whether a voter has been affiliated with a political party in the past that either never enjoyed the Party designation or at one time was designated a Party, but subsequently lost the Party status. Parties use these enrollment lists to conduct closed primaries, but they also use the lists for many other purposes, such as identifying new voters, processing voter information, organizing and mobilizing Party members, fundraising, and other activities that influence the political process. 9 As noted above, if a Party fails to receive 50,000 votes for its gubernatorial candidate in an election, it will be treated as an independent body, and not a Party, in the next election. In connection with this change in status of the political body, the local boards must erase the enrollment information of any member of a former Party and change the status of that individual to non-affiliated on the registration poll record. See id. § 5-302(1). Plaintiff political party members claim that, as a practical matter, § 5-302(1) thus deprives them of the ability to declare publicly their political affiliation, and to have that affiliation maintained and publicized in the enrollment lists. They additionally maintain that the challenged law deprives them of the ability to use the enrollment list information to conduct party building activities.