Writing-In Candidates in a One-Candidate Election

In 2013, the Bi-Partisan (Republican & Democrat) Suffolk Board of Elections threw the Libertarian Candidates, off the Ballot.  (for 2017 info go to ChrisGarvey4DA.blogspot.com  )

You had to write-in the Libertarian Candidates on the paper ballots:

1. Gene Farmer for Treasurer; 
2. Christopher B. Garvey for District Attorney; 
3. Michael R. Houze for Sheriff. 

Look for the Write-in space in the column under that office,  and 
write-in the name of your choice.
In fact, you can write-in anyone you want. It's not as though the ballot presents you with a lesser-of-two-evils. All five of the major parties have placed the same incumbents on the ballot, in this Stalinist Election.

There were There were 648 write-in votes, .38%, for District Attorney.

District Attorney (Vote for 1)

SUFFOLK: reported:	1,052 of 1,052	100.00%
Ballots:	207,343
Thomas J Spota III (DEM, REP, CON, IND)	181,082	99.64%
DEM	77,859	42.84%
REP	68,521	37.70%
CON	23,902	13.15%
IND	10,800	5.94%
Write-in	648	0.36%
Total	181,730	100.00%

blank, void, or missing:                                     25,613
http://apps.suffolkcountyny.gov/boe/eleres/13ge/unofficialsummary.html#1003

The NY Ballot Access Laws are designed to protect the Party Bosses from competition.

The Bi-partisan Board of Elections is:

1.  a person appointed by the Republican Party Boss, and
2.  a person appointed by the Democrat Party Boss.

No one represents any smaller parties.
 
If you sue the Board, the Judge who will decide your case is nominated & cross-endorsed every 7 years by the same Party Bosses.
To get on the ballot, you must collect as many as 15,000 valid signatures for some offices.
Thousands of signatures must be collected in just six weeks.
To better your odds of surviving an objection, you should try to double the number of signatures. 
In  Nassau, the local board refused, for weeks of the brief petition period,  to advise candidates what the minimum number was.
Signatures are subject to disqualification for any of many picayune "problems", that have nothing to do with forgery.
Signatures are invalidated by, among other things: 

1. an overwrite, 
2. a crossout,
3. a correction not initialed,
4. a correction not dated,
5. poor penmanship, 
6. a thick line in a letter or number,  
7. "invalid" adddress
8. incomplete address, 
9. printed name,
10. signature variations that occur when signing on a clipboard,
11. using your village, hamlet, or post office in your address, instead of the required naming of:
1. your town in some places, or 
2. your city in other places, or 
3. your county in New York City,
12. a correction in a witness statement, 
13. an overwrite in a witness statement, 
14. a crossout in a witness statement,
15. a thick line in a letter or number in a witness statement,
16. not tallying the number of signatures on the page,  
17. a petition page not sequentially page numbered,
18. volume cover doesn't meet with format preferred by local board (which is not posted on the local Board's website),
19. not meeting local guidelines  (which are not posted on the local Board's website),
20. Witnesses have been disqualified for errors and oversights.

I've spoken to candidates, who have been intimidated into withdrawing, by threats of vote fraud charges relating to witness errors. Most innocent people fear the hazard and expense of criminal charges, despite their actual innocence.

In two elections,  local government  officials have declared the long-existing apartments of Libertarian candidates to be illegal, within days of petitions being filed.

Any voter in your election can object your petitions, so you don't know who is really behind the objection.
If the Board of Elections decides on Tuesday that the Objection is valid, they advise you with a one-page letter, mailed first-class Tuesday night. Details of their decision are not included.
You have till Friday (that's 3 days from when they make that decision, which might be days before you actually receive the decision) to:

1. obtain copies of their work sheets, which they won't let you copy,
2. determine where they are wrong,
3. write a lawsuit called a Petition, specifying "with particularity" the hundreds of errors the Board made,
4. File the Petition with the County Clerk, with a $305 fee,
5. go to Supreme Court, find a judge, and obtain a signed show cause order,
6. Serve that order:
1. on all the possibly many objectors (who often deliberately make themselves scarce), and 
2. on the Board of Elections, who won't open their doors after 5 PM. 

Your Supreme Court Judge is nominated & cross-endorsed every 7 years by said Party Bosses. If the Party Bosses don't nominate the Judge at the end of his current term, he becomes unemployed.

If your Judge can find a procedural  reason to dismiss your case, he doesn't need to review the hundreds or thousands of signatures in question.

NY Election Law wastes more court time, on  election cases, than does any other state.

NJ only requires payment of a small fee to get on the ballot. NJ doesn't have a "crowded" or  "confusing" ballot. But, the NY Boards of Election often design deliberately confusing ballots to disadvantage opponents of the incumbents.

When a system often results in one-candidate elections, it has overshot it's stated goal of avoiding "confusing" ballots, and is being used to effectively eliminate democracy.
As a result of NY’s Ballot Access laws, in 2013, as in 2009, there are three County elections in Suffolk that have only one candidate on the ballot.
NY Election Law is really designed to eliminate the voters’ choices, and to thereby protect the Party Bosses, and their anointed candidates, from competition by better candidates.  Eliminating voter choice is the real purpose of NY Election Laws, and is the actual result.