Twenty years ago I ran for a seat in the New York State Senate.
Well, sort of.
My campaign ended when my petitions were invalidated by the State Board of Elections, an organization ironically vested in ensuring public elections actually did not occur.
There was a hearing for my case, though I was not allowed to attend. I submitted my comments in writing (by fax!), and for the record here they are, contents of a facsimile dated July 25, 2006.
Somebody ought to hear this.
Enjoy.
Facsimile
July 25, 2006
To: Todd Valentine
From: Michael O’Connell Jr., Conservative Party candidate, New York State Senate District 52
Re: O’Connell hearing of July 25, 2006; follow-up to a phone call of July 24, 2006.
Call (607)723-4527 to acknowledge receipt.
To be considered a matter of public record in regards to any hearings or debates concerning petitions filed by Michael O’Connell Jr., Conservative Party candidate for New York State Senate District 52:
On Saturday, July 15, 2006, I, Michael O’Connell Jr., received at my home a copy of a letter sent from a Ms. Margaret Luckert and a Ms. Michaelene Elko to the New York State Board of Elections in Albany. The letter described a “general objection” the women had made concerning my designating petitions, filed several days previous with said office. Ms. Luckert and Ms. Elko are known associates of State Senator Thomas Libous, the current occupant of the seat for which I am running this fall. I will heretofore refer to the objections as “Libous’s objections,” for I find the prospect that the women acted on their own laughable at best.
Several days after I received Libous’s “general objection” I received by registered mail his specific objections. There are no fewer than 90 objections, ranging from my not placing a page number on a particular page to listing a signer’s mailing address rather than his actual geographic area under the heading “Town or City.” Admittedly these are “errors,” though few would fail to recognize the intent of the signer or petitioner. (Using the same standards, my notice of the hearing concerning my petitions held on July 25 would never have reached me, for my official notice is addressed to a Michael O’Connor Jr. I have no idea who this gentleman is or why he would receive mail at my home.)
Libous’s objections to my petitions amount to nothing more than a general objection to my being on the ballot. He objects to fair elections, nothing else. He will hide behind a cloak of technicality offered by the State Board of Elections rather than face actual voters likely to oppose him. He expects the Board to act as a palace guard, protecting the lives and means of incumbents and their fellow travelers. I, on the other hand, would hope that the Board would exist to help regular, unaffiliated citizens obtain ballot access rather than establish hoops, garters, and rings of fire for us to combat.
As someone who is not a sitting office holder and therefore unable to command my taxpayer-financed staff to investigate such matters, I must rely upon information provided by boards of elections. Voter lists provided to me by the Board of Elections in Broome County–all of which is contained in District 52–contained not only misspellings of names, the aforementioned mailing addresses instead of geographic areas, and names of persons who no longer lived in the state, but indeed the names of deceased persons. As one horrific example, an eastside of Binghamton family informed me that a particular registered Conservative Party member still listed on the rolls had been dead for 10 years.
I did not challenge my opponent’s petitions nor did I even seek to view them. I can accept in good faith that the senator’s agents collected signatures and that he deserves a spot on the primary ballot. I find it a bit unsettling that he can do this as someone not officially registered as a Conservative, but he received signatures from registered Conservatives and I am willing to face him in the election.
Libous, on the other hand, wants no part of actual elections. He assumes the Conservative line will be his, not because of the similar ideologies of the two parties, but because the Broome County Conservative Party chairman, Mr. James Thomas, is one of Libous’s paid staffers. I pay Mr. Thomas’s salary as a state employee from 9-5; he moonlights as my political rival. Let us not forget that the two parties–Republican and Conservative–no matter how similar their professed ideologies may be are rival political parties. Were Libous to succeed in invalidating my petitions he would prevent a primary election from occurring in a rival political party. I do not believe boards of elections were established to allow such things to occur.
It did not surprise me in the least that Senator Libous challenged my petitions. A man who routinely makes a mockery of conservatism and small government would, naturally, cry foul to boards and panels and use hypertechnical legalese to skew real-world forces in his favor. Indeed, the general objection referred to above was filed on the same day as the board received my petitions. Considerable man-hours were spent detailing the 90 objections to my petitions, painstaking efforts usually reserved for gold panning or neurosurgery. I’m quite certain most people–including myself–could find better ways to spend their time.
The only seemingly valid claim Libous makes against my petitions is that a number of my signers had signed for him as well. I did not make it a habit to ask my fellow conservatives–who, by the way, favor personal privacy and limited government–whether they had signed their name on a particular piece of paper a month previous. I didn’t even ask whether they had seen any of the hate-filled letters Libous had sent out against me. I visited the people listed on the voter rolls provided to me by the Broome County Board of Elections, introduced myself, and allowed people to sign or refuse to sign.
And for all the high language and detail used in the Designating Petitions–again, issued to me by the Broome County Board of Elections–nowhere does it include anything about a signer’s not having signed other petitions or that a person cannot sign for multiple candidates. Nowhere. The listed qualifications are: duly enrolled voter of the party, entitled to vote in the next primary election, and truly stated place of residence. (I supposed living person is a given.)
In closing, I believe I have done everything necessary to warrant inclusion on the primary ballot this September. I have established a campaign committee, filed the necessary paperwork with the Board of Elections, and submitted signatures to the Board of residents who pledged a desire to see my name on a primary ballot. Furthermore, I am a registered member of the party in question, unlike my opponent who is merely trying to wrest the ballot line from people with whom he shares neither a party affiliation nor an ideology.
Sincerely,
Michael O’Connell Jr.
Binghamton, New York
