Minor parties’ burden
For ballot status they now need 130,000 votes, or 2 percent of votes cast.
Martin Babinec suspects that after November’s election, New Yorkers will be left with fewer political choices.
Amid a global public health crisis, a court decision upheld New York's move to increase the number of votes that a political party needs to maintain, or obtain, official party status. It was a change that came out of a ninemember election reform commission appointed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and legislative leaders last year.
To maintain ballot status political parties in New York now need 130,000 votes, or 2 percent of votes cast, in the most recent presidential or gubernatorial election.
Despite the clear battle ahead, Babinec — who founded the Upstate Jobs Party in 2016 while running an unsuccessful campaign for Congress — aims to give New Yorkers a choice in state politics and achieve party status.
“If not now, when? If not us, who?” Babinec said. “It’s never a good time to do something that is really hard, but our sights are set on 2022 and we don’t have a prayer at becoming a party unless we pedal hard and build one relationship at a time to find other like-minded people who can appreciate that there is value in working outside the two parties.”
While the Upstate Jobs Party has yet to make it on the ballot in New York, the political party has ramped up its efforts to support candidates and incumbents in elections across the state, from local races to the state Legislature.
This year the party announced the endorsement of 16 incumbents and candidates for state Senate and Assembly, including, in the Capital Region, Democratic Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara, Republican Sen. Daphne Jordan and Republican candidate Rich Amedure, who is running for the 46th Senate District seat against Democratic candidate Michelle Hinchey.
The party has seen success among the candidates they have supported, including Jordan, who was endorsed by the party in 2018, and Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh, who successfully ran as an independent candidate for office with the Upstate Jobs Party’s support. They also have thrown support to candidates for local office, including for various municipal seats across Saratoga County.
New York is staunchly Democratic, with just over 6.5 million voters registered as Democrats to the 2.8 million registered Republicans. Another 2.8 million voters are not registered with a party, according to statewide voter registration. Thousands of other voters are registered with minor political groups, including the Conservative, Independence and Working Families parties.
A new political party, one like the Upstate Jobs Party, which embraces education, economic development and holistic government reform along with supporting the innovation economy, could attract those undecided voters, Babinec said.
Richard Winger, a Californiabased political analyst who publishes and edits Ballot Access News, also anticipates some minor parties falling off the ballot in New York, but election reforms happening in other states could pave the way for third parties gaining traction in future elections.
Maine will be the first state to use ranked-choice voting — in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots — for the presidential election this year. Massachusetts will ask voters in November if they support adopting ranked-choice voting for future elections. And New York City is set to implement ranked-choice voting for local elections in 2021. Meanwhile, multiple cities across the country have also adopted the process.
Ranked-choice voting is intended to allow voters to prioritize their selected candidates, and a winner is declared once a candidate receives over 50 percent of the first-preference votes.
Winger said this could open the door to more third-party choices.
“That might spread a lot and that would free up people to vote for third parties,” he said. “We could be on the threshold of a big change if ranked-choice voting keeps growing in popularity.”
Throughout U.S. history, third parties have played a pivotal role in pushing for reforms, Winger noted, including the Liberty Party, which he said was the first to push for the abolition of slavery, and the Libertarian Party, which pressed for marijuana legalization in the 1970s.
The Working Families Party often touts its efforts to push major political party candidates to take on more progressive initiatives.
New York allows for crossparty endorsements, or fusion voting, which has come under scrutiny recently as the ninemember commission eyed eliminating the option altogether. Critics of the practice argue that it gives minor parties outsized influence, while proponents say it gives voters more choice.
Both the Conservative and Working Families parties have cross-endorsed for president and vice-president nominees: President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence hold the Republican and Conservative lines, while former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris hold the Democratic and Working Families party lines.
Working Families Party state director, Sochie Nnaemeka, said who they endorse “ensures that we have a more progressive, Democratic legislature.”
“In this moment we actually have to be focused on expanding our democracy, which includes expanding the participation of all types of voters and making sure there is choice,” Nnaemeka said. “Third parties and fusion voting play a part in that, and undermining one of those weakens democracy as a whole.”