Yanging our chain

There’s a reason that the courtroom will be empty when Manhattan Federal Appeals Judges Amalya Kearse, Dennis Jacobs and José Cabranes get on the phone for today’s oral argument in Andrew Yang’s dangerous effort to make New York hold a completely superfluous presidential primary next month. It’s that coronavirus has killed 27,567 New Yorkers so far.

Once, there were 11 Democrats vying on the New York ballot. Over time, 10 of them dropped out, including Yang and Bernie Sanders, with each one backing the sole remaining contender, Joe Biden. The contest is over.

But rather than let the state Board of Elections follow a sane law and remove from the ballot candidates who dropped out, dispensing with a meaningless exercise that would expose voters and poll workers to the virus, Yang sued and got a gullible trial judge to buy his nonsense that the primary must go on. The appeals panel needs to set it right and let the primary go the way of Yang’s campaign.

All of the 10 losers, including Yang and Sanders, were asked by the Board if they wanted to re-start their campaigns. All said no.

This is not a vote for public office, which is sacrosanct. The U.S. Supreme Court has held there is no right to vote in a party primary, which can be closed to non-party members. And there’s definitely no right to hold a primary for quitters.

Yang called his signature policy idea, Universal Basic Income, a “freedom dividend.” This primary would be a stupidity dividend.