This week- U.S. Senate Bill Limits Congressional Reapportionment Base to Citizens, N.Y.C. Charter Revision Election Recommendations, Dropping Out of an Election, Around the Nation, Upcoming Events
CENSUS
U.S. Senate Bill Limits Apportionment to Citizens Only
United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), joined by 17 Republican colleagues, reintroduced the Equal Representation Act legislation to ensure that only legal citizens are factored into the count for Congressional district reapportionment and the Electoral College map that determines presidential elections. Hagerty’s legislation joins the effort by House Republicans (H.R. 151) to also limit congressional reapportionment to a citizen population base and to add a citizenship question to the 2030 decennial census.
ELECTIONS
N.Y.C. Charter Revision Recommendations
After a series of public hearings, the 2025 New York City Charter Revision Commission (CRC) released its interim report on July 1st, including five proposals that the Commission may choose to put to New York City voters: four on housing and land use, and one on elections. The Commission also invites further testimony as it considers a shift to open primaries.
The Commission is proposing an amendment to move the City’s primary and general election dates to even-numbered years, so that City elections are held in the same year as federal presidential elections. This reform is intended to improve voter turnout, make local democracy more inclusive, and save taxpayer money.
According to the report, a shift to even year elections would also help ensure that New York’s voters represent the diversity of its people. An analysis by political scientist Dr. Lisa Handley, who has completed numerous studies on New York City voting patterns in the past, concluded in her report that a shift to even-year elections “is likely to benefit minority voters by substantially increasing their turnout.”
In an analysis of Dr. Handley’s report, a legal report from the Paul Weiss law firm also finds that a shift from odd-year voting to even year elections and a change from a closed primary to an open one- are likely to increase voter participation and are unlikely to dilute minority voting strength. Approval of any changes in the city’s voting laws are subject to the state’s new Vorting Rights Act preclearance requirements and would have to be submitted to the state Attorney General for approval. Further, the odd to even year change would be subject to a state constitutional amendment.
Another question would require the city to consolidate the functions of the five borough maps into one unified City Map under the jurisdiction of the Department of City Planning (DCP) by January 1, 2028. DCP would administer the City Map change process, working with land use applicants before, during, and after formal public review to ensure consistency and accuracy as the City Map changes over time.
Currently, the City Map consists of five different sets, one for each borough, totaling over 8,000 individual paper maps. The City Map establishes locations of street lines and widths, street names, and legal grades, as well as the locations of mapped parkland and public places. Consolidation of the five boroughs into New York City took place in 1898, but a unified City Map of all five boroughs has never been adopted.
The Commission is also considering sending a question to the voters to establish open primaries for city elections, in which all voters and all candidates participate, regardless of party membership. The commission offers several reasons for open primaries: 1.a shift to open primaries would be intended to give the over one million unaffiliated voters in New York City a more effective voice in city government; 2. open primaries may increase turnout in local elections; 3. opening New York’s closed primary system to unaffiliated voters would likely make the electorate more representative. 4. open primaries can increase electoral competition; and 5. open primaries can encourage candidates to appeal to a broader cross-section of New Yorkers.
The Commission has until July 21 to submit its final recommendations to the voters. A public meeting is scheduled for this purpose on July 21 (see events below)
Dropping Out is Hard to Do by Jerry H. Goldfeder
Ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo, having lost the Democratic Party primary election for New York City Mayor, is weighing whether he will compete in the general election. Whatever he decides, his name will be on voters’ ballots this November.
For many years, I and others have written extensively about ballot access – the arcane rules candidates must comply with to run for public office – and have advocated liberalizing the law.
In New York, almost all candidates for office must circulate petitions to get on the primary or general election ballot – securing a prescribed number of valid signatures from the pertinent jurisdiction; assiduously completing the required information on the petition; and perfectly binding and filing them to pass muster with the Board of Elections.
In short, there are plenty of procedural hoops that candidates must jump through just to be able to run for office. That is why there are often challenges to candidates’ petitions, filling court dockets year after year.
Unlike New York, some states have allowed the option of a modest filing fee to get on the ballot, an alternative I have repeatedly suggested which has thus far fallen on deaf ears. At least, however, because our state’s municipalities are permitted to enact their own election procedures, New York City has dramatically reduced the number of signatures required for candidates.
But although tomes have been written about getting on the ballot, there has been precious little attention paid to the rules for getting off the ballot.
Once a petition (or other certificate of nomination) has been filed for a candidate, New York law permits a candidate to “decline” and have their name removed from the ballot. But candidates have only several days after the filing to do this.
Once this deadline has passed, their name is on the ballot whether or not they are campaigning or have decided to drop out of the race. This is precisely what New York City voters are facing this year as Cuomo makes up his mind.
In fact, Cuomo faced this issue before. In 2002, he was a candidate for governor in both the Democratic party and now-extinct Liberal party primaries. Toward the end of the Democratic primary campaign, Cuomo withdrew from the race and backed the favorite, H. Carl McCall.
Too late to have his name removed from the primary ballot, he received approximately 14% of the Democratic primary vote. On the other hand, he “won” the Liberal Party primary because he had no opponent, and thus was on the general election ballot though no longer an active candidate.
The law at the time did not permit him to remove his name from the Liberal Party line in the general election. As a result, he received about 15,000 votes out of 4.5 million cast, obviously not enough to make a difference in the outcome.
As it turns out, if this scenario occurred today, as a result of the election law having been recently amended, Cuomo would be able to withdraw from the second line after losing the Democratic party primary.
As a practical matter, this means that a candidate running in the Democratic primary who already has the Working Families Party nod, or one running in the Republican Party primary who is already on the Conservative Party line, to withdraw from the general election as the minor party nominee if they lose the major party primary.
Assuming the party and the candidate agree, the intent and effect of the law is to allow the minor party to nominate the winner of the major party to avoid a split between its candidate and the major party’s nominee.
Similarly, a candidate like Cuomo in 2025 running in the Democratic Party and on a so-called independent line, such as his “Safe and Affordable” party, could withdraw from the independent ballot line after losing the Democratic primary.
In either case, there is a strict statutory time-line.
In this year’s mayoral election, Cuomo had only three days after the primary to do so, and he chose not to. Thus voters will be able to vote for him irrespective of whether or not he decides to wage a campaign.
Of course, this strict time-line makes little sense when the primaries are in June and the general election is in November. There is no reason the law cannot be amended to allow a candidate more time to decide whether to pursue a campaign or remove their name from the ballot.
The only hard deadline should be when ballots must be printed, which is approximately a month before the election.
Sometimes these artificial deadlines require ad hoc fixes. For example, in 2022, when Governor Kathy Hochul was running for re-election, along with her running mate, Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, he got indicted – and it was long past the deadline for him to withdraw from the ballot.
As a result, within a matter of just a few weeks, the legislature changed the law, allowing a candidate who has been arrested or indicted for a misdemeanor or felony to remove their name from the ballot. Thus, with Benjamin’s permission, the Democrats were able to replace him by nominating Antonio Delgado as their Lt. Governor candidate.
A similar situation occurred in New Jersey in 2002 during the re-election campaign of United States Senator Robert Torricelli. Embroiled in an ethics scandal, Democrat Torricelli opted to withdraw from the ballot, but announced this only thirty six days before the general election, fifteen days past the statutory deadline to do so.
The Democratic Party immediately brought a lawsuit seeking a declaration that this late withdrawal was permissible under the state’s election law. Although this effort was fiercely opposed by the Republicans who wished to run against a tainted Torricelli, the Supreme Court of New Jersey nevertheless held that Torricelli’s late withdrawal could be done because it was consistent with the intent of the law and in the interest of the people of New Jersey.
Putting aside these inventive legislative and judicial contrivances, New York has a somewhat unique loophole to allow candidates to withdraw from a race beyond the strict statutory deadline. It’s what I call the candidate “switcheroo.”
The premise is that a candidate cannot simultaneously run for two incompatible offices. So if a party and candidate agree to have their name removed from, say, a mayoral ballot, they can, as a first step, be nominated for another office. And inasmuch as they are now candidates for two offices, they can then withdraw from the first, and have the party replace them with someone else.
We are undoubtedly about to see this occur in the 2025 mayoral race. The Working Families Party’s candidate for mayor is a law professor, but she is a placeholder – giving the WFP time to see who won the Democratic Party primary for mayor.
Next month, assuming my prediction is correct, she will be nominated by a WFP judicial convention to run for Supreme Court Justice–her second nomination. She will then be able to decline the mayoral nomination, and the party will be able to nominate another person for mayor, presumably the Democratic Party nominee, Zohran Mamdani.
This work-around is not unusual at all. In fact, the current Bronx District Attorney originally became a candidate for that office as a result of this process. Such switcheroos, however, only underscore the fact that our Election Law time-lines are impractical and unreasonable.
Over the years Albany has laudably reformed New York’s laws to make it much easier for candidates to get on the ballot. It makes sense for state leg
Jerry H. Goldfeder is the Director of the Voting Rights & Democracy Project at Fordham Law School. Republished with the author’s permission.
VOTING RIGHTS ACT
N.Y. Attorney General’s Office Preclearance
There was no preclearance activity in the past week.
Numbers refer to submission numbers
All submissions can be viewed at: https://nyvra-portal.ag.ny.gov/
AROUND THE NATION
LOUISIANA: In May, plaintiffs in a case involving black Louisiana voters filed a motion seeking the appointment of a special master to redraw state house and state senate maps due to the Louisiana legislature’s failure to do so. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana decided that the appointment of a special master is unnecessary. Any party may refile the motion after the Court’s remedial evidentiary hearing, which is set to commence on August 25th.
MISSISSIPPI: The state now intends to seek to overturn part of a recent federal court decision that found Mississippi’s current legislative redistricting plan dilutes Black voting power—the three-member Mississippi Board of Election Commissioners filed a document on Thursday stating its intent to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
According to State Newsroom, the state attorney general’s office filed the appeal on behalf of the state. However, the office has not filed a substantive briefing that outlines which portion of the order will be appealed. A representative in Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office stated that the appeal “will only present a narrow legal issue.”
This order required Mississippi to “conduct do-over elections” in fourteen legislative districts in response to the dilution of Black voting power, and the appeal will not disrupt these upcoming special elections. The party primaries are scheduled for August.
UPCOMING EVENTS
NYC Charter Revision Commission
The New York City Charter Revision Commission will hold a public meeting on Monday, July 21, 2025, at 1 p.m. The meeting will be held at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission Public Hearing Room, 253 Broadway, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10007. Government-issued identification is required to enter the building.
A final public hearing will be held in Manhattan today in the Langston Hughes Auditorium at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Boulevard.
Comments can also be sent to: https://www.nycopenprimary.com/take-action-crc
INSTITUTE RESOURCES
The New York Elections, Census and Redistricting Institute has archived many resources for the public to view on our Digital Commons Page.
Our Redistricting Resources page contains resources on the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act. You can access the page
here: https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/redistricting_resources/
Archived Updates can be accessed
here: https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/redistricting_roundtable_updates/
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The N.Y. Elections, Census & Redistricting Institute is supported by grants from the New York Community Trust, New York Census Equity Fund and the New York City Council. This report was prepared by Jeff Wice and Alexis Marking.