(The Center Square) — A Democratic challenger will remain on the ballot in New York’s 17th Congressional District even after a state judge invalidated hundreds of ballots amid claims of fraud in the signature gathering process.
On Wednesday, state Supreme Court Judge David Fried ruled that Democrat Effie Phillips‑Staley had enough valid petition signatures to stay on the Democratic ballot, despite more than 800 signatures being invalidated.
Incumbent Rep. Mike Lawler’s campaign sued to knock Phillips‑Staley off the ballot, alleging that the signature-gathering process to qualify her for the Democratic primary was fraught with fraud.
In the ruling, Fried said the Lawler campaign failed to prove that Phillips-Staley was directly involved in submitting fraudulent signatures on behalf of her campaign, singling out a rogue petition gatherer who submitted potentially fraudulent signatures. He said his review of the allegations found that the individual’s conduct — while “reprehensible” — was an “outlier” in the campaign’s paid signature gathering process.
“He is but one person of a total of 108 people who gathered signatures from the designating petition,” Fried wrote. “In other words, he accounts for a mere 0.9% of the total petition carriers who gathered signatures and that is not permeation.”
Fried invalidated 829 signatures — including 501 gathered by a single petition gatherer — but said Phillips-Staley still had 2,058 valid signatures, enough to qualify her for the ballot. He said the more than 800 invalidated signatures didn’t show that the process was “permeated” with fraud which under New York elections laws is the standard to knock a candidate off the ballot.
Despite that, Fried also ordered a transfer of the court’s record of the case to district attorneys representing the 17th Congressional District to investigate allegations of fraud.
Lawler said the judge’s ruling “made clear that her campaign allowed numerous individuals to fraudulently collect signatures.” He called on the Westchester District Attorney’s office and the FBI to open a criminal investigation into the allegations of fraud.
“While some will try to gloss over that fact and say the petition was not permeated with fraud based on prior case law, the fact that a candidate for Congress would file hundreds of fraudulent signatures is beyond disqualifying,” Lawler posted on social media Wednesday. “The ultimate question for every candidate in this race, what level of fraud is permissible?”
Phillips‑Staley is one of several Democrats buying for the party’s nomination to challenge Lawler in the midterm elections in the Hudson Valley region congressional district.
While the ruling is likely to be appealed by Lawler’s campaign, Phillips‑Staley declared victory in the legal fight and vowed that she would be on the June 23 Democratic primary ballot.
“Today Mike Lawler was overwhelmingly defeated in his desperate effort to disenfranchise thousands of Democratic voters and silence more than 100 volunteers who powered my grassroots petition campaign,” she said in a statement. “This embarrassing loss exposed the lengths to which Mike Lawler will follow the MAGA playbook to subvert our democracy.”
New York’s 17th district is one of several highly competitive races on the state’s ballot in next year’s midterm elections. The purple district has swung back-and-forth between Republicans and Democrats over the past two decades. A Cook Political Report recently shifted its rating for the 17th District race from “lean Republican” to a “toss up” in the midterms.
