May: New York still needs candidate petition reform

Last year we made big strides toward making it easier to vote in New York. Our goal in the state Senate was to go from “worst to first,” so we would no longer have some of the lowest voter participation rates in the country. We enacted early voting and preregistration of 16- and 17-year olds, and we consolidated the state and federal primary elections.

But we still have a system that makes it exceptionally hard for candidates to get on the ballot: the way we gather designating petitions. I want to change that system.