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CUOMO SAYS, "BLAME THE DEMOCRATS!"

We've been tracking the status of Lopez Torres v. New York State Board of Elections , a dispute which has made it way to our nation's highest court.

In a brief filed with the United State Supreme Court , on August 17, 2007,  Andrew M. Cuomo , Attorney General of the State of New York , has argued that any dysfunction with regard to the selection of New York State Supreme Court Justices is not due to any infirmity with the state's Election Laws, but with the party system itself.

Cuomo notes in his brief, as follows:

If the system has been hijacked by party leaders to serve their own interests rather than the party's, it is up to the party members to reign in those leaders. The solution is not, as the lower courts did here, to invalidate the statutes on their face and replace the Legislature's chosen nomination system with an entirely different one.

Andrew, you gotta be kidding!

The ugly reality, of course, is that rank-and-file party members are powerless to combat the whim of entrenched politicians and the established power structure. And, the current convention-based system has been rendered more of a rubber-stamping "exercise" rather than a truly open, deliberative, and "democratic" selection process.

Direct primary elections are the only way to ensure that the people of our great state are afforded a true voice in the selection of judicial officers. Neither nominating conventions controlled by "party hacks," or, an appointive system controlled by "insiders" who are equally suspectible to "corruptive" influences is an acceptable alternative.

For a copy of the State Attorney General's brief, please use this link: Reply Brief for Petitioner Attorney General of the State of New York as Statutory Intervenor

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For our other blog posts on this topic, please use this link: Lopez-Torres

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