A federal judge ordered Tuesday that the state of New York hold its previously cancelled, due to COVID-19, Democratic primary in June. This will place Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and other former 2020 candidates back on the ballot.
What We Know:
- U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres of Manhattan ruled in favor of the legal team representing businessman Andrew Yang, who dropped out of the Democratic race in early February.
- Yang’s lawyers had sued the State Board of Elections late last month after it cancelled the state’s primary, which had already been postponed for two months. Due to coronavirus concerns, Sanders was dropped from the presidential primary ballot on June 23 after he dropped out.
- “Democratic Commissioners’ April 27 Resolution removing Yang, Sanders, and eight other Democratic presidential candidates from the ballot deprived them of associational rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution,” Torres wrote in the conclusion of her 30-page ruling.
- New York isn’t alone, dozens of states have postponed their primaries or moved to mail-in or drive-by voting as the pandemic has upended the 2020 election cycle. Despite that, some states have gone forward with their usual in-person voting. Wisconsin, being one of those states, still held its April 7th primary with in-person voting even after efforts to move to mail-in ballots and cases of coronavirus linked to those who went out to vote.
- According to the ruling, it will restore “all ten presidential candidates named in the April 27 Resolution, and their respective slates of delegate candidates, to the New York Democratic presidential primary ballot, and requires that the primary election be held on June 23, 2020.”
Aside from Yang and Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bennet and Amy Klobuchar will have their places restored. Others include Tulsi Gabbard, Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer will also appear on the presidential primary ballot this summer.
