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Matter of Rosen v. McNab

Court of Appeals of the State of New York
Jun 11, 1969
25 N.Y.2d 798 (N.Y. 1969)

Summary

In Matter of Rosen v McNab (25 N.Y.2d 798, 799) the court stated: "substantial compliance with the Election Law is sufficient.

Summary of this case from Vari v. Hayduk

Opinion

Argued June 11, 1969

Decided June 11, 1969

Appeal from the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the Second Judicial Department, HENRY TASKER, J.

Sheldon J. Sanders for appellants.

George W. Percy, Jr., County Attorney ( Francis J. Costello of counsel), for respondents.


MEMORANDUM. The designating petition filed with the Board of Elections should be validated. In the absence of allegations of fraud substantial compliance with the Election Law is sufficient. The People's will should not be fettered by technicalities requiring precise compliance. In this case Mr. Rosen submitted five petition sheets that were bound together and Mr. Porter submitted three petition sheets that were bound together. Each received a receipt from the Board of Elections attesting to the number of sheets filed. The board's responsibility extends only to the examination of the particular petitions under consideration — and of course any other petitions before the board — for the purpose of ascertaining whether they were signed by a sufficient number of qualified voters. We find that a sufficient number of signatures have been presented to the Board of Elections. Three of the sheets submitted by Mr. Rosen contain 20 signatures on each sheet which is more than the required number under the statute. Two of the sheets submitted by Mr. Porter each contains 20 signatures. Since the preceding enrollment showed 370 voters, no more than 20 were needed to meet the 5% minimum fixed by the Election Law (§ 136). Under the circumstances, even though the sheets were not separately numbered in strict accordance with section 135, the petitions which contain single sheets including sufficient signatures to support the designations sufficiently comply with the statutory requirements.

Chief Judge FULD and Judges BURKE, SCILEPPI, BERGAN, BREITEL and JASEN concur.

Order reversed, without costs, and case remitted to Special Term with directions to grant an order validating the designating petition in a memorandum.


Summaries of

Matter of Rosen v. McNab

Court of Appeals of the State of New York
Jun 11, 1969
25 N.Y.2d 798 (N.Y. 1969)

In Matter of Rosen v McNab (25 N.Y.2d 798, 799) the court stated: "substantial compliance with the Election Law is sufficient.

Summary of this case from Vari v. Hayduk

In Matter of Rosen v McNab (25 N.Y.2d 798, 799) the Court of Appeals stated that "The People's will should not be fettered by technicalities requiring precise compliance."

Summary of this case from Matter of Bayne v. Sachs
Case details for

Matter of Rosen v. McNab

Case Details

Full title:In the Matter of AARON D. ROSEN et al., Appellants, v. EVERETT F. McNAB et…

Court:Court of Appeals of the State of New York

Date published: Jun 11, 1969

Citations

25 N.Y.2d 798 (N.Y. 1969)
303 N.Y.S.2d 660
250 N.E.2d 709

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