Dawidziak: Now, governor, fix election laws

Michael Dawidziak is a political consultant and pollster.

The primary election is over, and the slates for the November election are settled. But before we move on to the carnage of the general election, let's spend a little time talking about the need to change New York's arcane and restrictive election laws. If Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is looking for a follow-up to his impressive list of governmental miracles, election-law reform fits the bill.

The state has pretty much resisted all attempts at election reform for its entire history -- that sort of challenge should be irresistible to Cuomo. Much like his championing of the property tax cap, same-sex marriage and ethics reform, he's bound to get plenty of intraparty and legislative resistance.

Our election laws are basically a major-party protection scheme, and ballot access should be the first thing updated. We teach our children the quaint notion that anybody can become president of the United States. In New York, kids grow up to discover that, without major-party backing, it's nearly impossible to run for dogcatcher.

Would-be independent candidates now must collect an onerous number of signatures -- from a couple thousand in a town-based race to 15,000 to run statewide (and getting double the requirement is prudent) -- in just 38 midsummer days. These signatures are then subject to legal challenges for obscure and arbitrary reasons. The time restriction and number of signatures required should be made more realistic. The purpose of the law shouldn't be to restrict access to the electoral process, but to ensure its fairness. The laws should also be updated to spell out clearly what would invalidate a petition signature.

It's time, too, for the state's residents to have the power to recall their elected representatives. This tool, when used correctly, can be a powerful incentive for politicians to do their jobs. If the ability to recall had been in place, New York's 2009 Senate leadership crisis would have been settled a lot faster. To avoid the freak show of the numerous recalls ongoing in Wisconsin, New York should follow many other states and limit the basis of a recall to malfeasance or dereliction of duty.

And it's time for New Yorkers to have the recourse of initiative and referendum. These enable voters to put an issue directly on the ballot or to strike down an existing law by majority vote. In states that have initiative and referendum, the large number of petitions required ensures that only the most serious of matters are placed on the ballot. And the judiciary can provide checks and balances if voters approve an unconstitutional measure. This one measure could allow the other election reforms to actually come to pass.

If this all seems radical, understand that these reforms are more than 100 years old. They were born out of the Progressive Party movement at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. While about half the states adopted these measures at the time, predictably New York, controlled by Tammany Hall, did not.

The Progressives saw many of their reforms written into law, but it was a symbolic victory. Fearful of their growing power -- especially the popularity of their most famous convert, Teddy Roosevelt -- most states passed laws barring cross-endorsement. Preventing a candidate from appearing on more than one party ballot line ensured that the Progressives could not become a true major third party. Once again, New York has gone against the norm, but in this case, we mostly got it right. Cross endorsements give a welcome voice to other factions not necessarily aligned with the two major parties. But a commonsense restriction would be to prohibit candidates from appearing on both major party lines, as we saw in the last election for Suffolk County executive with Steve Levy, to take one example.

It seems unlikely that the political parties would reform laws that were written to protect their own monopoly on government. But this has been a year of miracles in Albany. Just maybe, one more is in order.