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1 Canceling an Election during a Pandemic 1 (2020)

handle is hein.congcourts/fjcanc0001 and id is 1 raw text is: CASE STUDIES IN EMERGENCY ELECTION LITIGATION Canceling an Election During a Pandemic Yang v. New York State Board of Elections (1:20-cv-3325) and Key v. Cuomo (1:20-cv-3533) (Analisa Torres, S.D.N. Y.) Because all but one candidate for a party's presidential nomination had announced suspension of their campaigns, and in light of a global infectious pandemic, election officials in New York canceled the party's 2020 presidential primary election, leaving in place pri- mary elections for other offices in most of the state's counties. A dis- trict judge and the court of appeals concluded that it was unconsti- tutional to remove from the ballots candidates who had merely sus- pended their campaigns. Subject: Election dates. Topics: Enjoining elections; COVID-19; primary election; getting on the ballot; intervention; absentee ballots; party procedures; class action. At a time of widespread social distancing, both mandatory and voluntary, be- cause of the global COVID-19 infectious pandemic, New York's governor an- nounced on March 28, 2020, that the state's April 28 presidential primary elec- tion would be moved to June 23, the same day as primary elections for other offices.1 On April 27, at a time when all major candidates but former Vice President Joe Biden had already left the race, the state's board of elections de- cided to remove from the state's Democratic primary election the presidential primary election.2 Using newly enacted authority, election officials removed from the presidential primary ballot all candidates who had suspended their campaigns, leaving Biden as the only candidate and declaring him the winner.3 In twenty of the state's sixty-two counties, the office of president was the only office on the ballot, so voters in those counties would be spared a trip to the polls.4 On April 28, Andrew Yang, a Biden challenger earlier in the election sea- son, and seven other voters filed an emergency class-action federal complaint in the Southern District of New York against the board of elections, seeking restoration of the election of delegates to the presidential nominating conven- tion.' 1. Yang v. Kosinski, 960 F.3d 119, 125 (2d Cir. 2020); Yang v. Kellner, 458 F. Supp. 3d 199, 204 (S.D.N.Y. 2020); see Presidential Primary, N.Y. Times, Mar. 29, 2020, at 9; Stephen Wil- liams, Cuomo Delays Primary, Schenectady Daily Gazette, Mar. 29, 2020, at 1. 2. Yang, 960 F.3d at 123, 125-26; see Stephanie Saul & Nick Corasaniti, Sanders Camp Fumes as New York Cancels Primary, N.Y. Times, Apr. 28, 2020, at A18; see Yang, 960 F.3d at 123 (noting that candidates other than Biden had chosen to 'suspend,' rather than formally terminate, their campaigns). 3. Yang, 458 F. Supp. 3d at 204-05. 4. See Saul & Corasaniti, supra note 2. 5. Complaint, Yang v. N.Y. State Bd. of Elections, No. 1:20-cv-3325 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 28, 2020), D.E. 1; Yang, 960 F.3d at 126; Yang, 458 F. Supp. 3d at 202, 205; see First Amended Complaint, id. (May 1, 2020), D.E. 18. Federal Judicial Center 11/4/2020 1

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