Lawsuit Claims New York Primary Was Unconstitutional [Document]

new york votes

Not everyone was able to vote in the New York election. (Getty)

Attorney Mark Warren Moody has filed a class-action lawsuit in New York claiming that the closed primary is unconstitutional according to state law. After an hour of oral arguments were heard, the judge decided to take the weekend to think over the hearing, according to Jordan Chariton of The Young Turks.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled against a temporary restraining order to stop the certification, Chariton reported. But he also said that “the Court still has an open mind as to whether petitioner might ultimately prevail on the merits… Petitioner may be entitled to declaratory relief; but this Court finds… given what an uphill battle he faces … he is not entitled to stop the gears that are already in motion…”

Moody’s lawsuit is different from the lawsuit filed by Election Justice USA, which seeks to have provisional and affidavit ballots counted due to purges and other errors that caused voters to lose their registration or have their party affiliation changed entirely.

You can the entire PDF of Moody’s memo seeking injunctive relief below:

In his memo, Moody wrote about Ivanka and Eric Trump not being able to vote:

They are among the most privileged (financially at least) people in America. Their father is worth (at least) north of one billion dollars, and he’s running for President of the United States. Mr. Trump’s own army of lawyers and advisors could not, however, advise his children of the October 9, 2015 date. Put differently, Mr. Trump’s children are – under any reckoning – amongst the least likely people ever to be disfranchised. Yet in the 2016 New York State primary (together with approximately three million (3,000,000,000) other New Yorkers) they were…”

He added that back in October, when the party affiliations originally had to be changed, few Americans had heard of Bernie Sanders and few believed that Donald Trump had a chance at being the nominee. It was ridiculous to require voters to know what they wanted their party affiliation to be all the way back in October.

The New York constitution, he went on to say, “provides more rigorous protection to voters than the United States Constitution.” That right must be protected.

He also addressed the concerns of “party raiding” where voters of one party try to get an unelectable candidate chosen for the rival party:

Why shouldn’t the right to vote for someone that you dislike be as absolute as the right to vote for your favored candidate, or the right not to vote at all? It’s YOUR vote – in other words your ‘core political speech.'”

He added that the closed primary rules are mostly hurtful to Independent voters.

It is obvious that the two political parties would like to lock up closed primaries for only those loyal to them, but that is certainly not a “state interest” … it imposes heavily upon one of New Yorkers’ most hallowed and cherished rights: our right to vote; not to mention being absolutely contrary to and in derogation of the dictates of the New York State Constitution.”