Eric Sundwall, the Libertarian candidate in the 20th Congressional District Special Election, might not make in onto the ballot after all, as the State Board of Elections prepares to address objections to the signatures he collected.
Board of Elections Commissioners will meet Wednesday, March 25, at noon, to review the status of Sundwall’s petitions. The meeting will be Webcast at www.elections.state.ny.us. Sundwall’s name could be removed from the ballot should they decide he has fewer than the 3,500 voter signatures required.
Only our commissioners can make a determination as to the status of a petition, said Bob Brehm, a spokesman for the Board of Elections.
An initial review of the 6,530 signatures that Sundwall submitted found only 2,944 to be valid. Donald Neddo ofWaterford and Laurie Kelly Sickles of Ballston Spa both brought objections forth.
Signatures can be removed from a petition for a number of reasons, the most common being that the individual is not eligible to vote in the district or that they are not registered to vote at the address they signed with. Sundwall’s petition was invalidated in the 2006 20th Congressional race in this fashion.
Calls to the Sundwall Campaign were not immediately returned. A blog posting on Sundwall’s Web site dated today indicates he will refer all media inquiries to an abridged version of Albert Camus’s `The Myth of Sisyphus,` a Greek mythological figure condemned by the gods to forever repeat the task of pushing a rock up a mountain, only to see it roll back down.“