Democrats rallying (photo: @PatRyanUC)

UPDATE: On election night, results showed the Working Families Party achieve enough votes on its ballot line for Kathy Hochul to retain its political party status and ballot line in upcoming elections. In response to the New York gubernatorial election results, Director of the New York Working Families Party Sochie Nnaemeka released the following celebratory statement:

“The Working Families Party is proud to have secured more than enough votes to maintain our ballot line and continue fighting for working New Yorkers. Our grassroots volunteers mobilized voters from

Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa, left, & Conservative Party nominee Bill Pepitone

Leaders of New York’s Conservative Party, one of just two so-called third parties in the state with a ballot line, have been jubilant about the 2021 general election results. The party helped win victories in several local races and to defeat three ballot questions that would have made changes to legislative redistricting and voting rights. But the party went its own way in nominating candidates for citywide positions and key races on Staten Island,

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez & NYWFP Director Sochie Nnaemeka (photo: @AOC)

Many of New York’s smaller political parties face an uncertain future after they appear to have failed to garner enough votes to keep an automatic ballot line over the next two years under new rules that went into effect in this election cycle. Only the Working Families Party and the Conservative Party seem to have emerged unscathed, rallying voters to meet new thresholds through votes for their presidential and vice presidential nominees. 

As part of the state budget, the Legislature and

Gov. Cuomo appears interested in seeing the demise of New York's smaller political parties (photo: New York Democratic Party)

Included in the bills to approve a state budget for the new fiscal year beginning April 1 was the creation of a new campaign finance system with a public-matching program, lower individual contribution limits, and various other changes to campaign finance law. But the controversial inclusion of changes to ballot thresholds could prove to be a poison pill, not for the law but for the several minor political parties

Big decisions to be made in the state capitol (photo: Mike Groll/Governor's Office)

A State Supreme Court judge in Niagara County struck down the state’s new campaign finance law which was based on the recommendations of a controversial state-created commission that took effect in December. The state Legislature could not give the commission the authority to make binding changes to state law, the judge

(photo via the Governor's office)

As New York lumbers out of its double primary season and rolls into a general election that’s being closely watched for its potential to give Democrats control of the state Senate and therefore the entire Legislature, another issue more central to the democratic process itself is being debated in pockets across the state.

Fusion voting, the practice of allowing one candidate to take multiple political party ballot lines in a single election and aggregate the votes received on each, is under the gun as both Democratic

Marc Molinaro, left, and Chris Gibson (photo: @marcmolinaro)

The presumptive Republican nominee for governor of New York did not vote for the Republican president of the United States.

One question Marc Molinaro was asked most often in the early weeks of his campaign to replace Governor Andrew Cuomo is whether he voted for Donald Trump in November 2016.

“I did not, I voted for Chris Gibson,” Molinaro told reporters in Albany on April 2, the day of his official campaign launch, naming the former Congressional representative who