XPost: rec.games.chess.politics, alt.politics.republicans, alt.p 
 litics.democrats 
 XPost: alt.politics.bush, soc.culture.usa, alt.politics.democrats.d 
 From: sloan@ishipress.com 
  
 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 
 EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK 
 _______________________________________________________________ 
  
 SAMUEL H. SLOAN, 
  
     Plaintiff, 
  
       Affidavit in Support 
 of Order to Show Cause 
  
       No. 04 Civ. 2791 (DGT) 
  
   -against- 
  
 DIANE HASLETT RUDIANO, GLADYS PEMBERTON, AARON 
 MASLOW, HY SINGER, KING'S COUNTY REPUBLICAN PARTY, 
 ISABELLA JEFFERSON, BROOKLYN REPUBLICANS UNITED 
 FOR NEW LEADERSHIP, NEW YORK REPUBLICAN STATE 
 COMMITTEE, SANDY TREADWELL, PETER S. KOSINSKI, and 
 CAROL BERMAN, NEIL W. KELLERHER, HELENA MOSES 
 DONOHUE and EVELYN J. ACQUILA, Commissioners of Elections, 
 Constituting the New York State Board of Elections, and New York 
 City Commissioners of Elections NERO GRAHAM, FREDERIC M. 
 UMANE, WEYMAN A. CAREY, MICHAEL J. CILMI, MARK B. 
 HERMAN, DOUGLAS A. KELLNER, TERRENCE C. O'CONNOR, 
 NANCY MOTTOLA-SCHACHER, STEPHAN H. WEINER, 
  
     Defendants. 
 _______________________________________________________________ 
  
 Samuel H. Sloan, being duly sworn, states: 
  
 1. I make this affidavit in support of my motion to have my name 
 placed on the ballot as a candidate for Congress for the Tenth 
 Congressional District of New York in the General Election to be held 
 on November 2, 2004. As more fully explained in an accompanying 
 affidavit I have styled as "Affidavit in Opposition to the Affidavit 
 of Aaron Maslow", I was nominated by the Republican Party as a 
 candidate for US Congress for the Tenth Congressional District. The 
 main reason I was nominated was that they had no other candidate. If 
 they had had another candidate, any candidate at all, they would 
 almost certainly have nominated that candidate instead of me. 
  
 2. Thereafter, Diane Rudiano, who is BOTH Chief Clerk of the King's 
 County Board of Elections and the Secretary and Vice-Chairman of the 
 King's County Republican Party, started a campaign to deprive me of my 
 place on the ballot. 
  
 3. Diane Rudiano stated that she wanted to search for an alternative 
 candidate, even though all candidates were supposed to be decided at a 
 meeting held on "candidate€es night". She wanted more time, which 
 Aaron Maslow, the Chairman of the meeting, was unwilling to give her. 
 Marianna Blume suddenly jumped up and said that she would like to be a 
 candidate. Then Diane Rudiano said that she wanted to take a telephone 
 vote (which would include among the voters those who were not present 
 at the meeting and therefore did not get the opportunity to see the 
 candidates). This was obviously objectionable, because the rules of 
 the King's County Republican Party do not allow for any such telephone 
 vote and everybody who had shown an interest in voting was already at 
 the meeting. The subsequent events are described in my affidavit in 
 opposition to the affidavit of Aaron Maslow, the end result being that 
 I was kicked off the ballot. 
  
 4. Since then, even though when all this started they did not have 
 anybody else willing to run, they have been scrambling madly to find 
 somebody, anybody to run. Anybody will do, as long as it is not me. 
 Over a dozen newspaper articles have appeared in the mainstream media 
 about this. Last week, it was reported by the Courier Life chain of 
 newspapers that their latest candidate, Harvey Clarke, is ineligible 
 to serve in US Congress because he just recently became a citizen. 
 Article I Section 2 of the US Constitution requires that in other to 
 serve as a Congressman one must be a citizen for seven years. Harvey 
 Clarke does not meet that requirement. Still, his name has not been 
 taken off the ballot. 
  
 5. I wish to explain the process by which one gets on the ballot in 
 New York City, which is different from the process not only in other 
 states but in other parts of New York State. This no doubt is affected 
 by the fact that most parts of New York City are overwhelmingly 
 Democratic. Another factor is that petition gatherers face special 
 problems perhaps unique to New York City. Most voters in Brooklyn work 
 in Manhattan and so it is difficult to find them to collect their 
 signatures. On the other hand, most people on the street in Manhattan 
 either live in other counties or are from out-of-town, so their 
 signatures are useless in any petition drive in Manhattan. 
  
 6. The result is that by agreement the New York City Board of 
 Elections does not count the signatures. In most cases, petitions 
 which are submitted are passed through, unless somebody, usually the 
 opponent, objects. 
  
 7. When a petition is submitted to the New York City Board of 
 Elections, it is subjected to what they call a "weight test€h. (They 
 really call it that). This means that somebody simply picks up the 
 petitions and if they appear to weigh enough so that they might 
 contain enough signatures, they pass through that stage. If they fail 
 the weight test, they are rejected. Otherwise they pass. For example, 
 if somebody submits a petition of ten sheets where 1200 signatures are 
 required, it would probably fail the weight test, but if somebody 
 submits what appears to be about 100 sheets, then it would pass. The 
 sheets are required to be numbered. Beyond this, the Board of 
 Elections only looks at the cover sheet to see if it contains any 
 errors. This is in their rules, which are worth reading to understand 
 this process better. 
  
 8. Assuming that the petitions pass the weight test, as they almost 
 always do, the petitions are filed and logged into a book and then the 
 Board of Elections waits three days for objections. If nobody objects, 
 the candidate's name gets placed on the ballot. In practice, most 
 petitions do not receive objections. As a result, there are many, many 
 instances of candidates whose names are on the ballot even though they 
 did not get nearly enough signatures. This is especially helpful to 
 Republicans, because the Republicans have a much harder time 
 collecting enough signatures to get on the ballot, as the city is in 
 vast majority Democrats. Some Republicans have told me in confidence 
 that they got on the ballot with less than half of the required 
 signatures. 
  
 9. These problems tend to be resolved at the ballot box. The fact that 
 a lot of Republicans get on the ballot without having enough 
 signatures does not matter in the long run because in Brooklyn the 
 Republicans never win. Only in Staten Island and in some parts of 
 Queens do the Republicans have much of a chance to win election. 
  
 10. This process can be seen to be somewhat loose. Candidates get on 
 the ballot who do not belong there. For example, I have been told that 
 in this election a candidate got on the ballot without even being a 
 registered voter, because nobody bothered to check. I think that a 
 past candidate for governor got on the ballot without even being a 
  
 [continued in next message] 
  
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