Off-the-wall NYS election law prime for election trickery, as spoiler candidates snatch extra ballot lines

Suffolk County isn’t the lone place where the Working Families Party has had its ballot line raided.

Rockland and Rensselaer also have been hotbeds of skirmishes over the tactic of running a spoiler candidate affiliated with a major party in a WFP primary to effectively hijack the progressive minor party’s ballot line. In the recent case of the close election for Huntington town supervisor, a spoiler candidate played a major role in a narrow Republican victory.

Call it political hardball. Call it political opportunism — but it’s not illegal.

And as long as New York remains one of two states with "fusion voting" where candidates can appear on multiple ballot lines — think: Democrat and WFP; Republican and Conservative — there seems to be no easy fix to prevent ballot raiding, experts say