In New York State, to qualify for automatic ballot access, a party must have received at least 50,000 votes in the previous gubernatorial election. A party must run a gubernatorial candidate to be eligible for automatic ballot access; if 50,000 voters vote for that candidate on their party line, they have qualified the party for the next four general elections. A party that is not qualified may run candidates by completing a petition process. Parties are also allowed to cross-endorse candidates, whose votes are accumulated under electoral fusion, but any parties must cross-endorse both the governor and lieutenant governor candidates for fusion to apply. Parties that are already qualified must issue a Wilson Pakula authorization if they cross-endorse someone not enrolled in that party; there are no restrictions on who can be nominated on a non-qualified ballot line, as these lines are determined by filing petitions. For statewide and special elections, automatic ballot access means that no petitions have to be filed to gain access to a ballot line, and party organizations can endorse candidates through their own conventions. Qualified parties also are the only parties eligible to hold primary elections in the state-run primary elections. In addition to determining whether they automatically qualify for the next four years, this also determines the order on the ballot; qualified parties are ranked in order of gubernatorial votes, with the party having the most votes atop the ballot. In the 1994 election, the Democratic Party received the most votes, and so qualified to be first on the ballot for the next four years, even though their candidate, incumbent Governor Mario Cuomo, lost. George Pataki beat him because he received more votes combined over all of his party lines. In the 2002 election, three qualified parties failed to re-qualify: the Liberal Party, Right to Life Party, and the Green Party. The Liberals became dormant, the Right to Life dramatically scaled back its operations, while the Greens continued mostly unaffected before re-qualifying in 2010. The same five parties who qualified in 2002 re-qualified in the 2006 election. After the 2010 elections, these parties with ballot access were joined by a sixth party, the Green Party. Two additional parties qualified in the 2014 elections: the Women's Equality Party and the Stop Common Core Party, later renamed the Reform Party. Both parties failed to re-qualify in the 2018 elections and were replaced with the Libertarian Party and Serve America Movement party who qualified. Parties that do not qualify automatically can petition their way onto the ballot. For statewide candidates, this requires 15,000 signatures, and requires 100 signatures in at least half of the congressional districts in the state. The Socialist Workers Party regularly used this approach to appear on the ballot before abandoning its ballot-access efforts in 2010, then stopped running statewide candidates entirely in 2018. These parties also are not eligible to run primaries, and the first person to submit 15,000 signatures automatically gets the party line.
1994
1998
2002
2006
2010
2014
The Stop Common Core Party rechristened itself the Reform Party, initially unrelated to the national Reform Party, on February 17, 2015. In an effort to quash a trademark infringement dispute from the national Reform Party, the state party allowed national Reform Party officers, including chairman Bill Merrill, to take over the party. In September 2016, Curtis Sliwa orchestrated a hostile takeover of the Reform Party, and it is no longer related to the national party.
