SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
COUNTY OF BRONX
__________________________________________
In the Matter of the Applications of SAM SLOAN, MILLIE QUINONES and NEREIDA NARVAEZ as Candidates for Judicial Delegate,
Petitioners-Candidates-Aggrieved
-against- Index No. 260658-2015
BOARD OF ELECTIONS IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK
BENNIE CATALA, Objector
Respondents
_________________________________________
For an Order Pursuant to Sections 16-100, 16-102 and 16-116 of the Election Law Declaring Valid the Designating Petitions purporting to Designate SAM SLOAN, MILLIE QUINONES and NEREIDA NARVAEZ as candidates for the Judicial Delegate at the Primary
Election to be held at September 10, 2015 and restoring them to the Official Ballots of Such Primary Election
________________________________________
BRIEF OF APPELLANT Sam Sloan
________________________________________
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
________________________________________
This is an Election Law Appeal. There are several major errors in the court's decision. The Decision states that a Clerk's Report was reviewed by the Referee. This is not true. No Clerk's Report was brought to the court. Two representatives of the Bronx
Board of Elections were present in court on that day. They were Gloria Pugh and Anna Rodgers. They brought with them the petitions and the objection, but they did not bring a clerk's report with them.
Petitioner is informed by Lisa Gattis, Assistant to Deputy Chief Clerk Marika Scott MacFadden, that the Bronx Board of Elections never prepared a clerk's report in this case and does not have one in its possession now.

Petitioner has just this afternoon finally been able to obtain a copy of the so-called "Specific Objections" filed by Stanley Kalmon Schlien. These so-called objections are obviously not in compliance with New York Election Law. The "objections" are
exactly one sentence long. It states, "The number of signatures in the totality of this petition is less than the 500 signatures that is required for the designation of the candidates for this Party position as set forth on the schedule of respondents".

In the box for "Number of Signatures" it puts ?
In the Box for Number of Invalid Signatures on Petition it puts N/A.

This document was not provided to Judge Carter. Had he seen it he would have immediately recognized that it was invalid on its face because the requirement for a specific objection is it must state the number of signatures, the number of valid signatures
and the number required. Without that information the Board of Elections cannot provide a clerks report, and for that reason no clerk's report was created.

Because the so-called Specific Objections was not provided to the lower court, it is attached in its entirety, all three pages, to this brief so that this court can see that it obviously does not comply with New York Election Law.

The decision states that Sam Sloan was notified of the hearing set for August 3, 2015 at 11:00 AM and failed to appear. This is not true. Mr. Sloan was not notified that a hearing would be held at 11:00 AM. He was in the building of the Bronx Supreme
Court in Room 118 at that time having his latest affidavit notarized. Opposing Counsel knew his cell phone number of 917-659-3397 because it was on his papers. Nevertheless, they did not call that number to notify him of the new time and thus the hearing
at that time took place without him. Mr. Sloan is pro se and does not have an office staff to keep track of these required appearance times.

Petitioner would not have known of the August 12 hearing either except that John Segreti, a court officer, called Mr. Sloan and left a message on his voice mail. Mr. John Segreti is usually the referee in these election cases in Bronx Supreme Court.
However, the judge decided not to use Mr. Sergeti in this case and used his own secretary instead. One wonders why.

More Importantly, in the last page of his decision, the court states, "It was not necessary for the court to view the youtube video of the proceedings before the Commissioners of Elections".

Here the court was clearly wrong. It is now a legal requirement for the Boards of Elections to make and preserve and make available on youtube videos of these proceedings. By refusing to view these videos, the court is making the same mistake as if it
decided to hear an appeal without reading the transcript or appendix. All of the facts in the court's decision are wrong and the court would have realized this if only he had viewed the videos. He would have seen that there was no clerk's report and the
board of elections did not confirm any recommendations, unlike every case before the Board of Elections that day. A Clerk's Report was never made because the CRU had found the objections filed by Stanley Kalmon Schlein were not specific. On the video,
General Counsel for the Board of Elections states, at 1:07:34 in the video for July 28, 2015, "there were no line by line objections submitted".

At the hearing on August 12, the Board produced no documents to support its position. Sloan however produced two affidavits. Thus the only sworn statements before the court were by Sloan. Sloan demanded to see the documents including the petition and
other relevant documents. Sloan and the court were told that there documents were available for review at the Board of Elections Offices at 42 Broadway.

This was not true. Actually, all the documents were in the courtroom but both Mr. Sloan and the judge did not know it. There were two women sitting in the back of the courtroom. They had not been identified and it was assumed they had been waiting for
another case to be called. After the hearing was over and Sloan went to the Bronx Board of Elections, he was informed that the two women in the back of the courtroom were Gloria Pugh and Anna Rodgers, employees of the Board of Elections, and they had all
the documents in their purses, ready in case they needed to be called. It seems that even the attorney representing the Board of Elections, Mr. Kitzinger, did not realize this.

Regarding the statement that the other petitioners did not appear, Millie Quinones was at the Hearing Before the Board of Elections on July 28, but unlike in every other case, the names of the candidates were not called. You can see this by viewing the
video starting at 1:07:00. Again, the judge was remiss in not viewing the video. Millie Quinones had been planning to come to court. However, Steve Richman threatened her by saying she could be convicted of a federal crime. Naturally this frightened the
young woman living in a homeless shelter.

In this case there were no specific objections filed. This is shown by the youtube video. This can be seen by searching for
7-28-15 commissioners' hearings - Queens and Bronx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Qlw-G0lOc

Previously, there was a cover sheet review
7-9-15 Coversheet Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Inc-fqTl-lA
It starts at 13:09 and continues at 14:20
Another issue concerns Steve Richman who is leafing through pages of the 300 plus page petition at 15:11 and ends at 17:40
It is obvious here that Steve Richman is not doing a cover sheet review. He is doing a general search of the petition. This is not allowed. His compatriot even says at one point there is no problem with the cover sheet. It is with the content of the
petition.
What is going here is the Board of Elections is trying to make a new law or a new legal rule. They are trying to say that the Board of Elections has the inherent power to search through any petition that has been filed and search for mistakes and
defects. If it finds mistakes it can rule the candidate off the ballot even if no specific objections have been filed. Thus, the Board claims it need not follow a provision of election law. Here is what that provision states:
6-154.
Nominations and designations; objections to
1. Any petition filed with the officer or board charged with the duty of receiving it shall be presumptively valid if it is in proper form and appears to bear the requisite number of signatures, authenticated in a manner prescribed by this chapter.

The Board of Elections makes the assertion that it need not follow New York Election Law by citing a case this same petitioner lost last year: Sam Sloan vs. Kellner, Appellate Division, Third Department, decided August 21, 2014, Sloan v. Kellner, 120
AD3d 895 (3d Dept. 2014).

Since the appellant was involved, here is what happened:

Petitions were filed nominating Sam Sloan for Governor and other candidates for Lieutenant Governor, Comptroller and Attorney General.

No objections were filed as to Sam Sloan for Governor and as to the candidate for Lieutenant Governor. It became apparent that the incumbent governor, Andrew Cuomo, did not have one of his minions object because he wanted a weak candidate he felt he
could easily beat running against him, and this would also split the other outsider candidates.

However, objections were filed against Geeta Rankoth solely on account of her age and against Neil Grimaldi for Attorney General.

Neil Grimaldi, seeing that the Republican candidate for attorney general had filed objections against him, decided to withdraw. However, later the Republican candidate for attorney general withdrew his objection, so Grimaldi decided to reinstate his
candidacy. However, the court ruled it was too late to get back in the race.

All this time, there was no objections to Sloan. However, at the meeting of the New York State Board of Elections, Kimberley Galvin, the Republican Party representative on the Board of Elections, moved that all the Sloan candidates be removed from the
ballot. This was accepted without any discussion by the board. Mr. Grimaldi, who certainly would have objected had he been present, could not be there that day because he was in the Bronx Supreme Court that day representing paying clients all of whom
were being thrown off the ballot by Stanley Kalmon Schlein, the same objector here.

On appeal, Sloan, who was represented by Grimaldi, and Grimaldi also represented himself, stated that since there were no objections as to Sloan, he should be on the ballot. The Board of Elections stated that in reviewing the objections to Grimaldi they
had found that there were less than 15,000 signatures, even though those objections had been withdrawn. Thus, all the candidates named on that petition were off the ballot even though there had been no objections to the other candidates.

Also, the Third Department apparently decided that even though no specific line-by-line objections had been filed, the petitioner had to name the objectors even though they had only filed general objections, not specific objections.

By the way, appellants asked for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals. At the Court of Appeals, instead of arguing the case, Mr. Grimaldi spent his whole time before two judges of that court telling jokes and talking about the time he tried to run for
District Attorney four years ago. He never once mentioned the case before that court where he was supposed to be representing clients as well as himself. In view of his insulting behavior before that court, naturally his application was denied. Mr.
Grimaldi has since been arrested on unrelated charges and evicted from his home-office. Few of his former clients will be asking him to represent them in the future.

________________________________________
ARGUMENT
________________________________________
This case was filed on July 23, 2015 and an order to show cause was signed and served on that date. A hearing was set for July 29, 2015. Only the Board of Elections was named as a respondent at that time as there were no objections to the petition.
On July 28, 2015 a hearing was held by the Commissioners of the Board of Elections. At that time Mr. Stanley Kalmon Schlein, attorney for objector Bennie Catala, made a motion to add Bennie Catala as an Objector. Apparently Mr. Catala has made
objections previously but they had been dismissed as untimely by the CRU of Candidate Records Unit of the Board of Elections.

In order to see what really happened it is necessary to see the youtube video as required by Election Law. The board allowed Mr. Stanley Kalmon Schlein to make his late and untimely objection and then on the basis of that untimely objection ruled these
three candidates off the ballot and also put the candidates of Stanley Kalman Schlein back on the ballot as they had been ruled off the ballot by the CRU.
Earlier in the same hearing the Board heard prima facie objections made by Mr. Steven Richman concerning technical objections to the petitions such as the petition pages which were more than 300 in number were in some cases not in order as there was no
page number 16 and there were two pages numbered 20. However, all the pages had numbers and they were all in sequence. Commissioner Frederick Humain, the only commissioner with experience as all the other commissioners are new this year, said that in
past practice if the petition appeared to have sufficient weight these kinds of problems petitions were not considered prime facie matters and it was up to the objectors to raise these issues. At that point in time there were no objections as this was
before Mr. Stanley Kalman Schlein made his motion to reinstate all his candidates who had been thrown off the ballot and to instate his objections to the petitions here. At the vote by the Board of Elections, the Board was divided with some Commissioners
voting against these petitions and others voting in favor. Indeed, there were several divided votes on various other issues, the first time I have ever seen the Board of Elections to be split on certain candidates.
Here is what the relevant provision states:
6-154.
Nominations and designations; objections to
1. Any petition filed with the officer or board charged with the duty of receiving it shall be presumptively valid if it is in proper form and appears to bear the requisite number of signatures, authenticated in a manner prescribed by this chapter.
2. Written objections to any certificate of designation or nomination or to a nominating or designating petition or a petition for opportunity to ballot for public office or to a certificate of acceptance, a certificate of authorization, a certificate of
declination or a certificate of substitution relating thereto may be filed by any voter registered to vote for such public office and to a designating petition or a petition for opportunity to ballot for party position or a certificate of substitution, a
certificate of acceptance or a certificate of declination relating thereto by any voter enrolled to vote for such party position. Such objections shall be filed with the officer or board with whom the original petition or certificate is filed within
three days after the filing of the petition or certificate to which objection is made, or within three days after the last day to file such a certificate, if no such certificate is filed except that if any person nominated by an independent nominating
petition, is nominated as a party candidate for the same office by a party certificate filed, or a party nomination made after the filing of such petition, the written objection to such petition may be filed within three days after the filing of such
party certificate or the making of such party nomination. When such an objection is filed, specifications of the grounds of the objections shall be filed within six days thereafter with the same officer or board and if specifications are not timely filed,
the objection shall be null and void. Each such officer or board is hereby empowered to make rules in reference to the filing and disposition of such petition, certificate, objections and specifications.
When a determination is made that a certificate or petition is insufficient, such officer or board shall give notice of the determination forthwith by mail to each candidate named in the petition or certificate, and, if the determination is made upon
specified objections, the objector shall be notified.
In fact none of this was done.
Accordingly, the petitions are valid and the candidates must be reinstated on the ballot. What is going on here is the Board of Elections is doing a line-by-line objection when no proper objection by a voter has been filed. The Board of Elections is not
itself allowed to do line by line objections. They are required to act only of a voter makes objections and as there were none made here the candidates must be reinstated.

The Report of Referee Rusnak says that as Bennie Catala has filed specific objections petitioner must name him as an opponent and serve him with an order to show cause. However, Referee Rusnak is apparently not aware that Bennie Catala was not an
objector when this case was filed on July 23. He did not become an objector until July 28. Petitioner does not know how he came to be added as an objector more than a week after this case was filed on July 23, 2015 and an order to show cause signed and
served on that date. Since his counsel Stanley Schlein has requested that he be added as a respondent, Petitioner doubts it is necessary to file and serve a second order to show cause but since Referee Rusnak says it is required Petitioner is trying to
do that. A hearing was set for July 29, 2015. Only the Board of Elections was named as a respondent at that time as there were no objections to the petition.
On July 28, 2015 a hearing was held by the Commissioners of the Board of Elections. At that time Mr. Stanley Kalmon Schlein, attorney for objector Bennie Catala, made a motion to add Bennie Catala as an Objector. Apparently Mr. Catala has made
objections previously but they had been dismissed as untimely by the CRU of Candidate Records Unit of the Board of Elections.
In order to see what really happened it is necessary to see the youtube video as required by Election Law. Petitioner strongly disagrees with her report on several grounds.
Unfortunately, when her report arrived in my email box it contained a note saying "suspicious message" and that it is of the malicious type used to gather information and may contain a virus. Also, the report was untitled. Therefore, Petitioner did not
open it.
Fortunately, Mr. John Segreti called and left a message on my voice mail machine that the hearing had been posted until Wednesday. That is how Petitioner found out about the hearing. Otherwise, Petitioner would have missed the meeting again. Petitioner
is deeply thankful to Mr. Segreti for that call.
As Petitioner understands it, there were specific instructions from Judge Carter for her to count the signatures. He did not ask her to verify the signatures, just to count them. It appears she did not do that, that she just relied on the count by the
Board of Elections.
However, under New York Election Law, the law Petitioner cited in my previous affidavit, the Boards of Elections are not to count the signatures. They are to let the objectors count the signatures and then they may check the work of the objectors.
However, if there are no specific objections then no counting is to be done and the petition passes.
In this case there were no specific objections filed. This is shown by the youtube video which it appears you did not watch. This can be seen by searching for
7-28-15 commissioners' hearings - Queens and Bronx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Qlw-G0lOc
Steve Richman says at 1:07:34 in the video "there were no line by line objections submitted"
I was also informed by the CRU of the Board of Elections that no Specific Objections had been filed by Benny Catala or by anybody else for that matter.
It is simply not acceptable and is a violation of New York Election Law for the Boards of Elections to start counting signatures especially in a case like this where the petition was more than three hundred petition pages long.
I do not know what has happened about the claim by Stanley Schlein that his client filed objections but since the CRU told me that no specific objections had been filed, it must have been that they were filed late or not in proper form or not filed at
all. In either of those cases the objection is invalid and also Mr. Stanley Schlein has no standing to appear as objector in this case.
Regarding the prima facie issues where Mr. Steve Richman found technical defects in the petitions or the cover sheets, at the hearing on July 28
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Qlw-G0lOc
Commissioner Frederic Umane says at 34:35 "I am a little surprised to see this on the prima facie calender for technical defects. If there were not enough signatures normally what we would do is wait for someone to file an objection. This is not
something we would not do ordinarily including in a prima facie something that don't have the number of signatures on them for a prima facie defect as long as there were signatures filed for that and as for the weight test you don't normally get into
these technical details, you wait for an objection, so although Mr. Sloan seems to have joined the Dark Side Petitioner am just curious why we are seeing this on prima facie."
Here Stanley Schlein interrupts Commissioner Umane from speaking and says:
"I can elaborate since Mr. Richman is a little slow on the uptake here today the case was"
Here Stanley Schlein and Steve Richman interrupt each other back and forth and Stanley Schlein says:
"I am getting to that I am getting your work done for you. The pagination of that petition was to say the least bizarre it went from 2, 4, 6, 8, 27, 93, it was like the secret code from the CIA and it was within that pagination issue that notification
was sent out and no response to that notification occurred thereby mandating its placement on the prima facie.
Commissioner Umane responds, "That would be a legitimate reason for being there ..."
Again Stanley Schlein interrupts him saying, "Well I was jumping to answer your question."
Now, Steve Richman starts speaking saying that page numbering is mandated by statute and they had to check all the pages to see which ones were out of order.
Sloan speaks and says, "As I understand it these pages were handed out to different volunteers with the page numbers already on them to keep track of which volunteer had which pages."
Now the commissioners appear to take a vote at 36:59 but the unlike several other votes taken that day it is not clear which commissioners voted or which way they voted. It is clear from his comments that Commissioner Frederic Umane did not agree that
this was a prima facie matter but which way he and others voted is not clear from the video.
Again Stanley Schlein interrupts the commissioners before they have finished the report of the vote. Stanley Schlein says at 37:25 "I need to say something appropo to Mr. Sloans last statement that these petition pages were distributed to different
people to give out if Petitioner may remind this honorable board this petition was witnessed by a single individual one subscribing witness to the entire petition which kind of debunks what Mr. Sloan may have just ..."
After that Steve Richman goes on to another case on the calender.
However, Sloan who is still at the podium says at 38:40, "I have just one more thing. I would like to see proof of service. I asked for proof of service yesterday and I have not received it. The contact person says she never received anything."
Steve Richman says, "I will show it to you". However, Steve Richman did not show it until several hours later after the hearing was over and when he did show it, it said "signature waived".
Since the address of the contact person is a homeless shelter at 1921 Jerome Avenue known as "Susan's Place" with more than 200 residents, by waiving the signature requirement the Board of Elections has made it impossible to determine who received this
NSO notice or what happened to it. It would have been better to serve it both by regular and certified mail or to serve the head of the Vacancy Committee who is a well known elections personality who maintains an office on Tremont Avenue.
It can be seen by playing the youtube video (and Petitioner suggest that you play it several times), that Mr. Stanley Schlein repeatedly interrupts the commissioners while they are speaking and fights with Steve Richman over several issues. Every time
Commissioner Umane is saying something in my favor, and there are several instances of this, Stanley Schlein interrupts him and does not allow him to continue.
Most importantly, when the board is being polled to see whether these candidates get on the ballot or not, Stanley Schlein interrupts and we cannot hear the vote.
At 55:50 Steve Richman arrives at a case where the clients represented by Stanley Schlein were thrown off the ballot for reasons including that the petitions were modified with stickers after the signatures had been collected. Here Steve Richman says
that many of these petitions do contain stickers but the objector, Egidio Sementelli (the same person who is on the vacancy committee in the case before this court) does not allege "with particularity" how these stickers were attached to the petitions
and thus the objections to them were invalid.
Here it is obvious that Mr. Schlein and the board is showing favoritism to Mr. Schlein as when a sticker is attached to a petition with no way to determine whether the sticker was attached before or after the witness signed it is obviously invalid.
Steve Richman's statement that the Board would not normally rule on this type of allegation is simply not true. It is just plain common sense that the stickers that were attached changing the addresses of the candidates must have been attached after the
petitions were signed because otherwise the petitions would simply have been reprinted with the correct address on them. Thus the petitions submitted by Stanley Kalmon Schlein were obviously invalid and yet the board passed them.
They get back to my case at 1:07:07 naming Carleton Curry as he was the first judicial convention candidate on the list.
Stanley Schlein says, "This is for lack of a better word the Sloan petition".
At this point Petitioner had not come up because Petitioner did not realize that this involved me as my name had not been mentioned. Also, the names of the other candidates were not read out in contrast to all the other hearings that day. One of the
other candidates was in the room and would have come forward had she known that she was involved. However, Stanley Schlein started speaking and when he mentioned my name Petitioner started paying attention.
I came forward and said "As far as I know there were more than a thousand signatures on the petition" but Steve Richman says at 1:09:10, "Mr. Sloan you are no longer a candidate so you cannot appear." This refers to the fact that Petitioner had been
knocked off the ballot a few minutes earlier. When Petitioner complains that I have not received specifications of objections, Steve Richman replies at 1:09:40 that there is no obligation to provide me or the other candidates on the petition with the
specifications of objections.
The only issue discussed at the hearing was the pagination issue. The explanation offered by Mr. Sloan is that all the pages are numbered before being handed out to the volunteers who collect the signatures. By doing this they avoid the problems that
many other petitioners have. Petitioner is aware of no court decision that says this is improper. The only thing the law says it that all the pages have numbers so they can be identified and here they all had numbers.
Another issue concerns
7-9-15 Coversheet Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Inc-fqTl-lA
It starts at 13:09 and continues at 14:20
Steve Richman is leafing through pages of the 300 plus page petition at 15:11 and ends at 17:40
It is obvious here that Steve Richman is not doing a cover sheet review. He is doing a general search of the petition. This is not allowed. His compatriot even says at one point there is no problem with the cover sheet. It is with the content of the
petition.
Steve Richmon says at 15:45 "The person who filed this is Mr. Sam Sloan has a habit of litigating against the board on the ground that we usually discriminate against him and that we single him out for special treatment".
Actually, Petitioner did not file the petition. Petitioner was not even in New York. Petitioner was just one of the candidates on the list. The fact that he keeps mentioning my name shows the prejudicial attitude of the board against me.
For all of these reasons Ms. Rusnak should withdraw and reconsider her report and do a proper job this time.
Mr. Stanley Schlein is known as being the most powerful power broker in New York if not the USA. He has advised important people like the Clintons and has been instrumental in getting them elected by having all their opponents ruled off the ballot.
The New York Times says about him, "For years he has been a vital cog in the Bronx Democratic machine, defending incumbents and knocking insurgents from the ballot in the merciless tradition of city politics."
See The New York Times for July 26, 2005
"Bronx Lawyer Is a Power Behind Several Thrones"
However, Petitioner hopes to bring his nefarious career of knocking candidates off the ballot to an end as Petitioner intends to file an ethics complaint against him.
Accordingly, the petitions are valid and the candidates must be reinstated on the ballot. What is going on here is the Board of Elections is doing a line-by-line objection when no proper objection by a voter has been filed. The Board of Elections is not
itself allowed to do line by line objections. They are required to act only of a voter makes objections and as there were none made here the candidates must be reinstated.
I hereby certify that this brief contains 5109 words.
DATED: August 17, 2015
Respectfully Submitted,


Sam Sloan

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