Matter of Venuti v. Westchester Board of Elections

In Matter of Venuti v. Westchester Board of Elections, 43 A.D.3d 482 (2nd Dept. 2007) the petitioner commence the underlying proceeding to invalidate a designating petition of respondent candidate where five signatures in the petition to invalidate were inaccurately identified in the petitioner's objections filed with the Westchester Board of Elections. In reversing the final order and affirming the Supreme Court's findings of fact with respect to the five challenged signatures, the Appellate Division, Second Department, found the following [43 A.D.3d at 483- 484]: The Supreme Court, upon reviewing the merits of the proceeding in the alternative, properly determined that five of the signatures on Scattaretico-Naber's designating petition should be stricken as duplicative of earlier signatures on the designating petition of another candidate for the same public office. As a result, Scattaretico-Naber's designating petition does not contain the requisite number of valid signatures, and must be invalidated. Scattaretico-Naber contends that because the petitioner inaccurately identified the line or page numbers of the five signatures in question in presenting his objections to the Westchester County Board of Elections, the Supreme Court should not have entertained his petition, which did properly identify the five challenged signatures. The Supreme Court, however, has jurisdiction to entertain objections to signatures on designating petitions, even where an objector asserts "grounds other than those asserted before the Board of Elections" (Matter of Smith v. Marchi, 143 AD2d 325, 325, 532 N.Y.S.2d 389 [1988]; see Election Law 16-100 [1]; Matter of Flowers v. Wells, 57 AD2d 636, 394 N.Y.S.2d 33 [1977]). Since the petition filed in the Supreme Court afforded Scattaretico-Naber adequate notice as to precisely which signatures were being challenged, and the grounds for objecting to those signatures, the Supreme Court properly entertained the petitioner's objections (see Matter of Edelstein v. Suffolk County Bd. of Elections, 33 AD3d 945, 824 N.Y.S.2d 321 [2006]; Matter of Brotherton v. Suffolk County Bd. of Elections, 33 AD3d 944, 824 N.Y.S.2d 322 [2006]).