Little Green-Paper-Carrying People Invade City!

Nothing says 95 degrees with full humidity like a good six hours out in front of a Key Food holding a clipboard and a green sheet of paper and asking people with a bundle of groceries in their hands to please put down their packages and sign your petition to put so-and-so on the ballot in September’s primary.
Oh, the looks you get from some people.
Yes folks, we are deep in the heart of petitioning season in the city. If you haven’t yet been attacked by a swarm of political-slogan-sticker-wearing, literature-waving, college-age volunteers at a subway stop or, even worse, at your front door, don’t worry — as Yoda once said, “You will be.”
Everyone running for office in New York City has to get a requisite number of signatures from registered members of their party in their district to qualify for the ballot. For City Council it is 900, for mayor 7,500 and so on.
The catch is, don’t come in at the end holding just 900, because you will be challenged and most likely will not see your name in the voting machine in September.
The reason is that some signatures will not be valid. That person who swore up and down that they are a registered Democrat… turns out they’re actually an independent. That person who signed your petition on June 30? Well, they signed someone else’s on June 20 (you can only sign one, and the first counts). And the person who signed as “J. Smith” living on Main Street…turns out they are still registered to vote at their old address on 90th Avenue, so they’re invalid too.
Oh and by the way, one bad signature could — not will, but could — invalidate an entire page (15 signatures). So please cross your T’s and dot your I’s carefully.
It’s an age-old system meant to help the incumbent (surprise, surprise). So it’s advisable that you secure three times as many signatures as you need in order to consider yourself in good position, especially if you are an insurgent candidate and wish to be taken seriously as a threat to the incumbent.
And the thought process is this: For bulk signatures, go to a transit hub (subway station, bus stop) and for clean (valid) signatures go door-to-door.
Unless you are one of the lucky people who lives in a City Council district where there is a challenger (or two or three), you may not even know this goes on. But for those who are in a contested area, keep an eye out for the signature hawks.
from the Council races, the mayoral candidates are the ones who need the most ink to secure their spots, so they are the group you are most likely to see on the streets — especially in areas like Forest Hills or Jamaica where masses of humanity pass through every day.
The Gifford Miller camp told me that the Speaker was in the aforementioned Forest Hills, as well as Astoria, this past weekend collecting signatures.
Team Fernando Ferrer lent a more mysterious air to their operation, saying only, “We have people carrying petitions all over the city.” Gee, really?
And Anthony Weiner’s reps gave the old “rah-rah” angle to their operation: “We’ll get on the ballot through our vigorous, volunteer-driven outreach operation, that has hundreds of supporters out every day gathering petitions.”
So what do you do if approached by one of these groups? My advice: Be kind and sign. It’s hot out there.
politics@queenscourier.com