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 (this does not apply to legislative candidates, who still must petition onto the ballot regardless of party endorsement, but are only required to collect a third of the signatures required of non-qualified parties)[citation needed].
The threshold for automatic ballot access was originally 50,000 votes every four years during the gubernatorial election.
[4] 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.
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.
The Liberals became dormant, the Right to Life dramatically scaled back its operations, while the Greens continued mostly unaffected before re-qualifying in 2010.
In addition, former Syracuse mayor Stephanie Miner achieved automatic ballot access for the newly created Serve America Movement line.
Shortly after the Libertarian Party (United States) and Serve America Movement qualified for ballot access, the New York State Board of Elections raised the threshold for automatic ballot access from 50,000 votes to 2% or about 130,000 votes.
[8] The Serve America Movement lawsuit was against Todd D. Valentine and Robert A. Brehm, the Co-Execute Directors of the New York State Board of Elections, and Peter S. Kosinski, Douglas A. Kellner, and Andrew J. Spano, the Commissioners of the New York State Board of Elections.
Larry Sharpe (politician) has indicated that he may "sue personally" for ballot access during the announcement of an exploratory committee to run for Governor of New York again in 2022.