Because you vote for a candidate, but the ballot is a matrix and if a candidate is good and supported (endorsed) by several parties, he's listed for each of those endorsements. Therefore, I can vote on the Conservative Line and support the candidate and the party. But legitimately, the candidate can be checked off two or more times and it's the same candidate.
For example, the conservative Carl Paladino is endorsed by the Republican Party, the Conservative Party, and the Taxpayer Party...to show my support for the Conservative Party, I would vote on the Conservative Party line.
Yes, I shouldn't vote Republican, too, but the fact is that if I check both, I have not voted for two candidates.
File a lawsuit to change it. Call Al Gore’s attorneys. If that is the way candidates are listed in New York, then the courts should have no right to overrule them. If New Yorkers elect another criminal like Cuomo, they get what they deserve.
As a former New Yorker I know the NY rules. What we are talking about here is double voting, voting for two names for the same office - in most places always two different people, in NY, possibly, the same name twice. This is possible both with the new scanned ballots and with old fashioned (check the box) type voting, but not with the old mechanical voting machines, which made it impossible.
In most states the vote would not be counted for either candidate, this system counts votes for the candidate, and assigns it to the first place on the ballot it appears, which hurts 3rd parties co-nominating a candidate, but at least preserves the citizen’s vote. Short of a system of validating the ballot before it is cast, which we have in Florida, this seems better than simply throwing out the vote.
Of course it also helps if your supporters aren’t i;;iterate idiots!