August 23 Article in Courier Life newspapers about Sam Sloan for Congress

August 23 Article in Courier Life about Sam Sloan for Congress
August 23 Article in Courier Life about Sam Sloan for Congress
SLOAN STOPPED Last week was a busy one for would-be candidate for Congress Sam Sloan, who was disqualified from the Republican and Independent party lines by the Board of Elections, went to Supreme Court to get back on the ballot, had his cases dismissed because of a technicality, and immediately appealed that ruling. Sloan's effort was an example of how impossible it can be for a non-lawyer to run for office and navigate the legal system on his own.

According to Sloan, he waited in court for several hours on August 9 until, at 4:55 p.m., he was handed an order to show cause to be heard at 9:30 the following morning. He then attempted to serve the order before the hearing to all the defendants he'd named. He took the train from downtown Brooklyn to lower Manhattan and served the Board of Elections shortly after 5 p.m. Then he went to Staples to make copies of the order for the other parties. At 5:45 p.m. he arrived via subway at 250 West 57th Street to serve attorney Gary Sinawski, who was not in his office. Sloan left the order on his secretary's desk. Returning to downtown Brooklyn, he left the order at Republican county leader Hy Singer's office and then at the Kings County Board of Elections down the street.

Then he jumped on the Q train and served the office of Republican Party lawyer Ted Alatsas on Avenue U and East 21st Street. He did all of this with his 2-year-old daughter in tow. By the time they got home to East New York it was 11 p.m. Back at the courthouse the next morning for his 9:30 hearing, he found his cases would be the last of the 41 heard that day. When they came up, they were promptly thrown out because, the judge said, he'd failed to file affidavits of service notarized by a notary public. Sloan was baffled. "An affidavit of service is only needed if someone fails to appear and a party requests a default judgment," he wrote. "Here, there was no such issue. All parties were present in the courtroom."

A clerk told Sloan he needed to file affidavits of service by 9:30 that morning and handed him a notice published in the New York Law Journal. Sloan read it and found that it did not say when he had to file the affidavits of service. So he filed them later that day and appealed the dismissals. His appeal was denied, but he appealed that to the state's highest court. In all likelihood he won't be on the ballot this year, which surely would allow his prospective opponent, Rep. Ed Towns, to sleep easily. We are joking, of course-Towns never had reason to campaign against Sloan or any other nominal opponent.


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I have filed three petitions for a Writ of Certiorari in the US Supreme Court. All of the petitions I have filed seek to be reinstated on the ballot as a candidate for US Congress for the Tenth Congressional District of New York.

Here are the petitions I have filed in the United States Supreme Court, in HTML Format:

Here are the same three petitions exactly as filed in downloadable PDF Format:

Here are the same petitions on the US Supreme Court website:


Here is what I have filed thus far:


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