BUFFALO - An appellate court Wednesday declined to hear the case of a former legislator who missed out on a spot on next month's primary ballot because a homeless man who collected petition signatures did not list a correct address for himself on his paperwork.

The development ended former Erie County Legislature Chairman George Holt's bid to return to office.

It also exposed a need to broaden state election law to accommodate the homeless, his attorney said.

“It's a disaster depriving people of choice and it needs to be overhauled,” attorney James Ostrowski said.

Holt came up short in his attempt to earn a slot on the Democratic primary ballot for his former legislative seat after elections officials earlier this month threw out four pages of petition signatures collected by supporter Alvin Thomas.

Thomas conceded he improperly listed his residence on petition paperwork as his late mother's Buffalo home and a now-closed group home where he lived for three months last year.

He actually had been staying in Holt's campaign headquarters, and before that at the City Mission and with friends.

A state Supreme Court justice ruled that Thomas' failure to correctly list his current address was enough to invalidate the 41 signatures he witnessed, leaving Holt 20 signatures shy of the 500 required to appear on the ballot.

“The disturbing implication of the court's ruling is that no one who is destitute or homeless, and who therefore has no fixed address, can carry a petition,” said Ostrowski, who failed Wednesday to convince the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Rochester to consider Holt's case.

“Is there any case in American law that makes the exercise of fundamental constitutional rights contingent upon one's net worth or station in life?”

Elections officials said the problem was not that Thomas lacked an address, but that he listed a wrong address.

“This was not in any way punitive against someone who might be homeless,” Erie County Democratic Elections Commissioner Dennis Ward said.

Had Thomas approached the board before collecting the signatures, he could have made a case for listing Holt's headquarters, where he was staying, as his residence on voter registration and petition forms, Ward said.

“But it sounds a little bit like someone's grasping at straws when they come in and use all the wrong stuff and say, by the way, I'm homeless, so what else could I do?” Ward said.

“Well you could have done something that made it right, rather than just pick an old address that you're no longer living at.”

Holt was trying to regain the seat he lost earlier this year after pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax violations related to a restaurant he and his wife operate.

Ostrowski, founder of Free New York Inc., a public policy research organization, said the case would serve as motivation to pursue reforms in election law that would put more candidates on ballots. In Holt's case, he noted, the signatures collected by Thomas were otherwise legitimate.

“We don't think a minor error on a residence should invalidate the sheet in the absence of fraud or some other reason that makes the sheet invalid,” he said.

Thomas, 50, said he has been politically active since he was 18 and has gathered voter signatures for races at all levels of government, including for president.