A reader forwarded an e-mail from a fairly frantic-sounding Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party, announcing the labor-backed party wasn’t successful in getting a pre-Election Day decision in the so-called “double-vote” lawsuit it brought against the state Board of Elections along with the state Conservative Party.

UPDATE1: Cantor’s e-mail is a little confusing, but I’ve since been told the case hasn’t yet been decided, and won’t be until after Nov. 2. Instead, the judge declined to give the WFP the injunction it sought. The party is considering an appeal.

This is almost of bad as a loss, since the current policy is detrimental to the minor parties.

As things stand, voters who select the same candidate on two different lines on the paper ballots used by the new voting machine system will see their vote counted for the first party that appears on the ballot.

That is, of course, very bad for the minor parties. The WFP appears in Row E; the Conservative Party is on Row D (ironically, a spot the WFP has been trying to usurp for years now).

In the e-mail, Cantor called the judge’s decision “appalling,” adding: “This reminds us yet again that judges sometimes make decisions that have only a dim relationship to fairness (see, Florida 2000).”

“This is a huge problem for us,” Cantor wrote. “The new voting system – paper ballots with tiny ovals that the voter uses a pencil to fill in – makes it much more likely that a voter might mistakenly or even deliberately fill in more than one oval for the same candidate.”

“…This is obviously a crucial problem in the Gubernatorial race. If someone fills in both the D and WF ovals for Cuomo, it won’t count towards our 50,000 vote requirement.

How serious a problem will this be? Much worse that we thought. In Connecticut, where they have the identical system, roughly HALF of the votes that were cast for the WFP in the two towns for which evidence was submitted were ‘double votes.’”

“But unlike the brilliant ruling here, in Connecticut the votes are allocated to the minor party, on the view that as the minor party’s existence is at stake it is fairer to count the votes towards their total.”

“Also, unbelievably, the Judge here ruled that the Board of Elections does not need to keep track of the number of double votes. It may be that the greater familiarity with minor parties in New York means the double-vote problem won’t be as large here, but one surely wouldn’t want to bet the farm, or the party, on it.”

If the WFP fails to hit that 50,000 mark in the governor’s race, it will lose its official status and, more importantly, its ballot status. Ditto for the Conservative Party, which already has enough to worry about, given the implosion of its standard-bearer, Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino.

“Please do your utmost to make sure that your co-workers, members, Friends & Neighbors and anyone else voting WFP understands not just who to vote for, but how to vote,” Cantor said. “This is an enormous challenge, and the stakes could not be higher.”

“In all phone banking and E-Day activities, let’s make sure we do our best to underline the ‘Fill out the WFP oval’ only message.”

“Other thoughts on how to make sure we get our votes are hereby solicited. Having survived attacks by REBNY, Golisano, the Post, News, Bloomberg, the Chamber, the Business Council, the Restaurant Association, Randy Mastro, Glenn Beck and the Manhattan Institute, we now have one more bridge to cross.”

Yesterday, the WFP sent out a video recorded by folk legend Pete Seeger, urging supporters to vote Row E.

UPDATE2: From WFP spokesman Dan Levitan:

“We are not frantic, just pissed.”

“To clarify, the judge has not ruled on the merits of the suit itself, only on our request for an injunction that would have fixed the problem before Election Day. Our joint suit with the Conservative Party will still be heard, though no date has been set yet. We are also considering an appeal of the judge’s decision.”

“The double-vote problem certainly could cost all of the cross-endorsing minor parties a substantial number of votes.”

“But given that the Independence, Conservative, and Working Families parties all had more than 150,000 votes at the top of the ticket in both 2008 and 2006, it is very unlikely that the double-vote problem will cost any party their ballot line.”

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