Mid-Election Day Update: New York Needs Early Voting NOW

NEW YORK, NY (11/06/2018) (readMedia)-- Today, Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause/NY is traveling to poll sites throughout Brooklyn to monitor them for any Election Day issues. Common Cause/NY will have a full analysis tomorrow on complaints received, but as of mid-day a frequent issue seems to be wide-spread technical problems with scanners and long wait times.

In response, Lerner issued the following statement:

"38 million Americans voted early in 37 states but New York was not among them. Instead, eager New Yorkers waited in long lines, sometimes for hours at a time, while BOE technicians raced across the five boroughs to fix broken scanners. There's an easy solution to this madness: New York needs to pass early voting NOW. There's no reason we should be trying to cram millions of votes into a 15-hour window on one day while the rest of the country has figured out a better way. New Yorkers deserve the same access to safe, efficient elections as anyone else. It's time for legislative leaders in Albany to get this done the minute they reconvene in January. No more excuses, let New York vote!"

This year, Let NY Vote, formerly known as Easy Elections NY, formed as a statewide coalition of organizations & grassroots groups fighting to modernize New York's elections. The goal is to pass simple solutions in 2019 to improve our elections and remove barriers to registering and voting for all eligible New Yorkers, such as:

Early Voting: in place in 37 other states, allowing citizens to cast ballots in person days, sometimes weeks, before an election.

Automatic Voter Registration: in place in 16 other states, allows eligible voters to automatically register to vote and provides a vehicle for state agencies to efficiently transfer voter registration information to the Board of Elections.

Flexibility to Change Parties: 49 States have open primaries or allow voters to change of their party close to Election Day. New York has neither.? ?Instead, New York has the most restrictive deadline in the country. To participate in the 2018 primary voters had to register this change more than 6 months earlier, before candidates had even been solidified, disenfranchising up to 3 million registered NY voters.

Pre-registration of 16 and 17-year-olds: 13 states plus DC allow for pre-registration for voting at 16 and 17 years old. Pre-registration increases the likelihood of voter participation among young adults. Engaging potential voters at a young age and bringing them into the voting process early helps create lifelong voters.

Additionally, Common Cause/NY supports the passage of the Voter Friendly Ballot Act, which would create a ballot layout that is easy for voters to read and use, requiring the use of sans serif type, removing the requirement that each row on the ballot have an image of a closed fist and extended finger, and printing the names of candidates using a font size larger than 9-point font, among others.

Background

In the September primary, 27% of registered voters turned out to vote – almost double the numbers from the 2014 primary.

Of the 1.5 million people who voted, too many experienced problems at the polls. Over 125 New Yorkers shared their election day story with Common Cause/NY on or after the primary.

• 70% of voters reported to Common Cause/NY having trouble on election day:
• Slightly more than half of affected voters reported not being onthe voter rolls, despite the fact that many are long time registered voters or had voted within the last year.
• Numerous voters reported issues at their poll site, from missing pollbooks, to broken voting machines and missing signage, or poorly trained staff.
• Dante de Blasio, Mayor de Blasio's son, encountered perennial incompetence from the BOE.
• 19.3% of voters contacting Common Cause/NY reported an unauthorized change in party affiliation from the Democratic party to the Reform party or to unaffiliated status.
• As a follow-up analysis, CCNY reviewed the voter file and found that 338 super-prime Democrats appear to have had their party affiliation changed between the federal and state primary this year.