Questionable Results in New York Democratic Primary: Over 120,000 Purged From Voter Rolls; Millions Disenfranchised
Sanders campaign, New York officials cry foul after New York voters report issues
By Gregory Krieg, CNN
10:08 PM ET, Tue April 19, 2016
New York City
Bernie Sanders' campaign on Tuesday called reports of voting irregularities in New York state "a disgrace" as local officials rushed to condemn the city Board of Elections for stripping more than 125,000 Democratic voters from the rolls.
"It is absurd that in Brooklyn, New York -- where I was born, actually -- tens of thousands of people as I understand it, have been purged from the voting rolls," Sanders said during an evening campaign rally at Penn State University.
In an email to CNN, Sanders spokesman Karthik Ganapathy called the state's handling of the primary a "shameful demonstration."
"From long lines and dramatic understaffing to longtime voters being forced to cast affidavit ballots and thousands of registered New Yorkers being dropped from the rolls, what's happening today is a disgrace," he said.
Election Justice USA, a voter rights organization, told CNN it will go to Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning as part of an effort to have provisional ballots from voters disenfranchised by the Board of Elections counted before the primary results are certified.
Earlier in the day, a federal judge denied a temporary restraining order filed by the group that would have opened the polls to New York Democrats claiming they were unlawfully listed as Republican or unaffiliated.
A little before the polls here closed at 9 p.m., the polling site coordinator at Brooklyn Borough Hall estimated that about 10% of those who showed up to vote on Tuesday were previously removed by the board of elections. More than 2,800 people had voted at the location.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Hillary Clinton supporter, called for major reforms to the Board of Elections as a series of snafus continued to bubble up, including reports of the errant "purge" in Brooklyn.
"It has been reported to us from voters and voting rights monitors that the voting lists in Brooklyn contain numerous errors, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists," de Blasio said in a statement Tuesday calling on the board to "reverse that purge."
"The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed," he said.
Speaking to CNN on Tuesday night, Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan pushed back against the growing criticism, saying, "We're not finding that there were issues throughout the city that are any different than what we experience in other elections."
Of the 126,000 Democratic voters taken off from the rolls in Brooklyn, Ryan said 12,000 had moved out of borough, while 44,000 more had been placed in an inactive file after mailings to their homes bounced back. An additional 70,000 were already inactive and, having failed to vote in two successive federal elections or respond to cancel notices, were removed.
"Since the eyes and ears of the world are on New York, issues that are relatively routine for any election are receiving greater scrutiny," he added.
In pledging to audit the board, the office of New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer issued a much stricter verdict.
"The people of New York City have lost confidence that the Board of Elections can effectively administer elections and we intend to find out why the BOE is so consistently disorganized, chaotic and inefficient," he said.
The Clinton campaign had no immediate comment when asked by CNN.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's voter complaint hotline had "received more than 700 complaints from voters across (New York state)" before 4 p.m., Schneiderman spokesman Nick Benson tweeted. The same office, he added, had heard only around 150 on the day of the 2012 general election.
Voter Problems Impact Millions in New York Primary
BY LAURA BULT, ERIN DURKIN, LARRY MCSHANE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, April 19, 2016, 5:49 PM
A record-setting deluge of Primary Day voter complaints led Tuesday to the angry promise of a full-scale investigation into the city’s long-bumbling Board of Election.
The flood of gripes, running the gamut from locked doors to botched voter rolls, led irate city Controller Scott Stringer to announce an immediate probe of an incompetent agency.
“Unfortunately in New York City, this is nothing new,” Stringer told a news conference some 10 hours after the polls opened — or didn’t — at 6 a.m. “The next president of the United States could very easily be decided tonight.
“And yet the incompetence of the Board of Elections puts a cloud over these results. It’s time we clean up this mess.”
Presidential primary voters in the five boroughs ran an obstacle course of ineptitude to cast their ballots: Broken machines, shuttered precincts and purged voter rolls.
“There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote,” said Controller Scott Stringer, who planned an audit of the city’s voting apparatus.
“There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote,” said Controller Scott Stringer, who planned an audit of the city’s voting apparatus.
The most complaints came from Brooklyn, where entire sections of poll books listing the names of eligible voters were reported missing, according to state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
The problems started when early-bird voters in Queens and Brooklyn arrived at sunrise — only to find themselves unable to vote.
“There's no sign of me on the rolls!” fumed Lucinda Rosenfeld, a Boerum Hill novelist and registered Democrat for 28 years. “I’m mystified and outraged. ... I called the BOE as soon as I got home, they said they had no idea what happened.”
Mayor de Blasio issued a statement charging that entire buildings and city blocks of voters were among the 126,000 voters purged from the Brooklyn books since last fall.
The senior center at Atlantic Terminal, one of several sites where early voters encountered problems.
“These errors indicate that additional major reforms will be needed to the Board of Election,” said de Blasio. “The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process, and must be fixed.”
The purged Brooklynites included 12,000 who moved out, 44,000 shifted to inactive voting status, and a stunning 70,000 removed entirely from the books.
“I am calling on the Board of Election to reverse that purge,” said de Blasio. “We support the Comptroller’s audit and urge its completion ... so corrective action can be taken.”
Others encountered less sinister-sounding impediments.
Queens resident George Mack said he arrived at P.S. 52 in Springfield Gardens to vote right at 6 a.m.
He and 50 fellow voters learned all three on-site machines were broken. Volunteers told voters to place their ballots in a slot, and they would all get processed later.
“It’s a recipe for disaster,” said Mack, 55, a Hillary Clinton backer. “Somebody at the end of the day is going to feed (the ballots) through a machine? I don’t have confidence in that.”
A state voter complaint hotline received 562 phone calls and 140 emails between 6 a.m. and 3:50 p.m. — more than four times as many as in the 2012 general election, said Schneiderman.
Executive Director of the Board of Elections Michael Ryan outside Atlantic Terminal. He called the poll problems "absolutely unacceptable."
The most common gripe: Voters arriving only to find they were not included on the roll of registered voters. But the snafus were as simple as staffers providing blue pens for ballots clearly stating black ink only.
“I'm feeling profoundly snuffed," Lexie Smith, 27, a baker from Bushwick who wanted to cast her ballot for Bernie Sanders on Tuesday — but instead was instructed to vote via affidavit.
“It's given me a very large sense of fear about how the system is so ineffective.”
Incompetent poll workers added to the day-long distress, with voters told they were at the wrong polling place or incorrectly instructed not to vote for delegates.
“The truth is this agency hasn’t functioned properly for a very long time,” said Stringer. “So it’s time that somebody knock on the door and do the kind of audit that will hopefully bring about reform.”
Stringer said he hoped the reforms would be in place before New York’s voters help selected a replacement for President Obama this coming November.
But the tales told by frustrated voters illustrated the hard path ahead.
Voters at the Cooper Park Houses in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, couldn’t even reach a machine. More than two hours after polls were supposed to open at 6 a.m., the site remained shuttered.
“Cooper Park Houses polling site not open yet,” voter Rebecca Keith tweeted. “Good morning disenfranchisement.”
Republican strategist John Burnett, attempting to vote in the GOP primary, arrived at his polling place to discover they were out of ballots for his party.
“After showing voter card, I signed book and (was) given a Democrat ballot,” tweeted Burnett. “I asked for GOP ballot, told no more and to wait.”
It took two hours for somebody to provide him with a ballot to vote for a Republican presidential candidate.
Board of Elections Executive Director Michael J. Ryan, while defending his agency against critics, said even one delayed poll opening was too many.
“It’s absolutely unacceptable,” he said. “Clearly we strive to make sure that doesn’t happen, and if there were any voters that were inconvenienced, we certainly apologize.”
The BOE was “going to get to the bottom of this,” promised Ryan.
But Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said she was fielding complaints all day long about BOE failures.
Brewer, a Clinton supporter whose Upper West Side home serves as an ad hoc headquarters for Hillary volunteers, was told neighborhood poll workers urged voters to support Sanders in the Democratic race.
“I don't know who was doing that, but that is what I heard and that is not good," she said.
She also heard voters in the Hamilton Senior center at 141 W. 73rd St. didn't have privacy booths.
“They were upset,” she said.
Voters arriving at Public School 86 on W. 78th St. were delayed because the building was short eight election workers, she added.
“These are problems that are not hard to solve,” said Brewer. “This is communication, bad communication and that's not hard to fix, so that's frustrating to me.”
A similar mixup occurred at the Atlantic Terminal site in Brooklyn, which didn't open until after 7:30 a.m.
"They told me the key to the building had not arrived yet," voter Tara McCauley told the Daily News.
"I came back at 7:30 and they had just gotten the key. Upon entering, there were no voting machines."
A Board of Elections representative arrived around 8 a.m., she said, and told voters he had been busy tending to problems at other polls. Voting finally started 30 minutes later.
"I am sure there are many people who tried to vote and had to leave who will not be able to come back," she said.
With Aidan McLaughlin, Jason Silverstein, Glenn Blain
jsilverstein@nydailynews.com, edurkin@nydailynews.com
New York Voters Report Irregularities at Poll Sites
Mayor Bill de Blasio seeks answers from Board of Elections
By JOSH DAWSEY and MARA GAY
Washington Post
April 19, 2016 8:57 p.m. ET
Widespread complaints about faulty ballot scanners, inadequate staffing at poll sites and tens of thousands of people missing from the voter rolls on Tuesday led New York City’s comptroller to call for an audit of the Board of Elections.
“These allegations are very serious, and, unfortunately, in New York City, this is nothing new—we have long accepted the Board of Elections’ incompetence and over-politicization,” said Comptroller Scott Stringer, a Democrat, referring to problems during Tuesday’s presidential primaries.
Michael Ryan, executive director of the Board of Elections, defended the board, saying he thinks the criticism is fueled by all the public attention surrounding New York’s primaries this year.
“The eyes and the ears of the world are truly upon the City of New York right now,” he said. Mr. Ryan said he didn’t think Tuesday’s irregularities were any worse than in any previous election year since he took over the board in 2013.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said he supported the comptroller’s audit, and he called upon the Board of Elections to reverse what he called a purge of “entire buildings and blocks of voters” from the voter rolls.
“The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed,” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement.
The board confirmed that more than 125,000 Democratic voters in Brooklyn were removed from the rolls. But Mr. Ryan said those voters were removed properly because they changed addresses and, in some cases, failed to respond to board correspondence.
Some voters who showed up at poll sites—but weren’t listed on the voter rolls—were permitted to vote by affidavit ballot, Mr. Ryan said. Those ballots will be counted, he said.
Officials at state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office reported that 700 voters statewide complained about problems at the polls on Tuesday, up from about 150 complaints in 2012. A large number of the problems were in New York City, and specifically in Brooklyn, his office said.
The Board of Elections was already under scrutiny for spending more than $200,000 on overnight postage after making a mistake in the Spanish version of the primary ballots. The board, which is appointed by the City Council, has long been criticized as a den of patronage.
On Tuesday, some polling sites didn’t have enough available ballots, others didn’t open on time or at all, according to voters and officials.
Mr. Schneiderman’s office said voters also complained about a lack of privacy, unclear instructions from poll workers and ballots saying that voters must use black pens when the polling site only had blue-ink pens available.
Voter Jon Dieringer said it took him almost three hours to vote in Brooklyn, even though he showed up when the polls opened. He said workers told him they didn’t have the keys to open the polling site in Fort Greene and that he should come back in two hours.
When he returned, a line snaked around the building that didn’t move, he said. There was no coordinator at the poll, and some people left the line, Mr. Dieringer said.
“Everyone was saying it felt fishy,” said Mr. Dieringer, a writer. “No one there was inspiring confidence. They seemed to be disgruntled. No one seemed to have any idea what was going on.”
In Clinton Hill in Brooklyn, poll workers were seen Tuesday morning collecting ballots by hand and had trouble finding affidavit ballots. Voters at P.S. 273 in Brooklyn said they were turned away because of technical difficulties.
In other places, such as Manhattan’s Upper East Side and Brooklyn’s Park Slope, voters were reporting few problems.
In the Bronx, Wesley Moore, a 51-year-old Democrat and Co-op City resident, was disappointed when he was told he didn’t register to vote before the primary’s deadline.
“This never happened to me before,” Mr. Moore said. “I’m frustrated but I’m not discouraged.”
New York is a closed-primary state, which means only voters registered to the Democratic and Republican parties are permitted to vote in the primaries. The state has among the earliest voter-registration deadlines, causing some civil libertarians to say voters can be disenfranchised.
Many voters said they showed up at their usual polling sites to discover they were no longer registered there.
“I’m very concerned,” said Richard Emery, a voting-rights attorney on the Upper West Side. “This is the third location I’ve been to today to try and vote and I just ended up filling out an affidavit. The Board of Elections is a disaster.”
Write to Josh Dawsey at JOSHUA.DAWSEY@dowjones.com and Mara Gay at mara.gay@wsj.com
Front-runners Trump, Clinton Win in New York, Move Closer to Nomination
NEW YORK
BY EMILY FLITTER AND JONATHAN ALLEN
Republican front-runner Donald Trump easily won New York state's presidential nominating contest on Tuesday, moving closer to capturing enough delegates to win the nomination and avoid a contested convention in July.
The New York City billionaire's big victory in his home state gave him renewed momentum in the Republican race and pushed him closer to the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton also won in New York, which she once represented in the U.S. Senate, blunting the momentum of rival Bernie Sanders and taking a big step toward wrapping up the nomination.
The victories for Trump and Clinton in one of the biggest state nominating contests so far set up both front-runners for strong performances next Tuesday, when they are expected to do well in five other Northeastern state primaries.
Trump had more than 60 percent of the vote with about 40 percent counted, easily beating rivals Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, and Ohio Governor John Kasich and putting him in position to possibly win most or all of the state's 95 delegates.
Trump could win all of the delegates if his vote total is above 50 percent statewide and in each of the state's congressional districts.
"We don't have much of a race anymore based on what I'm seeing on television," Trump told cheering supporters at a victory party at his Trump Tower in Manhattan. "We are really, really rocking."
Trump entered the New York contest with 756 delegates, while Cruz had 559 and Kasich had 144, according to an Associated Press count. The count includes endorsements from several delegates who are free to support the candidate of their choice.
Trump said his New York win would make it almost mathematically impossible for Cruz to win the Republican nomination on the first ballot at the party's national convention in July. Cruz, Kasich and establishment forces in the party have been trying to keep Trump from winning on the initial ballot.
If Trump does not secure enough delegates needed to win the nomination on the first ballot at the July 18-21 conclave in Cleveland, delegates would be allowed to switch to other candidates.
Trump remains unpopular with the Republican leaders and activists who select and serve as delegates, while Cruz has invested time and money courting them.
Some establishment Republicans have been alienated by Trump's more incendiary proposals, such as building a wall along the border with Mexico and slapping a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.
Clinton's win in New York followed some of the most heated personal exchanges of her campaign against Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont who had won seven of the last eight state-by-state nominating contests.
The New York victory will expand Clinton's lead of 244 pledged delegates over Sanders, and make it nearly impossible for him to overcome the deficit and capture the 2,383 convention delegates needed for the nomination under Democratic rules that allocate delegates proportionally based on each state's result.
The voting in New York was marred by irregularities, including more than 125,000 people missing from New York City voter rolls. The city has roughly 4 million voters considered active for the primaries.
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer ordered an audit of the city elections board after it confirmed the names had been removed from voter rolls. He told the board in a letter it was "consistently disorganized, chaotic and inefficient."
"It is absurd that in Brooklyn, New York, where I was born actually, tens of thousands of people as I understand it have been purged from the voting rolls," Sanders told supporters at a rally in State College, Pennsylvania.
(Additional reporting by Megan Cassella and Alana Wise in Washington, Luciana Lopez in New York and Emily Stephenson in Pennsylvania; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
New York Judge Rules For Voters In Last Minute Primary Case
April 19, 2016
Nathaniel Downes
New York began disenfranchising millions of its citizens due to a draconian voter registration law. As a result, an emergency lawsuit (CV-16 1892) was filed in Federal District Court Monday by Election Justice USA to enable both independents and newly registered Democrats to vote in the primary. This law resulted in many people whom have been registered as Democrats were scrubbed from voter rolls without sufficient notice. The loss was so large in one borough of New York City that Mayor DeBlasio raised the issue in an interview with WYNC.
This number surprises me. I admit that Brooklyn has had a lot of transient population – that’s obvious. Lot of people moving in, lot of people moving out. That might account for some of it. But I’m confused since so many people have moved in, that the number would move that much in the negative direction.
On top of these problems, reports are coming in of New York voters facing broken and malfunctioning machines, resulting in long lines. Add to it the usual partisan conflicts in a hotly contested primary, nobody can claim that New York’s primary is not important.
Now the court has declined to dismiss the case, leaving the issue open for people to now petition for their vote to be accepted. This authorizes those who were denied access to the polls to cast their vote using a provisional ballot, due to the late stage of this decision. The judge also ruled that all county election offices must appear before the court within 60 days to defend their enrollment process. This order does not, however, give people who choose not to join a particular political party the opportunity to participate, leaving it only a partial answer to the issue.
For a more permanent solution, the legislature in Albany is currently working on Assembly Bill A9661, which would turn the New York primary into a full open primary.
The nature of democracy is the principle of one person, one vote. However, as Tom Stoppard put it in his play “Jumpers”, “It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.” By manipulating the numbers, by disenfranchising voters be it through closed primaries, voter ID laws or scrubbing election rolls, it undermines the principles upon which our nation was founded. The decision to enable people to vote in New York’s primary today is another victory for the forces of democracy.
New York’s Primary Isn’t Going Smoothly So Far
BY EMILY ATKIN
APR 19, 2016 1:18 PM
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Less than halfway though primary election day in New York, a main voter protection hotline has already received “hundreds” of phone calls from people with complaints, issues, and questions about their voter registrations and polling sites.
New Yorkers have been turned away due to problems with their voter registrations; polling sites have been closed; and equipment has been malfunctioning at sites across New York, according to Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Clarke’s organization runs the Election Protection hotline, which seeks to help voters work through challenges they experience at the polls.
“The traffic to our polling hotlines has been pretty significant,” Clarke told ThinkProgress on Tuesday afternoon. “We’re seeing a high volume of calls, which suggests this is not an election that is problem-free.”
The most frequent complaints received so far have been from voters who are confused about the New York’s closed primary rules, Clarke said. In New York, only registered Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary and only Republicans can vote in the Republican primary. Registered New York voters who wanted to switch parties had to do so by October 9, 2015 — more than six months ago — and many people didn’t realize they had to do it so early. New York has the earliest change-of-party deadline in the country.
We’re seeing a high volume of calls, which suggests this is not an election that is problem-free.
The result was that many New Yorkers showed up at their polls sites thinking they could vote, only to be turned away, Clarke said. One of those voters was Bayville resident Kali Ventresca, who changed her party affiliation from independent to Democrat on March 20, five days before New York’s registration deadline for new voters. Ventresca told ThinkProgress she didn’t realize the deadline for existing voters was different than the deadline for new voters. She fully expected to be able to cast a ballot.
“I’m pissed,” she said.
Other voters, however, insisted they did everything correctly with their voter registrations, and were still turned away because their names were not on the voter rolls.
“There are certainly some people who believe they did everything right, they registered well in advance, they registered and indicated their party preference, and expected to be able to vote in their party primary and their names are not on the rolls,” Clarke said.
In addition, voters in Brooklyn have reported that their polling sites were closed. Clarke said that one site at 195 Graham Ave was closed “due to technical difficulties.” Poll workers there reportedly “directed voters to another alternative site, and told voters they should go there and cast affidavit ballots,” Clarke said.
A polling place in Fort Green, Brooklyn, also opened more than two hours after it was supposed to, according to FiveThirtyEight chief economics reporter Ben Casselman. Though it was supposed to open at 6:00 a.m., Casselman said, his polling place didn’t open until 8:15 a.m., apparently because it was a new polling location and there was “no coordinator on site.”
Malfunctioning equipment was also reported at multiple sites in Brooklyn. Clarke said voting machines at the 215 MacDougal Street polling location were reported broken. “Our voter indicated that at some point the police arrived and locked up the voting machines because they were not working,” Clarke said. “We contacted the Board of Elections, and they said they’d send someone there.”
Another voter reported on Twitter that ballot scanners were malfunctioning at his polling site in Bushwick, Brooklyn. A poll worker reportedly told him that ballots there “won’t be counted today,” but will be at a later date.
So far, many of the voter complaints have come from Brooklyn, Clarke said.
“Brooklyn’s been well-represented for sure,” she said.
Clarke speculated that the reason so many calls have come from Brooklyn may be because of sheer size and voter turnout there. Brooklyn has, however, been the subject of some attention lately, after WYNC reported that Brooklyn has experienced an unprecedented, unexplained drop in registered Democratic voters. According to WYNC’s analysis, “the number of active registered Democrats dropped there by 63,558 voters between November 2015 and April 2016. That translates into a 7 percent drop in registered Democrats in the borough.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has demanded an explanation for the unprecedented drop in registered Brooklyn Democratic voters.
New York primary draws legal scrutiny amid reports of voting problems
Los Angeles Times
A legal effort that could have opened New York's Democratic primary to voters who are not registered as party members was unsuccessful as residents cast their ballots Tuesday.
The lawsuit alleged that some Democratic voters were improperly removed from the voting rolls and would be unable to participate in the primary.
"They’ve been voting in Democratic primaries for many years, and somehow found themselves in the unfortunate circumstance of getting purged from the rolls," said Shyla Nelson, a spokeswoman for Election Justice USA, an activist group that worked on the lawsuit.
Given the potential scope of the problem, Nelson said, they asked for a "Hail Mary" to address an "emergency situation."
"In the spirit of the scope and magnitude of the problem, we approached with the request to open the primary," she said.
However, a judge declined to grant the request Tuesday, instead calling for a hearing at a later date.
Meanwhile, officials at the state attorney general's office fielded a larger-than-usual number of complaints about problems voting. Many people believed they were registered but were told they were not when they went to vote.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement that he's heard of "numerous errors" with people missing from lists of registered voters.
"The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed," he said.
‘Good morning disenfranchisement’: New York primary tainted by voting irregularities
19 Apr, 2016 22:41
Rt.com
The New York primary has been marred by reports of broken voting machines; closed polling places; missing ballots and voter registration books; purged voter rolls; and a lawsuit over inexplicably changed party registration.
The problems started early and often, with several polling stations in New York City and elsewhere opening late.
In Hempstead, the polls opened half an hour late because the poll's chairman, the only person able to unlock the machines, hadn't arrived.
"I felt disenfranchised and dumbfounded," William Charpied told the New York Daily News. "It is difficult to understand how volunteers could be present while the single most important individual, the chairperson, was missing."
In some places, including the Bishop Ford School in Windsor Terrace, the voter registration books for the latter half of the alphabet never showed up, Gothamist reported. There were no records there of voter names and signatures corresponding to last names N-Z.
"I told them my name and they just sort of looked up at me and said, 'We're sorry, we only have one of the books'," Leo Roth told Gothamist.
Broken ballot machines held up voting in at least one precinct. As of 11 a.m. local time, all the scanners at PS 216 in Gravesend were down, and it was unclear when two more would be delivered, according to Gothamist.
"Both our scanners are down ‒ it's horrible, we should have had four," a Board of Elections worker told voters, who were instructed to leave their filled-out ballots for agency employees to scan once the new machines arrived.
There was confusion on the ballots, too, at least in the 12th congressional district. While Democratic voters were told to select seven delegates, there were only six possible choices who supported candidate Bernie Sanders. His rival, Hillary Clinton, had seven potential delegates.
When Gothamists’s John Del Signore asked a poll worker what to do, she told him: "Oh, it doesn't matter. Some people don't even fill that part out."
He later found out from Democratic National Committee spokesperson Deshundra Jefferson that there is a process for what happens if Sanders wins the district, albeit a convoluted one.
"This means that the [Sanders] campaign only had 6 [delegates] to file while the Clinton campaign had 7. The total allocation will be proportionally allocated to the two candidates based on the results in that congressional district,” Jefferson said. “Finally, if a candidate had not slated enough delegate candidates, there is a process in the Delegate Selection Plan to allow for that candidate to elect the additional delegates."
At the Lower East Side’s PS 20, Katelyn Glass, a registered Republican, was handed a Democratic ballot because they didn’t have any for GOP voters, she told Gothamist.
"I then came back and... told them I was a registered Republican, and they instructed me that they had no ballots for my table but I could either come back or just vote affidavit," Glass said. "The women in charge literally said, 'You're going to love this. They never delivered the Republican ballots. I'm a Democrat, but even I think this is a complete injustice’."
There was some movement on a lawsuit filed Monday by Election Justice USA on behalf of Democratic voters who claimed their party affiliation was changed without their consent. Because the New York primaries are closed, independents and unaffiliated voters are not able to participate in Tuesday’s hotly-contested primary.
While there was no hearing, the lawsuit wasn’t thrown out, either. Affected voters were told to ask for affidavit ballots (another name for provisional ballots), as they may be counted in the future, depending on the outcome of the court case.
The lawsuit is likely not going to affect voters who were not able to change their party affiliation in time, like Eric and Ivanka Trump, two of GOP candidate Donald Trump’s children.
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders sought to comfort independents who weren’t able to vote for him. The Brooklyn native gets boosts from non-Democrats in open primaries.
“Today, 3 million people in the state of New York who are independents have lost their right to vote in the Democratic and Republican primaries,” Sanders told an independent supporter who was unable to vote for the Vermont senator, according to The Hill newspaper. "That’s wrong.”
“You’re paying for this election; it’s administered by the state, [and] you have a right to vote,” Sanders told Michael Cantalupo, a 21-year-old independent who had tried twice to register as a Democrat. "That’s a very unfortunate thing that I hope will change in the future.”
Cantalupo claims that last May the Department of Motor Vehicles lost his paperwork to change his party affiliation. When he tried again in December, it was already too late ‒ the deadline to switch parties before the closed primary had passed in October.
For its part, the New York Board of Elections blamed the counties for any voting problems.
By Gregory Krieg, CNN
10:08 PM ET, Tue April 19, 2016
New York City
Bernie Sanders' campaign on Tuesday called reports of voting irregularities in New York state "a disgrace" as local officials rushed to condemn the city Board of Elections for stripping more than 125,000 Democratic voters from the rolls.
"It is absurd that in Brooklyn, New York -- where I was born, actually -- tens of thousands of people as I understand it, have been purged from the voting rolls," Sanders said during an evening campaign rally at Penn State University.
In an email to CNN, Sanders spokesman Karthik Ganapathy called the state's handling of the primary a "shameful demonstration."
"From long lines and dramatic understaffing to longtime voters being forced to cast affidavit ballots and thousands of registered New Yorkers being dropped from the rolls, what's happening today is a disgrace," he said.
Election Justice USA, a voter rights organization, told CNN it will go to Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning as part of an effort to have provisional ballots from voters disenfranchised by the Board of Elections counted before the primary results are certified.
Earlier in the day, a federal judge denied a temporary restraining order filed by the group that would have opened the polls to New York Democrats claiming they were unlawfully listed as Republican or unaffiliated.
A little before the polls here closed at 9 p.m., the polling site coordinator at Brooklyn Borough Hall estimated that about 10% of those who showed up to vote on Tuesday were previously removed by the board of elections. More than 2,800 people had voted at the location.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Hillary Clinton supporter, called for major reforms to the Board of Elections as a series of snafus continued to bubble up, including reports of the errant "purge" in Brooklyn.
"It has been reported to us from voters and voting rights monitors that the voting lists in Brooklyn contain numerous errors, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists," de Blasio said in a statement Tuesday calling on the board to "reverse that purge."
"The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed," he said.
Speaking to CNN on Tuesday night, Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan pushed back against the growing criticism, saying, "We're not finding that there were issues throughout the city that are any different than what we experience in other elections."
Of the 126,000 Democratic voters taken off from the rolls in Brooklyn, Ryan said 12,000 had moved out of borough, while 44,000 more had been placed in an inactive file after mailings to their homes bounced back. An additional 70,000 were already inactive and, having failed to vote in two successive federal elections or respond to cancel notices, were removed.
"Since the eyes and ears of the world are on New York, issues that are relatively routine for any election are receiving greater scrutiny," he added.
In pledging to audit the board, the office of New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer issued a much stricter verdict.
"The people of New York City have lost confidence that the Board of Elections can effectively administer elections and we intend to find out why the BOE is so consistently disorganized, chaotic and inefficient," he said.
The Clinton campaign had no immediate comment when asked by CNN.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's voter complaint hotline had "received more than 700 complaints from voters across (New York state)" before 4 p.m., Schneiderman spokesman Nick Benson tweeted. The same office, he added, had heard only around 150 on the day of the 2012 general election.
Voter Problems Impact Millions in New York Primary
BY LAURA BULT, ERIN DURKIN, LARRY MCSHANE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, April 19, 2016, 5:49 PM
A record-setting deluge of Primary Day voter complaints led Tuesday to the angry promise of a full-scale investigation into the city’s long-bumbling Board of Election.
The flood of gripes, running the gamut from locked doors to botched voter rolls, led irate city Controller Scott Stringer to announce an immediate probe of an incompetent agency.
“Unfortunately in New York City, this is nothing new,” Stringer told a news conference some 10 hours after the polls opened — or didn’t — at 6 a.m. “The next president of the United States could very easily be decided tonight.
“And yet the incompetence of the Board of Elections puts a cloud over these results. It’s time we clean up this mess.”
Presidential primary voters in the five boroughs ran an obstacle course of ineptitude to cast their ballots: Broken machines, shuttered precincts and purged voter rolls.
“There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote,” said Controller Scott Stringer, who planned an audit of the city’s voting apparatus.
“There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote,” said Controller Scott Stringer, who planned an audit of the city’s voting apparatus.
The most complaints came from Brooklyn, where entire sections of poll books listing the names of eligible voters were reported missing, according to state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
The problems started when early-bird voters in Queens and Brooklyn arrived at sunrise — only to find themselves unable to vote.
“There's no sign of me on the rolls!” fumed Lucinda Rosenfeld, a Boerum Hill novelist and registered Democrat for 28 years. “I’m mystified and outraged. ... I called the BOE as soon as I got home, they said they had no idea what happened.”
Mayor de Blasio issued a statement charging that entire buildings and city blocks of voters were among the 126,000 voters purged from the Brooklyn books since last fall.
The senior center at Atlantic Terminal, one of several sites where early voters encountered problems.
“These errors indicate that additional major reforms will be needed to the Board of Election,” said de Blasio. “The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process, and must be fixed.”
The purged Brooklynites included 12,000 who moved out, 44,000 shifted to inactive voting status, and a stunning 70,000 removed entirely from the books.
“I am calling on the Board of Election to reverse that purge,” said de Blasio. “We support the Comptroller’s audit and urge its completion ... so corrective action can be taken.”
Others encountered less sinister-sounding impediments.
Queens resident George Mack said he arrived at P.S. 52 in Springfield Gardens to vote right at 6 a.m.
He and 50 fellow voters learned all three on-site machines were broken. Volunteers told voters to place their ballots in a slot, and they would all get processed later.
“It’s a recipe for disaster,” said Mack, 55, a Hillary Clinton backer. “Somebody at the end of the day is going to feed (the ballots) through a machine? I don’t have confidence in that.”
A state voter complaint hotline received 562 phone calls and 140 emails between 6 a.m. and 3:50 p.m. — more than four times as many as in the 2012 general election, said Schneiderman.
Executive Director of the Board of Elections Michael Ryan outside Atlantic Terminal. He called the poll problems "absolutely unacceptable."
The most common gripe: Voters arriving only to find they were not included on the roll of registered voters. But the snafus were as simple as staffers providing blue pens for ballots clearly stating black ink only.
“I'm feeling profoundly snuffed," Lexie Smith, 27, a baker from Bushwick who wanted to cast her ballot for Bernie Sanders on Tuesday — but instead was instructed to vote via affidavit.
“It's given me a very large sense of fear about how the system is so ineffective.”
Incompetent poll workers added to the day-long distress, with voters told they were at the wrong polling place or incorrectly instructed not to vote for delegates.
“The truth is this agency hasn’t functioned properly for a very long time,” said Stringer. “So it’s time that somebody knock on the door and do the kind of audit that will hopefully bring about reform.”
Stringer said he hoped the reforms would be in place before New York’s voters help selected a replacement for President Obama this coming November.
But the tales told by frustrated voters illustrated the hard path ahead.
Voters at the Cooper Park Houses in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, couldn’t even reach a machine. More than two hours after polls were supposed to open at 6 a.m., the site remained shuttered.
“Cooper Park Houses polling site not open yet,” voter Rebecca Keith tweeted. “Good morning disenfranchisement.”
Republican strategist John Burnett, attempting to vote in the GOP primary, arrived at his polling place to discover they were out of ballots for his party.
“After showing voter card, I signed book and (was) given a Democrat ballot,” tweeted Burnett. “I asked for GOP ballot, told no more and to wait.”
It took two hours for somebody to provide him with a ballot to vote for a Republican presidential candidate.
Board of Elections Executive Director Michael J. Ryan, while defending his agency against critics, said even one delayed poll opening was too many.
“It’s absolutely unacceptable,” he said. “Clearly we strive to make sure that doesn’t happen, and if there were any voters that were inconvenienced, we certainly apologize.”
The BOE was “going to get to the bottom of this,” promised Ryan.
But Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said she was fielding complaints all day long about BOE failures.
Brewer, a Clinton supporter whose Upper West Side home serves as an ad hoc headquarters for Hillary volunteers, was told neighborhood poll workers urged voters to support Sanders in the Democratic race.
“I don't know who was doing that, but that is what I heard and that is not good," she said.
She also heard voters in the Hamilton Senior center at 141 W. 73rd St. didn't have privacy booths.
“They were upset,” she said.
Voters arriving at Public School 86 on W. 78th St. were delayed because the building was short eight election workers, she added.
“These are problems that are not hard to solve,” said Brewer. “This is communication, bad communication and that's not hard to fix, so that's frustrating to me.”
A similar mixup occurred at the Atlantic Terminal site in Brooklyn, which didn't open until after 7:30 a.m.
"They told me the key to the building had not arrived yet," voter Tara McCauley told the Daily News.
"I came back at 7:30 and they had just gotten the key. Upon entering, there were no voting machines."
A Board of Elections representative arrived around 8 a.m., she said, and told voters he had been busy tending to problems at other polls. Voting finally started 30 minutes later.
"I am sure there are many people who tried to vote and had to leave who will not be able to come back," she said.
With Aidan McLaughlin, Jason Silverstein, Glenn Blain
jsilverstein@nydailynews.com, edurkin@nydailynews.com
New York Voters Report Irregularities at Poll Sites
Mayor Bill de Blasio seeks answers from Board of Elections
By JOSH DAWSEY and MARA GAY
Washington Post
April 19, 2016 8:57 p.m. ET
Widespread complaints about faulty ballot scanners, inadequate staffing at poll sites and tens of thousands of people missing from the voter rolls on Tuesday led New York City’s comptroller to call for an audit of the Board of Elections.
“These allegations are very serious, and, unfortunately, in New York City, this is nothing new—we have long accepted the Board of Elections’ incompetence and over-politicization,” said Comptroller Scott Stringer, a Democrat, referring to problems during Tuesday’s presidential primaries.
Michael Ryan, executive director of the Board of Elections, defended the board, saying he thinks the criticism is fueled by all the public attention surrounding New York’s primaries this year.
“The eyes and the ears of the world are truly upon the City of New York right now,” he said. Mr. Ryan said he didn’t think Tuesday’s irregularities were any worse than in any previous election year since he took over the board in 2013.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said he supported the comptroller’s audit, and he called upon the Board of Elections to reverse what he called a purge of “entire buildings and blocks of voters” from the voter rolls.
“The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed,” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement.
The board confirmed that more than 125,000 Democratic voters in Brooklyn were removed from the rolls. But Mr. Ryan said those voters were removed properly because they changed addresses and, in some cases, failed to respond to board correspondence.
Some voters who showed up at poll sites—but weren’t listed on the voter rolls—were permitted to vote by affidavit ballot, Mr. Ryan said. Those ballots will be counted, he said.
Officials at state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office reported that 700 voters statewide complained about problems at the polls on Tuesday, up from about 150 complaints in 2012. A large number of the problems were in New York City, and specifically in Brooklyn, his office said.
The Board of Elections was already under scrutiny for spending more than $200,000 on overnight postage after making a mistake in the Spanish version of the primary ballots. The board, which is appointed by the City Council, has long been criticized as a den of patronage.
On Tuesday, some polling sites didn’t have enough available ballots, others didn’t open on time or at all, according to voters and officials.
Mr. Schneiderman’s office said voters also complained about a lack of privacy, unclear instructions from poll workers and ballots saying that voters must use black pens when the polling site only had blue-ink pens available.
Voter Jon Dieringer said it took him almost three hours to vote in Brooklyn, even though he showed up when the polls opened. He said workers told him they didn’t have the keys to open the polling site in Fort Greene and that he should come back in two hours.
When he returned, a line snaked around the building that didn’t move, he said. There was no coordinator at the poll, and some people left the line, Mr. Dieringer said.
“Everyone was saying it felt fishy,” said Mr. Dieringer, a writer. “No one there was inspiring confidence. They seemed to be disgruntled. No one seemed to have any idea what was going on.”
In Clinton Hill in Brooklyn, poll workers were seen Tuesday morning collecting ballots by hand and had trouble finding affidavit ballots. Voters at P.S. 273 in Brooklyn said they were turned away because of technical difficulties.
In other places, such as Manhattan’s Upper East Side and Brooklyn’s Park Slope, voters were reporting few problems.
In the Bronx, Wesley Moore, a 51-year-old Democrat and Co-op City resident, was disappointed when he was told he didn’t register to vote before the primary’s deadline.
“This never happened to me before,” Mr. Moore said. “I’m frustrated but I’m not discouraged.”
New York is a closed-primary state, which means only voters registered to the Democratic and Republican parties are permitted to vote in the primaries. The state has among the earliest voter-registration deadlines, causing some civil libertarians to say voters can be disenfranchised.
Many voters said they showed up at their usual polling sites to discover they were no longer registered there.
“I’m very concerned,” said Richard Emery, a voting-rights attorney on the Upper West Side. “This is the third location I’ve been to today to try and vote and I just ended up filling out an affidavit. The Board of Elections is a disaster.”
Write to Josh Dawsey at JOSHUA.DAWSEY@dowjones.com and Mara Gay at mara.gay@wsj.com
Front-runners Trump, Clinton Win in New York, Move Closer to Nomination
NEW YORK
BY EMILY FLITTER AND JONATHAN ALLEN
Republican front-runner Donald Trump easily won New York state's presidential nominating contest on Tuesday, moving closer to capturing enough delegates to win the nomination and avoid a contested convention in July.
The New York City billionaire's big victory in his home state gave him renewed momentum in the Republican race and pushed him closer to the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton also won in New York, which she once represented in the U.S. Senate, blunting the momentum of rival Bernie Sanders and taking a big step toward wrapping up the nomination.
The victories for Trump and Clinton in one of the biggest state nominating contests so far set up both front-runners for strong performances next Tuesday, when they are expected to do well in five other Northeastern state primaries.
Trump had more than 60 percent of the vote with about 40 percent counted, easily beating rivals Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, and Ohio Governor John Kasich and putting him in position to possibly win most or all of the state's 95 delegates.
Trump could win all of the delegates if his vote total is above 50 percent statewide and in each of the state's congressional districts.
"We don't have much of a race anymore based on what I'm seeing on television," Trump told cheering supporters at a victory party at his Trump Tower in Manhattan. "We are really, really rocking."
Trump entered the New York contest with 756 delegates, while Cruz had 559 and Kasich had 144, according to an Associated Press count. The count includes endorsements from several delegates who are free to support the candidate of their choice.
Trump said his New York win would make it almost mathematically impossible for Cruz to win the Republican nomination on the first ballot at the party's national convention in July. Cruz, Kasich and establishment forces in the party have been trying to keep Trump from winning on the initial ballot.
If Trump does not secure enough delegates needed to win the nomination on the first ballot at the July 18-21 conclave in Cleveland, delegates would be allowed to switch to other candidates.
Trump remains unpopular with the Republican leaders and activists who select and serve as delegates, while Cruz has invested time and money courting them.
Some establishment Republicans have been alienated by Trump's more incendiary proposals, such as building a wall along the border with Mexico and slapping a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.
Clinton's win in New York followed some of the most heated personal exchanges of her campaign against Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont who had won seven of the last eight state-by-state nominating contests.
The New York victory will expand Clinton's lead of 244 pledged delegates over Sanders, and make it nearly impossible for him to overcome the deficit and capture the 2,383 convention delegates needed for the nomination under Democratic rules that allocate delegates proportionally based on each state's result.
The voting in New York was marred by irregularities, including more than 125,000 people missing from New York City voter rolls. The city has roughly 4 million voters considered active for the primaries.
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer ordered an audit of the city elections board after it confirmed the names had been removed from voter rolls. He told the board in a letter it was "consistently disorganized, chaotic and inefficient."
"It is absurd that in Brooklyn, New York, where I was born actually, tens of thousands of people as I understand it have been purged from the voting rolls," Sanders told supporters at a rally in State College, Pennsylvania.
(Additional reporting by Megan Cassella and Alana Wise in Washington, Luciana Lopez in New York and Emily Stephenson in Pennsylvania; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
New York Judge Rules For Voters In Last Minute Primary Case
April 19, 2016
Nathaniel Downes
New York began disenfranchising millions of its citizens due to a draconian voter registration law. As a result, an emergency lawsuit (CV-16 1892) was filed in Federal District Court Monday by Election Justice USA to enable both independents and newly registered Democrats to vote in the primary. This law resulted in many people whom have been registered as Democrats were scrubbed from voter rolls without sufficient notice. The loss was so large in one borough of New York City that Mayor DeBlasio raised the issue in an interview with WYNC.
This number surprises me. I admit that Brooklyn has had a lot of transient population – that’s obvious. Lot of people moving in, lot of people moving out. That might account for some of it. But I’m confused since so many people have moved in, that the number would move that much in the negative direction.
On top of these problems, reports are coming in of New York voters facing broken and malfunctioning machines, resulting in long lines. Add to it the usual partisan conflicts in a hotly contested primary, nobody can claim that New York’s primary is not important.
Now the court has declined to dismiss the case, leaving the issue open for people to now petition for their vote to be accepted. This authorizes those who were denied access to the polls to cast their vote using a provisional ballot, due to the late stage of this decision. The judge also ruled that all county election offices must appear before the court within 60 days to defend their enrollment process. This order does not, however, give people who choose not to join a particular political party the opportunity to participate, leaving it only a partial answer to the issue.
For a more permanent solution, the legislature in Albany is currently working on Assembly Bill A9661, which would turn the New York primary into a full open primary.
The nature of democracy is the principle of one person, one vote. However, as Tom Stoppard put it in his play “Jumpers”, “It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.” By manipulating the numbers, by disenfranchising voters be it through closed primaries, voter ID laws or scrubbing election rolls, it undermines the principles upon which our nation was founded. The decision to enable people to vote in New York’s primary today is another victory for the forces of democracy.
New York’s Primary Isn’t Going Smoothly So Far
BY EMILY ATKIN
APR 19, 2016 1:18 PM
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Less than halfway though primary election day in New York, a main voter protection hotline has already received “hundreds” of phone calls from people with complaints, issues, and questions about their voter registrations and polling sites.
New Yorkers have been turned away due to problems with their voter registrations; polling sites have been closed; and equipment has been malfunctioning at sites across New York, according to Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Clarke’s organization runs the Election Protection hotline, which seeks to help voters work through challenges they experience at the polls.
“The traffic to our polling hotlines has been pretty significant,” Clarke told ThinkProgress on Tuesday afternoon. “We’re seeing a high volume of calls, which suggests this is not an election that is problem-free.”
The most frequent complaints received so far have been from voters who are confused about the New York’s closed primary rules, Clarke said. In New York, only registered Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary and only Republicans can vote in the Republican primary. Registered New York voters who wanted to switch parties had to do so by October 9, 2015 — more than six months ago — and many people didn’t realize they had to do it so early. New York has the earliest change-of-party deadline in the country.
We’re seeing a high volume of calls, which suggests this is not an election that is problem-free.
The result was that many New Yorkers showed up at their polls sites thinking they could vote, only to be turned away, Clarke said. One of those voters was Bayville resident Kali Ventresca, who changed her party affiliation from independent to Democrat on March 20, five days before New York’s registration deadline for new voters. Ventresca told ThinkProgress she didn’t realize the deadline for existing voters was different than the deadline for new voters. She fully expected to be able to cast a ballot.
“I’m pissed,” she said.
Other voters, however, insisted they did everything correctly with their voter registrations, and were still turned away because their names were not on the voter rolls.
“There are certainly some people who believe they did everything right, they registered well in advance, they registered and indicated their party preference, and expected to be able to vote in their party primary and their names are not on the rolls,” Clarke said.
In addition, voters in Brooklyn have reported that their polling sites were closed. Clarke said that one site at 195 Graham Ave was closed “due to technical difficulties.” Poll workers there reportedly “directed voters to another alternative site, and told voters they should go there and cast affidavit ballots,” Clarke said.
A polling place in Fort Green, Brooklyn, also opened more than two hours after it was supposed to, according to FiveThirtyEight chief economics reporter Ben Casselman. Though it was supposed to open at 6:00 a.m., Casselman said, his polling place didn’t open until 8:15 a.m., apparently because it was a new polling location and there was “no coordinator on site.”
Malfunctioning equipment was also reported at multiple sites in Brooklyn. Clarke said voting machines at the 215 MacDougal Street polling location were reported broken. “Our voter indicated that at some point the police arrived and locked up the voting machines because they were not working,” Clarke said. “We contacted the Board of Elections, and they said they’d send someone there.”
Another voter reported on Twitter that ballot scanners were malfunctioning at his polling site in Bushwick, Brooklyn. A poll worker reportedly told him that ballots there “won’t be counted today,” but will be at a later date.
So far, many of the voter complaints have come from Brooklyn, Clarke said.
“Brooklyn’s been well-represented for sure,” she said.
Clarke speculated that the reason so many calls have come from Brooklyn may be because of sheer size and voter turnout there. Brooklyn has, however, been the subject of some attention lately, after WYNC reported that Brooklyn has experienced an unprecedented, unexplained drop in registered Democratic voters. According to WYNC’s analysis, “the number of active registered Democrats dropped there by 63,558 voters between November 2015 and April 2016. That translates into a 7 percent drop in registered Democrats in the borough.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has demanded an explanation for the unprecedented drop in registered Brooklyn Democratic voters.
New York primary draws legal scrutiny amid reports of voting problems
Los Angeles Times
A legal effort that could have opened New York's Democratic primary to voters who are not registered as party members was unsuccessful as residents cast their ballots Tuesday.
The lawsuit alleged that some Democratic voters were improperly removed from the voting rolls and would be unable to participate in the primary.
"They’ve been voting in Democratic primaries for many years, and somehow found themselves in the unfortunate circumstance of getting purged from the rolls," said Shyla Nelson, a spokeswoman for Election Justice USA, an activist group that worked on the lawsuit.
Given the potential scope of the problem, Nelson said, they asked for a "Hail Mary" to address an "emergency situation."
"In the spirit of the scope and magnitude of the problem, we approached with the request to open the primary," she said.
However, a judge declined to grant the request Tuesday, instead calling for a hearing at a later date.
Meanwhile, officials at the state attorney general's office fielded a larger-than-usual number of complaints about problems voting. Many people believed they were registered but were told they were not when they went to vote.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement that he's heard of "numerous errors" with people missing from lists of registered voters.
"The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed," he said.
‘Good morning disenfranchisement’: New York primary tainted by voting irregularities
19 Apr, 2016 22:41
Rt.com
The New York primary has been marred by reports of broken voting machines; closed polling places; missing ballots and voter registration books; purged voter rolls; and a lawsuit over inexplicably changed party registration.
The problems started early and often, with several polling stations in New York City and elsewhere opening late.
In Hempstead, the polls opened half an hour late because the poll's chairman, the only person able to unlock the machines, hadn't arrived.
"I felt disenfranchised and dumbfounded," William Charpied told the New York Daily News. "It is difficult to understand how volunteers could be present while the single most important individual, the chairperson, was missing."
In some places, including the Bishop Ford School in Windsor Terrace, the voter registration books for the latter half of the alphabet never showed up, Gothamist reported. There were no records there of voter names and signatures corresponding to last names N-Z.
"I told them my name and they just sort of looked up at me and said, 'We're sorry, we only have one of the books'," Leo Roth told Gothamist.
Broken ballot machines held up voting in at least one precinct. As of 11 a.m. local time, all the scanners at PS 216 in Gravesend were down, and it was unclear when two more would be delivered, according to Gothamist.
"Both our scanners are down ‒ it's horrible, we should have had four," a Board of Elections worker told voters, who were instructed to leave their filled-out ballots for agency employees to scan once the new machines arrived.
There was confusion on the ballots, too, at least in the 12th congressional district. While Democratic voters were told to select seven delegates, there were only six possible choices who supported candidate Bernie Sanders. His rival, Hillary Clinton, had seven potential delegates.
When Gothamists’s John Del Signore asked a poll worker what to do, she told him: "Oh, it doesn't matter. Some people don't even fill that part out."
He later found out from Democratic National Committee spokesperson Deshundra Jefferson that there is a process for what happens if Sanders wins the district, albeit a convoluted one.
"This means that the [Sanders] campaign only had 6 [delegates] to file while the Clinton campaign had 7. The total allocation will be proportionally allocated to the two candidates based on the results in that congressional district,” Jefferson said. “Finally, if a candidate had not slated enough delegate candidates, there is a process in the Delegate Selection Plan to allow for that candidate to elect the additional delegates."
At the Lower East Side’s PS 20, Katelyn Glass, a registered Republican, was handed a Democratic ballot because they didn’t have any for GOP voters, she told Gothamist.
"I then came back and... told them I was a registered Republican, and they instructed me that they had no ballots for my table but I could either come back or just vote affidavit," Glass said. "The women in charge literally said, 'You're going to love this. They never delivered the Republican ballots. I'm a Democrat, but even I think this is a complete injustice’."
There was some movement on a lawsuit filed Monday by Election Justice USA on behalf of Democratic voters who claimed their party affiliation was changed without their consent. Because the New York primaries are closed, independents and unaffiliated voters are not able to participate in Tuesday’s hotly-contested primary.
While there was no hearing, the lawsuit wasn’t thrown out, either. Affected voters were told to ask for affidavit ballots (another name for provisional ballots), as they may be counted in the future, depending on the outcome of the court case.
The lawsuit is likely not going to affect voters who were not able to change their party affiliation in time, like Eric and Ivanka Trump, two of GOP candidate Donald Trump’s children.
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders sought to comfort independents who weren’t able to vote for him. The Brooklyn native gets boosts from non-Democrats in open primaries.
“Today, 3 million people in the state of New York who are independents have lost their right to vote in the Democratic and Republican primaries,” Sanders told an independent supporter who was unable to vote for the Vermont senator, according to The Hill newspaper. "That’s wrong.”
“You’re paying for this election; it’s administered by the state, [and] you have a right to vote,” Sanders told Michael Cantalupo, a 21-year-old independent who had tried twice to register as a Democrat. "That’s a very unfortunate thing that I hope will change in the future.”
Cantalupo claims that last May the Department of Motor Vehicles lost his paperwork to change his party affiliation. When he tried again in December, it was already too late ‒ the deadline to switch parties before the closed primary had passed in October.
For its part, the New York Board of Elections blamed the counties for any voting problems.
No comments:
Post a Comment