No improprieties at Board of Elections, officials say

KINGSTON, N.Y. >> Recent grumblings about improprieties involving the Ulster County Board of Elections are misplaced, according to county and state elections officials.

In the past several days, local residents have taken to the internet and elsewhere to suggest Democratic Elections Commissioner Ashley Dittus voted twice in the November election.

Not so, said Republican Elections Commissioner Thomas Turco.

Turco said that Dittus, like all other employees of the Board of Elections, were issued special ballots on which to cast their votes. Dittus submitted her special ballot, which according to the state Board of Elections, is akin to an absentee ballot, but also voted at a poll site.

When elections officials sorted through the absentee ballots, the ballot Dittus

cast was not counted because the vote she cast on the voting machine had already been counted.

“We all do it at the board,” Turco said. “Since we don’t know where we will be that day, we always cover ourselves.

“The absentee wasn’t counted,” he said.

Turco said he found it “ironic” that people are complaining about something that has been what he called “standard operating procedure” for years.

He suggested that those raising the issue were either unfamilar with the workings of the Board of Elections or was politically motivated.

“As an election official, we are entitled to cast an absentee ballot under election law section 11-302 which states that ‘My duties as a Board of Elections Employee, Election Inspector, Poll Clerk, Election Coordinator of Voting Machine Custodian/Technician require me to be elsewhere,’ Dittus said in an email to the Freeman.

“We are often quite busy during election days as you can imagine and do not always get to a poll site in order to vote.

“During early voting, I decided I would vote cast my ballot early and therefore that invalidated the absentee ballot that I had cast earlier in the month. My absentee ballot was thus ruled invalid by both myself and Commissioner Turco since I had already voted early.”

Dittus said she made it clear the day that she voted at the poll site that her absentee ballot had to be pulled and called the suggestion that she acted nefariously a “petty attack and an easily disproved one at that.”

State Board of Elections Spokesman John Conklin said the procedures followed in Ulster County are spelled out in Election Law and are used across the state.

Special ballots are issued to all workers at the boards of elections, including poll workers who must be at their assigned poll site before polls open at 6 a.m. and must remain there until after the polls close at 9 p.m.

Because elections commissioners must be immediately available throughout the day and poll workers are not always assigned to work at the same location that they would vote, the law makes special provisions to ensure they aren’t disenfranchised from their right to vote, Conklin said.

Conklin said the process used in handling the special ballot cast by Dittus is the same as what would be used if any voter cast both an absentee ballot and a ballot at the poll site. All absentee ballots are checked against the poll books and if a voter is found to have cast ballots both ways, the absentee ballot is not counted, he said.

“The preferred method is voting at the poll site,”

Conklin said.

Conklin said that while the introduction this year of early voting could make it easier for elections officials and employees to get

to a polling site, the provision to provide elections workers the ability to vote via a special ballot remains.

“That would be up to the state Legislature (to change),” he said. “Of the things that might need to be addressed in early voting, that’s not even near the top of the list.”