It’s never too late: Demand early voting
Ican get tequila shots, with limes and salt, delivered to my apartment at any hour of the day or night. There are taxi services just in case my dog wants to go around town by herself. In fact, I could order puppies to play with for an hour if the mood strikes me. I’ve not washed my own laundry in five years. If I wanted to I could also never wash my own hair; there is just such an industry of convenience in New York City.
You can hire someone to raise your children, another to talk to your spouse and some other guy to put together your IKEA furniture. We have apps that get us food, dates and a taxi, even in the rain. If you have the means you can successfully outsource all of life’s annoyances.
New Yorkers are tough, but we also like things to be easy. So why don’t we have early voting?
Mayor de Blasio won re-election by a whopping margin in an election with the worst voter turnout in generations. In 2013, barely more than a fifth of registered voters turned out to vote in citywide elections, totaling 1.1 million ballots cast. Four years later, last Tuesday, the numbers were nearly identical.
This isn’t just the city’s problem; New York State ranks 42nd in the nation in voter participation.
Now that de Blasio has a second-term mandate, he’s promised to fix what he calls our “backward election laws” and “a disgrace.”
“I am sick of my state being one of the last in the country to achieve electoral reform,” the mayor told reporters the day after his re-election. “There’s tremendous passion on this point. We are one of only 13 states that does not allow early voting.
“Early voting is the greatest preventative measure to make sure people are not excluded because of the weather or because work went late or because the subway broke down . . . . We need to say that every New Yorker who wants to vote should have the right to vote. It should be easy. It should be something that people can do naturally, not have to struggle to do.”
He’s said a push for early voting will be a big part of his Albany agenda starting in January. It ought to be accompanied by other voting reforms, such as same day registration, no-ask absentee voting, automatic registration and, yes, online registration.
But here’s the rub: The mayor will going to Albany to ask a bunch of politicians who benefit from low information and low turnout to vote against their best interests.
Don’t bet on change. Instead, call your state senator and assemblyperson and tell them you support voting reform. Tell them you support modernity. Tell our Albany lawmakers we want the modern voting conveniences that other, less corrupt states — which is all of them — enjoy.
Even still, Albany being Albany, it probably won’t happen. Which is why there’s another thing de Blasio can and should do, right away, whether or not Gov. Cuomo and the swamp things in the Albany Legislature give him the time of day: Give the people who work for him the day off to vote.
Around 250,000 New Yorkers work for the city government. All of the top five employers in New York are in the public sector. Meaning, government is our biggest employer — and we don’t give those government workers incentives to be engaged with how they’re being governed. This is how ridiculous it gets: We close public schools for Election Day — but the teachers still don’t get the day off to vote.
Once he takes care of publicsector workers, de Blasio — with we, the people, at his back — should engage private employers. In 2016, more than 180 mostly tech companies participated in a #takeelectiondayoff campaign. The sentiment has been around for some time.
“I hope you can hear in my voice that I am ready to get to work right away,” de Blasio said right after the election. “I’m not interested in any victory laps, I just want to get right back to the agenda. I feel a deep sense of urgency.”
The highest voter participation in the country is in Minnesota, and that is because they have a law stating that employees can take the time off necessary to vote. Start in 2018 — the year of the midterm and gubernatorial elections. Get as many New Yorkers as possible to have the first Tuesday in November off.