VOTE N.Y. DURING A COVID PANDEMIC
Three ways to cast ballots Mail-ins will play critical role When will we know results?
Election Day is as American as apple pie, but this year it promises to be a surreal, contentious, angst-filled affair that could test the foundations of democracy.
That’s why now, more than perhaps at anytime before, it’s important for voters to know their options, know their rights and come up with a plan to vote.
Coronavirus has made going to the polls a potentially life-threatening proposition, which means mail-in voting will almost certainly play a much larger role in this year’s contest.
But absentee voting won’t be as simple as it has been in years past.
President Trump continues to undermine it, arguing with thin evidence that it’s fraught with fraud and setting the stage for a possible court showdown if he loses, or if a final tally stretches on for days or even weeks after Election Day.
Add to that his administration’s efforts to diminish the U.S. Postal Service, the agency responsible for processing mail-in ballots, and many voters are concerned absentee ballots won’t be counted.
Some experts have even suggested that voters opt for in-person voting to avoid long delays to the vote count.
“Maybe what we need to be doing is trying to actually encourage in-person voting, or at least not try to push so hard in having everybody vote by mail,” said Charles Stewart, a political science professor at MIT. “The big increases in mail ballots have been coming from the cities and, of course, it’s been coming from Democrats.”
There are two other options on how to cast a ballot in this year’s presidential contest: early in-person voting and voting at the polls on Election Day.
Whichever one of those three voters choose, it will serve them well to be prepared.
Here’s how:
In New York State, early in-person voting begins on Oct. 24 and will end Nov. 1, two days before Election Day, when voters will also have the opportunity to cast their the ballots at the polls.
To vote early at New York City polls, voters can find their polling places and the hours they’re open at the city Board of Elections website. Hours will vary day-today, so it’s probably best to plan accordingly. Voters are assigned to specific earlyvoting sites, so showing up to any one of them won’t do. In an effort to offer more space for city voters, sports venues, including Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center will be open.
“As a part of the Brooklyn community, it is only appropriate to be an early voting and Election Day polling site,” BSE Global CEO John Abbamondi announced in September.
The city Board of Elections website can be confusing. Polling places are listed, but it may not be immediately clear which one is the right one to report to. To determine your early voting place, go directly to https:// findmypollsite.vote.nyc/. Voting by absentee ballot for years has been a reliable way to cast one’s vote — with very little evidence to indicate it’s subject to voter fraud. Trump’s claims to the contrary are likely to change that dynamic, whether through attempts to call ballots into question or heightened postelection fraud rhetoric.
But absentee voting also poses other considerations.
“The basic problem is we’re shifting the way tens
of millions of Americans vote, and we’re doing it in a short period of time,” said Nate Persily, a Stanford Law School professor and co-director of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.
This is a fact of life at boards of elections throughout the country. Do local boards have enough ballots and envelopes? Do they have the extraction machines used to remove ballots from envelopes — 100 each minute?
“For some jurisdictions, if they haven’t ordered that, they’re going to be out of luck,” he said.
That could be a problem in New York City. The city’s Board of Elections has zero extractor machines, according to a board spokeswoman.
In the Big Apple, voters have two deadlines to consider when applying for an absentee ballot. The deadline for applying online, by mail or through fax is Oct. 27. Voters can apply in-person at borough Board of Elections offices for an absentee ballot until Nov. 2, the day before the election.
To ensure they ’re counted, absentee ballots must be postmarked or delivered in-person to a polling site by Nov. 3. Those ballots must be received by the city Board of Elections by Nov. 10. Military ballots must arrive at the Board of Elections office by Nov. 16.
Absentee ballots have already posed problems for more than 99,000 prospective voters in Brooklyn who received the wrong ballots in the mail. On Tuesday, the city Board of Elections blamed the bad ballots on a vendor error and promised new ballots would be sent out.
Mayor de Blasio called the snafu “appalling” and demanded an investigation into it Friday. Elections experts said the muckup would only continue to undermine confidence in mail-in ballots — even though the new ballots Brooklyn voters receive should count if mailed in on time.
“If people cannot get to their poll site, I would encourage them to vote by mail,” said Ali Najmi, an elections lawyer. “[But] I’ve heard and observed many people on social media expressing a deep lack of confidence in mail-in voting in New York City.”
New Yorkers can also choose to vote the good oldfashioned way — in-person, on Election Day — though that poses its own potential risks as far as health goes.
Voter turnout in a presidential election is almost always higher than in other years and social distancing will be required at polls come Nov. 3, but it is still unclear whether voters will encounter long lines.
This is the first year the city Board of Elections has allowed in-person early voting in a presidential contest, which many mean shorterthan-normal lines on Election Day.
People who aren’t registered to vote in the city must submit their registrations by Oct. 9 in order to vote in November’s presidential election and can do so by mail, in-person or online.
COVID will still be a paramount concern at polling places. Voters will be encouraged to wear masks inside polling sites. Poll workers will provide them, too, as well as hand sanitizer and pens to be used in the voting booth and then taken home.
It is unclear, though, whether voters can be asked to leave a polling place if they refuse to wear masks. A spokeswoman for the board would not say whether the board is empowered to remove people in such instances.