Election Hell
Why politicians never fix NYC’s voting horrors
UNLESS you’ve been living under a rock, the fact that last Tuesday’s massive voter turnout became a stress test for the city’s Board of Elections shouldn’t have been a surprise.
Invariably, it seems every two years another chink in the board’s Election Day operations results in new self-inflicted wounds.
This time it was long lines and hours-long waits caused by damp (!) ballots jamming the electronic scanners used to record votes. I laughed about the wet-ballots excuse until I read a report about similar problems in Connecticut. So, let’s not pretend the city was the only place that had problems Tuesday.
The NY attorney general’s Election Day hotline received approximately 600 calls and e-mails statewide. The top issue: broken scanners — almost all coming from within the five boroughs — and complaints about poll workers, mostly outside the city, improperly requiring photo ID.
Mayor de Blasio, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams were quick to point fingers and issue calls for reforms. Johnson even tweeted that the board’s executive director, Michael Ryan, should resign.
Nothing raises my hackles more than disingenuous pols huffing about the city Board of Elections, or rather boards of election, as each borough operates a quasi-independent office. Yes, count ’ em: five counties, five boards and 10 political party bosses (five from each party) with their thumbs in the patronage pie.
So, when pols like de Blasio and Johnson beat their chests and rend their garments decrying the long lines, broken scanners and other snafus, feel free to roll your eyes (I’d urge a more explicit response, but this is a family newspaper).
The board is also subject to state and federal mandates that have led to scanners and related equipment commanding more room, as well as multi-page ballots in small print and in languages other than English and Spanish.
But the BOE clearly needs reform and a drastic administrative overhaul to eliminate the yearly snafus.
True, the BOE has made incremental improvement after each Election Day foul-up. But its political and administrative structure and agency culture do not encourage forward thinking or innovation.
The reforms advocated by de Blasio and Johnson fail to address these problems because they don’t run the agency and they have no idea of the BOE’s day-to-day operations. (In between elections, the borough offices go into hibernation mode.)
Both officials — along with other political grandstanders — are actually part of the problem: They owe allegiances to the very Democratic county leaders who choose the board’s commissioners and the staff at the central and borough offices. (Johnson owes his speakership to the Bronx and Queens county leaders.)
The mayor, however, is right about the BOE being an arcane institution. But it’s arcane because the state laws that created it, govern it and hamstring it are equally arcane.
From its top managers all the way down to the Election Day poll workers — the public face of the agency — everyone at the board is a political appointee.
Just before leaving my post as a state lawmaker and following the fitful introduction of the ballot scanners in 2010, I proposed legislation that would have placed the administrative functions of the now-independent board under mayoral control.
Mayoral control of board oper- ations would’ve included appointing the executive director, the board’s managerial staff and voting-machine techs and hiring poll workers. Party leaders would still appoint the 10 commissioners from their two parties whose responsibilities would be limited to ruling on strictly election-related matters, such as nominating petitions and ballot placements, as opposed to personnel decisons.
That way, voters and the news media could hold the mayor accountable when things go wrong. Plus, the City Council’s role in confirming top board officials and holding hearings would act as a check on the mayor.
None of the reforms advanced since Election Day addresses the board’s governing structure.
De Blasio and Johnson are calling for various modes of early voting to address the crush of people at the polls, and sameday voting. Yet these would create new problems of their own.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie has pledged to pass early voting and online voter registration. He’d also combine the federal and state primaries.
These ideas have long been on lawmakers’ and good-government groups’ wish lists, yet no one is willing to attack the real cause of the paralysis and seeming incompetence: the politics behind the board’s operations.
And until someone does, we can again look forward to self-inflicted wounds and Election Day tumult marring the voting experience for countless New Yorkers in 2020.