Poll position

Gov. Hochul stands nearly alone in insisting that there be two separate primary elections this summer, voters and taxpayers be damned. She wants her primary against fellow Democrats Tom Suozzi and Jumaane Williams, along with Assembly and other local races, to be on June 28, but the contests for Congress and the state Senate to be on Aug. 23. The split happened because the state courts threw out districts gerrymandered by the Legislature and ordered new maps to be drawn. (The Assembly maps should also fall next week when a judge takes a look.)

To their credit, Suozzi and Williams both agree with Citizens Union and the League of Women Voters as well as this newspaper and our colleagues at Newsday on Long Island and the Times Union in Albany that a single primary for all offices, in August, is an absolute must.

The chairs of the Legislature’s committees governing elections, Assemblywoman Latrice Walker and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, also believe in consolidation, as they told the publication City & State.

When the Democrats took the Senate majority in 2018, one of their first actions in 2019 was to unify the primaries, which had been split since 2012, as Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins correctly recalled this week: “Our general policy has been to combine where we could, and that’s what we’ve done.”

So pass a fix — and see if the governor has the guts to issue a self-serving veto.

This isn’t partisan. Among Republicans, gubernatorial contenders Rob Astorino, Andrew Giuliani and Harry Wilson also side with the voters and taxpayers to save the $25 million extraneous June balloting by moving their contest to August. From the fourth candidate, Lee Zeldin, there’s only silence. Is he the sole ally of Hochul on dual primaries?

The courts may order an August primary for everything, as they should. But if that doesn’t happen and Hochul and the Legislature fail to do the right thing, the joke will be on taxpayers and voters — and once again, on New York’s deeply dysfunctional democracy.