Outrage at city BOE’s ballot flubs
Dems and GOP fuming
They’re ticking all the wrong boxes.
The New York City Board of Elections was torn to shreds on Tuesday over two recent blunders that have cast doubt on the agency’s ability to conduct mail-in voting for the Nov. 3 election.
Numerous politicians — including Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo — slammed the city’s independent BOE for the flubs, including sending return envelopes with incorrect names and addresses to as many as 100,000 Brooklyn residents who requested absentee ballots.
That error, which the BOE blamed on an outside vendor, came after election officials sent out confusingly worded ballots that had voters believing they’d received documents meant for military use.
“It’s appalling,” de Blasio said. “I don’t know how many times we’re going to see the same thing happen at the BOE and be surprised.”
The mayor said the gaffes were impermissible, coming at a time when leaders are encouraging people to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic to limit gatherings at polling sites.
A top aide to the governor also rapped the BOE for the fumbles.
“It’s unacceptable and it’s something that they’ve got to take charge of right away,” said Cuomo Secretary Melissa DeRosa.
State GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy said it undermines the trust in mail-in voting.
“This is a colossal mistake that continues to validate all of our concerns and seriously undermines the credibility and integrity of this election. Cuomo and the Democrats rammed this ill-conceived and ill-prepared system through while refusing to acknowledge any potential pitfalls, and attacked anyone who had concerns as racist,” Langworthy said.
The first error, a misprint, made it appear that voters had received an “Official Military Absentee Ballot” instead of a “Military/Absentee Ballot,” leaving some New Yorkers who got the documents worried that their votes might not be properly tallied.
The second problem appeared to have happened when the BOE’s vendor, Rochester-based Phoenix Graphics, used a new automated machine to assign voters’ names, ID labels and addresses to be included in the oath statements and return envelopes used to mail the ballots.
The machine went haywire and spit out labels with the wrong names and addresses to voters in Brooklyn, said Doug Kellner, co-chairman of the state Board of Elections, who is investigating the matter.
“If left uncorrected, people could lose their vote,” said Kellner, who believes there’s still time to fix the screwup.
City Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan pledged that voters who were part of the botched mailings will be sent new ballots.
But Gov. Cuomo opposed the idea of sending duplicate ballots and pressured the board on Monday to send only new return envelopes.
Senior Cuomo adviser Richard Azzopardi said late Monday, “There is nothing wrong with the actual ballots and sending 100,000 duplicate ballots seems to be an overcorrection.”
City BOE Secretary Fred Umane said the decision was made to send new ballots so “everyone can vote correctly.”
The slight risk of somebody voting twice was touched on internally by the city board, according to Umane. But, he said, the city BOE forged ahead with the decision to send new ballots because the method outweighs what he called the small possibility of fraud.