Election reformers make case for early voting in New York
Published 6:28 pm Wednesday, April 26, 2017
- MorgueFile
ALBANY — Advocates for election reform say voter turnout across the New York could be greatly increased by allowing citizens to cast their ballots early and adopting automatic voter registration, as other states have.
Without such measures, said Jennifer Wilson, program and policy director for the League of Women Voters of New York State, this state will continue to have one of the lowest voter-participation levels in the nation.
“We think early voting would have an immediate impact,” Wilson said Wednesday after the Assembly Election Law Committee advanced legislation that would allow voting in New York up to seven days before an election.
The league has stepped up its lobbying effort on behalf of the measure this spring and anticipates that the Assembly will embrace it in time to ramp up pressure on Senate Republicans, who have been chilly to the proposal.
The league maintains that without early voting, long lines at polling places will continue to discourage participation.
STAFFING CONCERNS
But not everyone agrees that widening opportunities for citizens to participate in elections would significantly heighten voter turnout.
Gregory Campbell, the Clinton County Republican election commissioner, voiced concerns about whether counties could properly staff polling places were they required to open several days before an election.
the New York State Association of Elections Commissioners recently balked at endorsing a similar early-voting proposal, he said.
“We have a hard time as it is getting poll workers for just one day,” said Campbell, who has been a commissioner since 2011.
“We haven’t seen anything to show that more people vote in the states that have been using this.”
FRAUD FEARS
Also voicing reservations with the proposal was Assemblyman Mike Norris, R-Lockport.
He suggested that opening voting early could lead to more fraud at the ballot box and leave voters flat-footed should they become aware of information that forces them to rethink their choices after they backed a particular candidate.
“As we have seen in recent election cycles, current events change rapidly, and early voting does not give voters an opportunity to amend their votes based on these events,” Norris said.
AUTOMATIC REGISTRATION
The reform advocates also argue that more New Yorkers would go to their polls if citizens could become automatically registered to vote simply by completing state Department of Motor Vehicles documents.
New York has an estimated 13.7 million citizens who are eligible to vote, but some 2 million remain unregistered.
Even if New York adopted automatic registration, it remains unclear whether more citizens would flock to the polls, said John Conklin, spokesman for the state Board of Elections.
“I don’t think there is a body of evidence to demonstrate what would happen one way or the other,” Conklin said. “It’s just too early to tell.”
SESSION WRAPPING UP
Lawmakers are slated to conclude the legislative session on June 21, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo suggested April 15 that it is unlikely that they will come to agreement on significant reforms in the closing weeks before returning to their districts.
“Those that weren’t done in the budget, I don’t know that they are feasible to get done,” he told Albany reporters.
The governor also maintained that “if we didn’t get it done in the budget, it means you don’t have the political will to get it done.”
Wilson criticized Cuomo for effectively throwing in the towel this year on voting reforms that he has said he supports.
“it was so insulting to us and all the advocates who work on voting issues,” she said, contending the governor should use his political clout to drive the legislation forward.
‘UNFUNDED MANDATE’
Reached in Cooperstown, Otsego County GOP Chairman Vincent Casale said voters will turn out for elections when they sense their choices will matter in bringing about the changes they want to see in government.
He also questioned whether rural counties would be able to marshal the resources to staff polling places on multiple days and counter attempts at voter fraud.
“This could become a huge unfunded mandate for the counties,” Casale said.
A companion bill for the early voting legislation has been introduced by Democrats in the GOP-led State Senate.
According to the legislation authored by Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, D-Manhattan, 37 states and the District of Columbia now allow early voting in some form.
Joe Mahoney covers the New York Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jmahoney@cnhi.com