In the age of the endless campaign and the political marathon, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has come up with a kind of electoral lightening round. On July 1, Cuomo announced that special elections to fill six empty Assembly seats, four of them from the NYC, as well as the Brooklyn/Queens seat in the House of Representatives left empty in the wake of the Anthony Weiner scandal, would take place Sept. 13.
While that may seem far away, on the downside of a summer that has only begun, it set off a rapid scramble. Nominating documents for party sanctioned candidates are due Monday, 10 days after Cuomo issued his proclamations. Candidates running without the imprimatur of their party had to amass signatures, vet and file them all no later than midnight of July 13.
These would represent tight deadlines any time of the year, let alone in July and during a period that encompassed a three-day weekend. How can rank and file party members, let along ordinary voters, influence the process?
The answer is, to a great extent, they can't. And that may very well be the point.
Under New York State law, special elections take an end run around primaries, putting the choice of party nominees entirely in the hands of the party leadership. On the day of the special election, voter select among the nominees of any party that they choose to be on the ballot. But in a state where many districts feature wildly lopsided party registrations, that comes down to little or no choice at all.
As a result turnout can be light to virtually nonexistent.
To take an extreme case, in a June 2009 special election to fill an Assembly vacancy in the Bronx, only 2.3 percent of voters turned out, according to a recent analysis by Citizens Union. Democrat Marcos Crespo won 1,457 votes to defeat Republican Leopold Paul, who got a mere 106 votes.
Statewide, the turnout in special legislative elections between 2007 and this June was only 12.3 percent. For the NYC alone, the number was lower, just under 10 percent.
Under state law, Cuomo did not have to call a special election, at least for the Assembly seats, according to the report by Citizens Union. If he had not, there been a primary for those positions on Sept. 13, which is primary day, followed by a general election in November.
Good government groups criticized Cuomo's decision to take the special election route instead. "We strongly disagree with this decision, which we believe will result in lower voter turnout, increased confusion at the polls and potentially higher costs to localities, the statement said. It went on to assail the special elections for empowering "the interests of party leaders, rather than presenting voters with a real choice of candidates at the polls."
Some editorial pages agreed. "Party leaders will now get to choose the candidates to run. That is not the way a democracy is supposed to work. Unfortunately, it’s the way things are done in New York," the Times wrote.
While the special elections will technically fill the affected seats only until the 2012 elections, the decision made in party backrooms over the past weeks are likely to have long-lasting effects, at least on the Assembly districts.
A special elections give its winner the mark of incumbency, an advantage whose effect in Assembly and State Senate races in New York can hardly be overestimated. The Citizens Union study found 26 percent of legislators in office on January 2011 had initially been chosen in special elections. In the State Assembly, 31 percent got to Albany this way.
The congressional contest stands out as an exception to that pattern. While the contest to fill Weiner's seat in Brooklyn and Queens is the marquee race for Sept. 13 whoever gets the prize will likely have to find a new job in January 2013. With New York set to lose two congressional seats in the current redistricting, Weiner's fall left his Ninth District ripe for elimination.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!
Michael H. Drucker
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