During the Sandy storm of 2012, Governor Cuomo allowed any voter in the affected areas to vote in any poll using provisional and affidavit ballots for the federal elections.
So today, the Board of Elections swears that it is finally on the verge of a full and accurate count of the votes cast in the presidential election nine months ago.
The panel on Monday will open and tally 58 paper ballots that had gone unopened and untallied since the Nov. 6 contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. On Tuesday, the board will meet to officially recertify the vote count.
Just like the board did last Dec. 18, and again with new totals on Dec. 28, and again with new totals on Jan. 15, and again with totals in March and again with new totals in July, and now, again, for the sixth time.
The staff just keeps finding stacks of unopened envelopes filled with unread paper ballots. In March they stumbled across 426 of them and in July, 1,579. Now this latest batch has surfaced.
Fifty eight citizens cast the latest find as affidavit ballots after showing up at the polls and discovering that their names did not appear in registry books. The polling places were in 31 Manhattan election districts, with a heavy concentration on the upper East Side.
What happened to the ballots after they were cast? Who the heck knows? How were they discovered? Ditto. The board says only that the ballot envelopes were “stored in double-locked secure areas” in the Manhattan office.
The City Department of Investigation has a new, dedicated unit assigned to specifically to uncover waste, fraud, abuse and incompetence at the board. In this instance, the lost-and-found votes will not change the outcome of the election. But missing ballots could distort the result in a much closer contest.
DOI should pay a visit to the Manhattan office to solve the mystery of how the board, whose primary job is to safeguard and count votes, is so prone to losing them.
I received my new polling place for 2013. Two years ago I voted 3 blocks from my residence. Last year, 1 block away, waiting 4 hours to vote. This year 9 blocks away with 27 Election Districts in one school building, with two entrances and two gymnasiums. Found out this was an ADA court case that forced the city counties to use stricter federal requirements for polling places. Many schools failed the stricter test.
In 2013, New York City will use the old lever machines for the primary and any run-offs. ADA groups forced the board to allow disabled voters to use direct marking devices to vote on paper ballots and the Governor allowed three weeks between the primary and the run-off.
Do you see another counting disaster coming?
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!
Michael H. Drucker
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