The Independent View: NY’s Voter Turnout Crisis

I just read this great article on CITY and STATE's website by Morgan Pehme.

He writes "The abysmal voter turnout in New York State constitutes a crisis that must be addressed immediately and calls on Governor Cuomo and the Legislature’s leaders to remedy it"

We in the independent movement agree.

He then states "Allowing Election Day registration, online registration, early voting, drive-through voting, no-fault absentee voting, the preregistration of 16- and 17-year-olds; accelerating the process whereby voters can change parties; moving to open primaries, nonpartisan elections, even Internet voting—there are myriad ways we can address our voter turnout crisis, and yet we are pursuing none of them."

We really agree with many of these solutions.

CLICK HERE to read the article and add your comments.

The next mayor of New York City has these options to improve voting in the city:

1. Increase the pool of good poll workers. The Board of Elections faces a chronic shortage of thousands of poll worker positions, including interpreters that are mandated by law. The new mayor should push for municipal employees to be permitted time off on Primary Day to work the polls.

2. It’s time to move to outside trainers who will be held accountable for their performance instead of using in-house and patronage appointees.

3. Get rid of “voter cards” at poll site sign-in tables. Optical scan ballots have numbered stubs to record how many ballots were distributed. No New York county outside of the city still uses that system.

4. The new mayor should implement a system that proactively updates the addresses of eligible citizens who interact with city agencies. City law requires giving registration forms to people who use city services, but agency workers are barred from helping people complete the forms.

5. Make the Board of Election more transparent and accountable. The board should work with the city to establish sensible and consistent performance measures, such as types of machine breakdowns and repair times. It should also post Election Day complaints the agency receives along with efforts to resolve those problems in real time.

6. Reassess the runoff system. The city will spend more than $20 million on a citywide runoff, this time maybe only for the public advocate’s race. Instead, we should explore Instant Runoff Voting, where voters rank candidates in preferred order, like they use in San Francisco and Minneapolis.