NY Gets a Board of Election’s Chief Enforcement Counsel

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has nominated former prosecutor Risa Sugarman as the state Board of Election’s chief enforcement counsel, a position created as part of the ethics negotiations that attended the March agreement on the state budget.

Sugarman currently serves as a deputy commissioner for the Department of Taxation and Finance, running its criminal investigations division.  She worked for two years as a deputy commissioner at the Division of Criminal Justice Services, where she headed up the Office of Sex Offender Management.

She worked with Cuomo during his four years as attorney general, running the AG’s regional offices before taking over that office’s Sex Offender Management Bureau.  Among her special assignments, she took part in the investigation of former Sen. Pedro Espada Jr.  She worked for two decades, 1977 to 1997, in the Bronx district attorney’s office.

The creation of the independent enforcement unit was recommended by Cuomo a year ago, a proposal that was repeated in the December report by his Moreland Commission on public corruption.  That panel’s hearings cast the Board of Elections as woefully ineffective at its enforcement duties.

The deal to create the position was one of the ethics concessions worked out by Cuomo and legislative leaders in the state budget package.  In exchange, the governor agreed to shut the panel down.

Sugarman’s nomination requires approval of the Assembly and Senate.  If she gets the job, she’ll serve as a fifth vote on the board for any matter touching on enforcement.

“Despite the enforcement counsel’s limited powers, she may very well prove to be an effective one,” said Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Research Group, a longtime critic of the board’s enforcement efforts.  “But it’s an amazing coincidence that out of 19.5 million New Yorkers, the most qualified individuals always seem to have experience working for Gov. Cuomo.”

After dark yesterday, state legislators concluded their annual half-year session. They approved a new enforcement counsel for the Board of Elections.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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This Is What Happens When There Is No Posse

Continuing from my prior post, “it is an open scandal in Washington that the Federal Election Commission is completely ossified as the referee and penalizer of abuses in national politics”, we now will review the New York Board of Election’s lack of enforcing campaign finance violations.

Earlier this month, federal prosecutors arrested Queens Sen. Malcolm Smith, Bronx Assemblyman Eric Stevenson and New York City Councilman Dan Halloran in bribery schemes. Officials including Gov. Andrew Cuomo have since begun discussing new laws in response; Democrats who dominate the Assembly plan to introduce a campaign finance reform.

While laudable, good-government advocates say the New York Board of Elections' action is notable for being so rare, this was only the sixth time in the last 10 years that the board, after undertaking an investigation, has referred a complaint to a local prosecutor. It received more than 1,000 complaints over that time, according to Jerry Goldfeder, an election lawyer.

League of Women Voters Legislative Director Barbara Bartoletti said it is "very difficult" to go after election law violations, for a variety of reasons. The Board of Elections is split evenly along party lines, and given the political basis to many complaints they are rarely pursued. Even if they are, the board does not currently employ any investigators, due to budget reduction, and local prosecutors including Rensselaer County District Attorney Rich McNally have said they don't have many resources to devote to public corruption cases.

"There are so many weaknesses in the chain," Bartoletti said.

One solution favored by her group and others would be to give the Office of Attorney General jurisdiction to investigate and enforce election and campaign finance laws. Cuomo promised to do so in his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, and his successor as attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, has expressed a similar position. Some legislators are cool to the idea, and fear an aggressive attorney general could pursue a partisan agenda if granted.

Cuomo did not include the item, or any expansion of the attorney general's power, in a package of anti-corruption bills he announced last week. They would stiffen penalties for defrauding the public and create several new crimes, enforceable by the state's district attorneys. Cuomo said he would "revisit and explore" his campaign promise about the attorney general. "The Board of Elections has really poor enforcement, in my opinion, and it has for a long time. That has to be improved," the governor said last week in a radio interview. "The attorney general could be helpful there."

In a statement, Schneiderman said: "We should take an 'all of the above' approach to policing public corruption, and my office will use every tool available to restore the people's faith in the integrity of our state government."

New York Board of Elections Democratic Co-chairman Doug Kellner affirmed Goldfeder's count, but spokesman Tom Connolly noted hundreds of complaints for non-filing or over contributions, which did not require investigations, have been sent to prosecutors over the past several years.

So where is the posse?










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NYS Possible 2nd Voting Date

New York state law allows for an extra day of voting if turnout is drastically suppressed because of a natural disaster like Superstorm Sandy. That could potentially postpone state, congressional and even presidential election results beyond Tuesday’s Election Day.

State Board of Elections spokesman John Conklin confirmed Friday that the law permits election commissioners to create a second day of voting if the turnout in any county is less than 25 percent of the total number of registered voters.

The commissioners, two Democrats and two Republicans, would make that decision after Election Day. Any second day would have to be scheduled within 20 days.

Officials were checking polling sites Friday to make sure they can open Tuesday.

Typical turnout is about 60 percent in most areas.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NY Adjusts Absentee Vote Deadline After Sandy

New York, one of the states hit hardest by Sandy, has extended the deadline for absentee ballots and applications not delivered or requested in person, the State Board of Elections said.

New York City's election preparation efforts have also been hampered by flooding, power outages, and transportation shutdowns. The city's election board said their offices in Manhattan and Staten Island were closed and phone hotline was not operating correctly, but that additional staff had been assigned to handle absentee ballots and election preparations.

The state's original deadline to request an absentee ballot by mail or phone was Tuesday, when the storm was battering parts of the state, but the elections board said the deadline has been extended through Friday. While absentee ballots returned by mail can not be postmarked after Monday, the elections board extended by nearly a week the window for those ballots to be received. The deadline for voters to submit an absentee ballot in person has not changed from Monday, the board said.

In person voting could hit hurdles, too, as a survey on Wednesday of Long Island's Nassau County showed nine in ten polling stations were without power and nearly seven in ten were in flood plains.

If voters have to use polling places out of their districts, it will take even longer to verify and count, as they could either be provisional ballots or filled in optical ballots that would have to be sent to board offices with power to be read by optical scanners programmed correctly for the different district's ballot formats.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NY Mayor, BOE at Odds Over Rescheduling NYS Primary Date

Mayor Michael Bloomberg denounced on Monday a proposal to move the city primary from September to June next year, while city Board of Elections officials said it will be impossible to pull off a primary and a likely run-off election the way the calendar currently stands.

New York State and City Elections officials want to change 2013's political calendar by moving the state and city primary from September to June. Officials at the New York City Board of Elections say they will not have enough time to process the votes cast in the city's September primary and prepare for a likely run-off election two weeks later.

"I think it would be a terrible idea," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday.

"It just really seems like an impossibility to get all that done in 15 days," said BOE official Raphael Savino.

Albany lawmakers would have to sign off on any such move. And if approved, it would dramatically reshape the political season for the 2013 races, including the fight for New York City Hall.

"We understand that this isn't as sexy as marriage equality or the budget and everything else. But it is important and it affects the 4.6 million voters that we have in New York City," said BOE Commissioner J.C. Polanco.

Bloomberg said an earlier primary date would be bad for democracy.

"I think the later it is, the more chance candidates have to enter the race, the more chance there is for candidates to build support, raise money, explain to the public what they would do if they were elected," said the mayor.

The primary issue was raised at a Monday City Council hearing on a package of elections bills. Supporters said the legislation is designed to engage more voters and improve the city's elections system.

"Nothing in our democracy is more important than securing the right to vote," said Brooklyn Councilman Brad Lander.

With the MOVE Act and the UOCAVA (Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act), military and overseas voters had to be mailed their absentee ballot in time for them to be returned and counted. A Federal Judge had to force New York to change their Federal Primary date from September to June. But the state did not move the state and local primary date.

So it is a surprise that the mayor would put politics over the rights of voters to have their vote counted. It is interesting that the Supreme Court saw the problem in Ohio that would have created two classes of voters by allowing military personal and their family to vote early but not the rest of the state's voters.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NY BOE 9/12/12 Meeting

Here are some of my notes:

1. The Court order to fix the OverVote problem will not be done until the 2013 elections. In the 2010 General Election we used two new optical scan voting systems. I found an error in the software that did not create an OverVote if you selected two of the same candidate for a position. This happens due to New York's Fusion voting which allows the same candidate to appear on multiple party lines. The software would only select the first party it scanned, from the top down upstate and from the left to right in New York City and not tell the voter which party it selected as your vote.

2. The pre-cleared addition of the Bengali language in New York City will not be done until the 2013 elections due to a printing vendor problem.

3. They are to begin evaluating an automated ballot audit system, ClearVote. One electronic system to verify another electronic system and replace hand counting.

Only in New York.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NY Board of Elections Meeting Notes

This is my notes from today's New York Board of Elections meeting.

- During the month of the April, during the Presidential Primary, the Board moved its operations to an existing government building to save over $300,000 yearly in rent charges.

- During the 2010 election, over 200 military & overseas ballots were not counted even though they were mailed in time under the Move Act. These ballots were from 33 counties. The Board will research and produce a report classifying the reasons and remedies.

- During the 2010 election, an optical scanner in the Bronx counted a very high number of overvotes. After tests with the manufacture, it was determined, after awhile the machine overheated and lost its calibration. They are working on a fix.

- Campaign finance forms have been traditionally late. So far this year, Campaigns and Candidates have been sued over 500 times.

- The HAVA law required a state to use HAVA money for an Arbitration Board. New York contracted for a $10,000 - $15,000 annual contract for this service, so voters had a place to go to complain about voting rights, if they did not get satisfaction with the Board of Elections. In the four years of the contract is had not been used.

Today, the highest court in New York approved the new Republican 63rd State Senate District ceated by the new redistricting maps. The State Senate Democrats brought the case claiming the Republicans used unconstitutional calculations in creating the new district. I would have used a different reason. The calculations indicated a growth in the Albany area, but put the new district in an area that did not have the growth. It was a political move to help the Republicans maintain their Senate majority.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NYC Needs a Complete Vote Count

The two candidates for a, Special Election on March 20th, for a Brooklyn State Senate seat, came through election night separated by a razor-thin margin in votes cast on electronic scanning machines, forcing a count of absentee ballots filed on paper. Republican David Storobin and Democrat Lew Fidler should insist that the New York City Board of Elections tally every vote, using a single method.

Contrary to all fairness and equality, not to mention common sense, the New York City board’s standard operating procedure uses differing approaches for determining whether a vote is validly cast. When a voter fills in an oval beside a candidate’s name, the vote will be counted either by a scanner, assuming the machine works correctly, or by the board as workers inspect absentee ballots. When a voter leaves an oval blank, but, say, circles a candidate’s name, the vote won’t be counted by a scanner, but will be counted if the board finds such a marking on an absentee ballot.

This probably happened in the Storobin-Fidler battle. The scanner tally lists 42 ballots on which voters filled in no choice, unlikely, as those people were dedicated enough to go to the polls to make a choice in the only race on the ballot. Odds are they made a selection without filling in an oval. Their votes are, for now, lost, while similarly cast absentee ballots will be included. In such a super tight race, 42 ballots could be decisive.

The board will inspect all the paper ballots only if the margin ends up below .5%. With a total tally of about 21,000, that comes out to roughly anything more than 105 votes. Now, the preliminary margin is 118 votes. At that level, there would be no visual ballot inspection without a court order.

The bumblers at the New York City Board of Elections are not to be trusted to make such fine distinctions. On election night, they came up with tentative results by adding up votes for each candidate by hand after cutting the paper receipts from the scanners into little piles of scraps. They came in 82 votes over for Storobin and 80 votes over for Fidler compared with a later computer tally.

Storobin and Fidler can safeguard the accuracy of the count and set an invaluable precedent for New York by demanding to see, under the state Freedom of Information Law, photographs of ballots that the scanners record with each vote.

The Daily News used the law recently to review ballots cast at a Bronx polling place whose returns defied possibility. The inspection found a haywire scanner had miscounted hundreds of votes.

Storobin and Fidler should file the request now to search out the missing votes even as the board labors though the absentee ballots.

Doug Kellner, co-chairman of the New York State Board of Elections, wants such images posted on the Internet for every election. It’s a great idea, and it should get a boost from this race. The campaigns have nothing to lose and perhaps a seat to win.

This seat will be eliminated at the end of the year due to redistricting.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NY BOE Meeting Notes

This is from my notes of the New York State Board of Elections meeting:

1. During the April Presidential Primary, the operations may begin their move to a new location.

2. Begin to improve the process of the interface between DMV and BOE for new and changed voter registrations.

3. The changes to the Overvote process and changes to the Optical Scanner screens have been pre-cleared by Section 5 of the Justice Department.

4. Begin the process to determine why the scanner in the South Bronx failed counting votes at the last primary and general elections.

5. Develop a State-wide standard for when a candidate can ask for a manual count. Currently each county's election board determines the threshold. Also discussed was who should pay for the first pass, everyone agreed it should be the candidate and not the state or court.

6. Santorum Ballot Issue: When his New York Committee first filed their delegate list, 50% where rejected and they had five days to correct the problem. They refiled but one of the delegates wrote a letter to the board saying they were not supporting him and to remove their name. So he is short one name and since the deadline is March 1st, he may not get on the ballot. In New York, you must certify you support the candidate. On March 4th his partition was accepted.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NY BOE and the Judge

Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Gary L. Sharpe moved the New York Congressional Primary date from September 11 to June 26 to comply with the MOVE Act, allowing overseas military ballots to arrive and be counted on time. Yesterday the judge criticized the New York State Board of Elections for its "intransigent refusal" to comply with his ruling. Quoting a line from the movie "Cool Hand Luke", he told the board "What we have got here is a failure to communicate."

He ordered the elections board to produce a calender in order for the election to take place on the new date. But the board, with two Democrat and two Republican members, failed to agree on how to comply his ruling and instead filed two two competing submissions. Judge Sharpe said he was left with no choice but to adopt the submission from the two Democratic Commissioners because the submission from the Republican commissioners "erroneously interprets" his order and provided only a partial calendar for the new primary date.

Under the plan adopted by the judge, the total number of days for the circulation of designating petitions is reduced by 10 days to 28 days and the number of signatures required to get on the ballot was cut by 25%.

The changes will go some way to satisfy concerns of New York City's Board of Elections who wrote the judge "present computer and operational systems and procedures do not have the capability to meet the June 26 date."

From Ballot Access News
Back in November 2011, a group of New York community leaders, and persons interested in government and elections, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, asking the Court to take over redistricting of U.S. House and legislative districts, on the theory that the New York legislature had proved itself incapable of doing the job in a timely manner. That case is Favors v Cuomo, 11-cv-5632. It is before U.S. District Court Judge Dora Irizarry.

On February 10, the plaintiffs wrote a letter to Judge Irizarry, pleading for quick appointment of a 3-judge court, which would be needed for the court to take over redistricting. The letter says, in part, “The March 20 start to the candidate petitioning period is less than six weeks away, yet no congressional lines have even been proposed through New York’s legislative process. It is now exceedingly unlikely that a new congressional redistricting plan can be proposed and passed by the legislative redistricting task force, referred to and passed by the Legislature, signed by the Governor, sent to the U.S. Department of Justice and precleared, all sufficiently in advance of March 20 so that candidates and their supporters can prepare for the petitioning period.”

We still do not have approved redistricting maps and the state legislators have not determined if they will change their primary date from September 11 to the new June 26. With the Presidential Primary on April 24, will New York voters' have to go to the polls four times in 2012? Will Governor Cuomo veto the new maps, because they were not made by an Independent Commission, and force the courts to make them?









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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