New York: New York City Council Aiming to Abolish Runoff Elections | Wall Street Journal

The City Council has identified instant runoff voting—and the end of citywide runoff elections—as one of several dozen budget and legislative priorities in Albany, according to a report to be released by Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito on Tuesday. The report, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, outlines 35 priorities that the council will be championing in the state capital this year, including Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal to increase city income taxes on wealthy New Yorkers to pay for universal prekindergarten and an expansion of after-school programs for middle-school students. Ms. Mark-Viverito is slated to join Mr. de Blasio on Tuesday for a day of lobbying in Albany, where the mayor’s proposal to raise income taxes on New Yorkers making $500,000 or more will take center stage. Ms. Mark-Viverito said in an interview Monday that the council plans to advocate for dozens of other issues, including the push for instant runoff voting.

New York: Albany looks into early voting to boost turnout | Times Herald-Record

On paper, it looks pretty simple. Albany legislators are proposing the state join 32 other states in allowing voters to cast their ballots in person a week or two early. Proponents say more opportunity to vote equals more votes. More votes means increasing the voice of the state’s voters. It’s not as if the state is outstanding in this regard, they say. New York had the country’s 44th-lowest voter turnout in 2012. The turnout nationwide was 58 percent. In Orange and Ulster counties, it was 72 percent and in Sullivan 60 percent. That was a presidential election year; in off-presidential election cycles, local voter turnout drops into the mid-30s or low-40s percent range. So why not try early voting, the state’s Democrat-dominated Assembly asks. Not so fast, members of the Republican-dominated Senate say.

New York: NYC Department Of Investigation Chief: Board Of Elections “Hostile” To Reform Recommendations | New York Daily News

The new head of the city Department of Investigation testIfied Friday that his staff has encountered “outright hostility” at the highest levels of the Board of Elections while trying to get the embattled agency to clean up its act. The Board has not been “anywhere near as cooperative” as necessary in responding to a 2013 DOI investigation that detailed nepotism, incompetence, inefficiency — and even possible crimes, DOI Commissioner Mark Peters (pictured center) told a joint hearing of the City Council Government Operations and Oversight and Investigations Committees.

New York: Assembly passes early voting bill | Legislative Gazette

Legislation has passed in the Assembly that would allow early voting in all general, primary and special elections in New York. The bill (A.689-a) would establish a 15-day early voting period for general elections and an eight-day early voting period for primary and special elections. “It is long past time for New York to join the ranks of 32 other states and the District of Columbia who offer the ease and convenience of early voting,” said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan.

New York: Attorney General calls for passage of voter intimidation prevention act to combat barriers to the ballot box | Empire State News

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman today announced new legislation to restore accountability and ensure access to the ballot box by eliminating baseless and intimidating challenges to voter eligibility at the polls on Election Day. Under current law, voters who are challenged at the polls are required to recite an oath affirming their right to vote. The challenger, on the other hand, has no such obligation. Under the Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, introduced by Assembly Member Karim Camara, those who mount challenges to voters at the polls will be required to provide the factual basis for their challenge and attest their right to challenge a voter. While these basic accountability requirements are already enshrined in law for challenges made during the time of voter registration, no such protections exist at the polls on Election Day. The Act will correct this imbalance and ensure greater access to the ballot box.

New York: No Microscopic Type On This November’s Ballots, Board Of Elections Promises | New York Daily News

The city Board of Elections is going to try something different this November: Printing ballots voters can actually read. The Board took a beating over the eye-straining six-point typeface on last year’s general election ballots from a legion of elected officials and watchdog groups who said the print was preposterously small. The 2013 problem arose because of the number of languages — as many as five in some pockets of Queens — into which the ballots had to be translated. Now the Board will do what some say it could well have done last year: Print no more than three languages on any single ballot, which will boost the type size to 10 points. The agency insisted it had no choice but to microsize the print citywide last year because providing ballots with varying type sizes might trigger accusations of discrimination and possibly lawsuits.

New York: Albany County minority election districts case can proceed | Times Union

A lawsuit that alleges Albany County didn’t do enough in 2011 to create a new election district made up mostly of minority voters can go forward, a judge ruled. In a decision issued Tuesday, Judge Lawrence E. Kahn ruled there are enough black residents in a compact geographic area in the county to create a fifth minority district, allowing the case to proceed to trial. The plaintiffs — who include local NAACP leader Anne Pope and former County Legislator Wanda Willingham — brought the action seeking to invalidate the 2011 redistricting map by arguing the 2010 census showed a growth in the minority population, and therefore, minority representation should have been increased to five legislators out of 39 from the current of four. The suit says the county violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

New York: Bill de Blasio’s Other Party | National Review

As recently as 1998, New York State’s Republican party controlled the governorship, a United States Senate seat, and the mayor’s office in Manhattan. Today, it is greatly diminished, with its sole beachhead of influence in the state senate, where it shares a majority with four independent Democrats. In contrast, the Working Families party (WFP), a 15-year-old left-wing, union-fueled group with just 20,000 members, now holds the whip hand over much of the dominant Democratic party in New York — and is already spreading its wings to other states. The WFP not only was a major force behind Bill de Blasio’s victory for mayor last November; it dominated the rest of the election, too. “They propelled all three citywide officials in New York City into office, and have a huge chunk of the city council allied with them,” says Hank Sheinkopf, a leading Democratic consultant who has worked for Hillary Clinton. “They are a real force.”

New York: The dead can vote in New York City | New York Post

Death doesn’t necessarily disqualify you from voting in New York City. Investigators posing as dead voters were allowed to cast ballots for this year’s primary and general elections, thanks to antiquated Board of Election registration records and lax oversight by poll workers, authorities said. The election board’s susceptibility to voter fraud by people impersonating the departed was uncovered during a massive probe of the agency by the Department of Investigation. The probe uncovered 63 instances when voters’ names should have been stricken from the rolls, but weren’t — even though some of them had died years before. “The majority of those 63 individuals remained on the rolls nearly two years — and some as long as four years — since a death, felony conviction, or move outside of New York City,” said DOI Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn.

New York: City Council Members Consider Internet Voting and Free Airport WiFi | TechPresident

Even as the Presidential Commission on Election Administration is still considering improvements to the U.S. election system, politicians on the local level are also looking at ways to address voting problems that came up in recent elections. The New York City Council Technology and Government Operations Committees on Wednesday held a hearing to consider the “Promise and Perils of Internet Voting” in municipal elections. Committee Chair Bronx City Council member Fernando Cabrera said he was drawn to the potential of Internet voting to address long lines, low voter turnout and save costs, citing successful precedents in other countries such as Estonia. Voter turnout in New York City’s recent mayoral general election hit a record low of 24 percent. Election officials and advocates cited security and cultural barriers to the widespread adoption of Internet voting, but pointed to other technological improvements that could help improve the voting process. New York City Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan said he and other commissioners had not had enough time to come to a consensus on the issue. But he said he felt the cultural challenges would be one significant obstacle. “It would be a wholesale change really in the way business is done, right down to the way campaigns are run,” he said, noting the practice of poll watchers at polling places. “From a cultural perspective we’ve gotten very used to voting in a particular way … Voting is a private thing but yet a very public thing,” he said, noting the traditional gathering at polling places. “The resistance may be in the breaking down of the actual rituals more so than the technology itself.”

New York: Broken voting machines, mistranslated ballot measures plague low-turnout election | New York Daily News

The modest number of New Yorkers who bothered to vote Tuesday encountered short lines and a good number of busted voting machines, officials said. The problem hit Brooklyn’s 52nd Assembly District hard, where 70 machines at 21 poll sites were out of commission all morning. Voters had to fill out emergency affidavits. Michael Ryan, executive director of the city Board of Elections, said the machines in these neighborhoods — including Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill and Prospect Heights — were improperly set up. “We traced the issue back to a technician who improperly set up the backup memory device,” Ryan said, noting that all the machines were back up and running by 11 a.m. Ballots in Chinese were mistranslated, swapping text for one proposition measure with another.

New York: Court Lifts Limit on Contributing to Pro-Lhota PAC | New York Times

It looks as though the “super PAC” era is coming to New York. A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that a conservative group supporting Joseph J. Lhota, the Republican nominee for mayor of New York City, can immediately begin accepting contributions of any size because New York State’s limit on donations to independent political committees is probably unconstitutional. The ruling, 12 days before the mayoral election, is not likely to change the dynamics of the race, given the wide lead of the Democratic candidate, Bill de Blasio, and a presumed reluctance by many potential big donors to donate to an underdog candidate this late in the game. But an end to limits on contributions to independent political groups could have a much bigger impact next year, when voters will decide whether to re-elect Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, and will determine which party controls the State Senate — a long-running battle in which independent spending could make a significant difference. “This could usher in an era where super PACs call the shots in campaigns all over the state, not just in the city,” said David Donnelly, the executive director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, which advocates public financing of elections.

New York: High-Cost Runoff for Public Advocate’s Post Prompts Calls for Reform | New York Times

The numbers are attention-getting: on Tuesday, New York City will spend about $13 million to hold a runoff in the Democratic primary for an office, public advocate, that is budgeted only $2.3 million a year. And the combination of a little-known post with a little-understood election process is expected to lead to startlingly low turnout — maybe 100,000 to 175,000 voters, in a city of 8 million people. Yet the election is likely to determine the occupant of one of the city’s top offices, because there is no Republican candidate. The high cost of an election for a low-cost office has inspired wags to muse. Some have suggested that the race be decided by a coin toss. Others, including the Republican nominee for mayor, Joseph J. Lhota, have joked that, because the public advocate has few concrete powers, the two candidates could be allowed to serve, at a saving to taxpayers. But some elected officials and government reform advocates have suggested a longer-term solution: instead of holding costly, low-turnout runoffs, New York City should switch to instant runoff voting, a system already used in other cities.

New York: Lhota Backers Challenge Cap on Spending | New York Times

A new Republican group supporting the mayoral candidacy of Joseph J. Lhota sued New York election officials in federal court Wednesday to allow individuals to contribute more than the current $150,000 annual maximum to independent political groups. If successful, the lawsuit would allow similar outside groups, known as “super PACs,” to pump hundreds of thousands of dollars into helping either Mr. Lhota or his Democratic rival, Bill de Blasio. Mr. Lhota trails Mr. de Blasio by wide margins in polls, in a city where Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats, six to one. The new Republican group, New York Progress and Protection PAC, is separate from another pro-Lhota group that is backed by the billionaire David H. Koch, according to Michael Carvin, a Washington lawyer representing the new group.

New York: Campaign-Finance Law Worked, but New Yorkers Still Won’t Celebrate It | New Republic

The second-day story from New York City’s primaries last week could have been the exceptional performance of the city’s unique system of small-donor public financing. By providing a six-dollar public match for every dollar raised in contributions of $175 or less, the system enabled the little-known Scott Stringer to compete with and defeat Eliot Spitzer’s family fortune in the race for Comptroller. On the Republican side, it helped mayoral nominee Joe Lhota, who received almost half his total spending in public money, to overcome another self-financed millionaire. The top three Democratic candidates for mayor finished in reverse order of the amount of private money they had raised, and as Alec MacGillis noted here, public financing allowed the eventual nominee, Bill de Blasio, to resist the policy preferences of big donors, such as opposition to paid sick leave. Dozens of city council and other races featured three or more candidates with enough money to compete. But instead of celebrating a system that finally emerged from the shadows of Michael Bloomberg’s personal spending to show its value, we’ve had handwringing about the rise of “outside money,” or spending by groups other than the candidates and parties, in New York City politics. Jim Dwyer in The New York Times argued that outside spending was “reshaping” city politics, focusing on three independent committees: one that promoted “Anybody But [Christine] Quinn,” based on the City Council speaker’s refusal to block horse carriages from Central Park; a tiny committee formed to support Lhota, with contributions solely from David and Julia Koch; and Jobs for New York, the biggest outside spender, a front for the real estate industry.

New York: Mayoral race narrows as Thompson cedes to De Blasio | Los Angeles Times

The race to become New York City’s next mayor narrowed Monday as the runner-up in last week’s Democratic primary ended his campaign and endorsed Bill de Blasio, the liberal public advocate who has cast himself as the anti-Michael Bloomberg. But Bill Thompson, who captured just over 26% of the vote in the Sept. 10 primary, did not go out with a whimper as he announced his withdrawal at a news conference outside City Hall. Thompson, facing his second failed attempt at the mayor’s office, lashed out at the Board of Elections for taking days to count all the primary ballots, saying it made it impossible to campaign for what might have been a Thompson-De Blasio runoff on Oct. 1. “In the greatest city in the world, in the greatest democracy on Earth, we ought to be able to count all the votes,” said Thompson, who ran against Bloomberg in 2009. Tens of thousands of votes — including absentee ballots and paper ballots cast by voters who encountered malfunctioning voting machines — have not been counted and are not expected to be tallied until next week.

New York: BOE: 78K Paper Ballots To Be Counted In Democratic Mayoral Primary | CBS New York

The Board of Elections says there are 78,000 paper ballots across the five boroughs that still need to be counted from Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Bipartisan teams across the city are unsealing and opening more than 5,000 lever voting machines Friday. BOE Executive Director Michael Ryan said the process is expected to wrap up by Sunday. “There’s always the potential for human error and that’s why New York has one of the most extensive recanvassing procedures in the country, to make sure that every vote is counted and every vote is counted accurate,” Ryan said. Bill de Blasio has slightly more than the 40 percent of the vote needed to avoid an Oct. 1 runoff. If de Blasio dips under 40 percent, he’ll face runner-up Bill Thompson. The outstanding ballots make up more than 11 percent of votes cast.

New York: Election Math Works in Favor of de Blasio | New York Times

It is not rocket science. The odds favor Bill de Blasio. With tens of thousands of votes from the Democratic mayoral primary still to be counted, Mr. de Blasio needs only about one in three of them to remain above the 40 percent threshold he passed in the unofficial count to avoid a runoff against the second-place finisher,William C. Thompson Jr., on Oct. 1. The math will not be lost on Mr. Thompson as he mulls whether to remain in the race. Based on the preliminary count from lever voting machines and emergency ballots cast where machines were not working, about 645,000 votes were cast in the election on Tuesday. Mr. de Blasio received 260,000 votes, or about 2,100 more than he needed to surpass 40 percent.

New York: Election errors could lead to new $30,000 primary | WHAM

With nearly 60 ballots in question, Conservative Party leadership has broached the idea of seeking a new primary. The Livingston County Board of Elections is still receiving absentee ballots and will not be able to certify ballots for at least a week, according to elections commissioners. In the interim, some are already thinking about getting the court involved. “It certainly is looking more and more that way,” said Jason McGuire, Conservative Party Chairman. “Out of the 377 ballots that we believe were cast in that race, it looks like between 15 and 16 percent of those were given out irrespective of party affiliation, that’s a problem, you can’t do that in New York.” On Tuesday elections commissioners received word from inspectors at two of the 27 polling sites in Livingston County, that elections inspectors handed out ballots regardless of party affiliation, a violation of state law. James Szczesniak won the Conservative party line by one vote. His opponent, Tom Dougherty won the Republican line by 157 votes.

New York: The Mystery of the 1,001 Mayoral Votes for a Comedian in the Bronx | The Atlantic

We know that New York Public Advocate Bill de Blasio came from behind (way behind) to garner the most votes in yesterday’s Democratic primary for mayor, and with 98 percent of precincts reporting, we know he captured roughly 40 percent of the vote to Bill Thompson’s 26 percent. Randy Credico, a longtime comedian-turned-longshot mayoral candidate, barely registered: he got just about 2 percent of the vote, or 13,666 votes throughout the city. So why is a tiny district of the Bronx showing a drastically different story? And could it matter? Here, take a look at Election District 80-079 for yourself, via The New York Times’ interactive voting map. That’s up in Norwood by the Bronx River Parkway, encompassing East 206th and 207th Streets. It’s pink, which means it went for Credico, which means it’s easy to spot. See it? As the map would have you believe, Credico captured 1,001 votes in the district ahead of second-place de Blasio’s 36. That’s 90.8 percent of District 80-079, which is astounding, but also a staggering turnout for one tiny district in the Bronx. In bordering district 80-083, just 126 votes were recorded; in neighboring 80-080, a meager 72. Credico received no votes in either district. Hmm. … So: does it matter? That depends, of course, on whether or not de Blasio tops the 40 percent he needs to steer clear of a runoff election with Thompson.

New York: NYC mayoral primary may go to Round Two | USAToday

The Democratic mayoral primary is still too close to call even though Bill de Blasio leads by more than 90,000 votes. That’s because de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, must clear 40% of the vote to avoid a primary runoff with Bill Thompson, former city comptroller and second-place finisher. De Blasio’s vote totals are hovering around the 40% mark, but Thompson declined to concede, and the city’s Board of Elections has yet to count more than 19,000 absentee ballots. If de Blasio dips below 40%, he and Thompson will compete in a runoff election Oct. 1. Nearly 650,000 votes were cast in the race Tuesday.

New York: Democrats Press Thompson to Forsake a Runoff | New York Times

New York City’s Democratic power brokers moved swiftly on Wednesday to prevent a combative sequel to the party’s primary for mayor, as union officials and party leaders rallied around the front-runner, Bill de Blasio, and urged the second-place finisher, William C. Thompson Jr., to end his quest for a runoff election. On a day of back-room maneuvering and deal-making, Mr. Thompson’s own inner circle appeared divided over how, or even whether, to proceed, with his campaign. Mr. Thompson vowed to press on, but the chairwoman of his campaign said Mr. de Blasio had won a “clear victory” and suggested the race was over. “I don’t think there’s much appetite within the Democratic Party to have a fight here,” Merryl H. Tisch, the campaign chairwoman, said in a telephone interview.

New York: Mayoral primary plagued by voting machine problems | Associated Press

As New York City’s contentious primary campaign drew to a close Tuesday, some voters – including one leading mayoral candidate – encountered problems with the city’s decades-old voting machines. Turnout appeared light, but the city’s complaint line received several thousand voting-related calls. Many reported jams and breakdowns in the antiquated lever machines, which were hauled out of retirement to replace much-maligned electronic devices. In some sites, the broken machines forced voters to use pen and paper to cast their ballot. Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota presumably wrote his own name when his machine broke at his Brooklyn polling place.

New York: The return of the lever pull: To prepare for runoff, BOE goes Lo-Fi | AMNewYork

Voters will experience a blast from the not-too- distant past Tuesday when they use the old lever voting machines to cast their primary ballots. The city Board of Elections pushed for the one-time use of the retro devices, which were last used in the 2009 election, primarily because they are better suited to a two-person runoff. “It’s a much more shorter time process to change it to a two-person contest,” BOE spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez said. But not everyone is convinced the old ways are the best. City Councilwoman Gale Brewer, the chair of the governmental operations committee and a candidate for Manhattan borough president, said she is concerned that voters will be confused by the temporary change. “I think it’s weird for 21st century to be available and then go to the lever machines,” she said. “I’m not hopeful, but I might be wrong.”

New York: Elections Board Rings In the Old, as Lever Machines Replace Scanners | New York Times

Dented, dinged and dated, New York’s battleship-gray lever voting machines have been hauled out of retirement because the city can’t seem to get the hang of electronic voting.Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for news and conversation. The board is using the lever machines for the coming primary elections because of their quicker turnaround. About 5,100 old machines, each weighing more than 800 pounds and made of 20,000 parts, have been lubricated, and the names of candidates from 2009 (Michael R. Bloomberg, anyone?) have been removed and replaced with those of this year’s contenders. But there is a question no one can answer for sure: Will they work? “I’m very nervous about it,” said Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer, who leads a City Council panel that monitors the Board of Elections. Ms. Brewer’s interest is personal as well — she is one of four candidates in a hotly contested Democratic primary for Manhattan borough president. The lever machines to be used on Tuesday were acquired in the 1960s. In 2010, they were replaced with a $95 million electronic system that uses optical scanners to read paper ballots. But after long lines and chaotic polling scenes in 2012, as well as problems producing complete election results, the State Legislature this year authorized the return of the lever machines for the primary and any ensuing runoff, though it insisted that the city make the electronic machines work for the November general election.

New York: The New York City Mayoral Election Nightmare Scenario | TPM

On Tuesday, Bill de Blasio became the latest frontrunner in New York City’s mayoral election, a race which has seen several major shifts in polling. Whoever emerges victorious in the first round of the Democratic primary next month, almost all of the polling indicates he or she will be headed to a runoff against the second place finisher three weeks later. This might be a problem. The Big Apple’s recent history of elections have included legal battles, chaotic lines at the polls, and vote counts that seem to never end. Adding to those headaches next month are the return of the city’s aging lever-pull voting machines and the possibility of a close finish for that number two spot, opening the door for a nightmare scenario where the results are still in dispute as the date of the final runoff approaches. “I can’t even think about that, the concept is too stressful,” one mayoral campaign staffer, who asked not to be named, said after TPM asked about how the potential Election Day chaos could complicate the tightly scheduled race.

New York: Fraud cases center on absentee ballots | Newsday

Absentee ballots often generate intrigue, suspicion and allegations across party lines. It is easy to see why. “Other ballots are filed at the polling place — where presumably people keep an eye on what goes on,” explained a New York elections expert. “Absentee ballots go wherever they go and then come back with somebody delivering them.” How they’re handled, and by whom, opens chances for irregularities. Last week, Frances Knapp, the Dutchess County election board’s Democratic commissioner, was accused on 94 criminal counts of misconduct and false-instrument filing. Under the law, an absentee voter may designate an agent to handle his or her ballot. Two years ago, says the indictment announced by Dutchess District Attorney William Grady, Knapp permitted the names of such designated agents “to be fraudulently changed” in the county’s computer system.

New York: New York City Vows to Provide Bengali Ballots after Lawsuit Filed | India West

The New York City Board of Elections said it would translate ballots in Queens, New York, into Bengali for the Sept. 10 primary election. It is the first new language added in more than a decade, election officials said. The addition of Bengali-language ballots at 60 polling sites in Queens comes nearly two years after the federal government ordered the city to provide language assistance to South Asian minorities under a provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The federal government had ordered the city’s English ballots to be translated into Spanish, and more recently Chinese, in 1993 and Korean in 2001, The New York Times reported.  The move by election officials comes after the New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a lawsuit July 2 against the board for failing to comply with the language assistance provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act.

New York: “Miscommunication” Led To NYC Board Of Elections Shredding 20 Pages Of GOP Petitions | New York Daily News

Mere weeks after the Daily News reported the Board’s Brooklyn outpost dug up nearly 1,600 uncounted votes from 2012, the agency confirms a Board worker in the same office mistakenly destroyed 20 pages of 2013 Republican petitions. It wasn’t immediately clear Monday exactly how the petitions — voter signature sheets that are gathered to get candidates on the ballot — ended up in the dustbin of electoral history. “A single petition volume of 20 pages was inadvertently destroyed” last Friday, Board spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez said in a statement responding to a Daily News inquiry about the destroyed docs.  “Fortunately, we have obtained copies of the petition volume in question from both the filer and a member of the public who had previously requested a copy of this volume,” Vazquez continued. “Board staff compared the two copies and found them to be identical.”

New York: South Asians await Bengali ballots | TimesLedger

The borough’s South Asian community last week cautiously celebrated the news that the city Board of Elections will provide Bengali-language ballots for this year’s city elections. “By providing translated ballots and language assistance in Bengali, we are ensuring that all voters in Queens have the resources they need to fully exercise their right to vote in the upcoming elections,” said state Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Little Neck), whose district stretching from Bellerose to Richmond Hill was redrawn after the 2010 census in a deliberate move to consolidate the electoral power of Queens’ fractured South Asian community. “This is one critical step towards improving voter access and increasing voter participation for all New Yorkers.”