New York: League of Women Voters calls for election reform | Troy Record

The Black Box Theater at the Arts Center of the Capital Region was the setting for a symposium on campaign finance and election reform Saturday, where a space usually associated with drama and comedy was filled by earnest concerned citizens curious about an important issue. The space Saturday was the setting for a symposium on ideas about reforming and overhauling elections in the state hosted by the Rensselaer County chapter of the League of Women Voters. Saturday’s event revolved around a power point presentation entitled “Preserving Our Democracy: Campaign Finance Reform in New York State.”

New York: Early voting slammed as costly and impractical | Denpubs.com

A statewide early voting system as proposed by Democrats in the state Assembly would be far too unwieldy and expensive to implement, Warren County leaders said this week. Friday Jan. 25, county supervisors serving on the Legislative & Rules Committee endorsed a resolution opposing the measure — which would entail setting up five polling sites in the county and keeping them open and staffed with election inspectors for 11 hours per day for two full weeks before each general election, even through the weekends. The proposal also mandates that such provisions be made for a week prior to both primary and special elections.

New York: Cecilia Tkaczyk, Democrat, Ekes Out 18 Vote Victory in Republican Senate District | NYTimes.com

Hoping to pad their narrow majority in the State Senate, Republicans used the redistricting process last year to draw a new, Republican-friendly district in the Albany area. They expected that George A. Amedore Jr., a state assemblyman whose family has a successful home-building business in the capital region, would have no trouble making the jump to the Legislature’s upper house. Democrats sued to block the creation of the seat, but failed. Yet on Friday, 73 days after Election Day, Mr. Amedore conceded defeat to a little-known opponent: Cecilia F. Tkaczyk, a Democrat who, in addition to serving as vice president of the local school board, is also the vice president of the Golden Fleece Spinners and Weavers Guild. Ms. Tkaczyk (pronounced KAT-chik) was ahead by 18 votes — out of more than 126,000 cast — after a batch of contested ballots was counted in Ulster and Albany Counties. (Another uncounted ballot was found in Montgomery County, but it remains unclear whether it will be counted.)

New York: Push for early voting in NY begins | New York Amsterdam News

A state political official wants New York added to the list of states that participate in early voting. Under legislation submitted by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and co-sponsored by Assemblyman Michael Cusick, voters would be able to cast ballots at designated locations starting 14 days before a general election and seven days before a primary or special election. Under the legislation, the boards of elections for each county and New York City would have to designate at least five polling places for early voting from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. during the advance periods, including Saturdays and Sundays, which would be counted at the close of the polls on Election Day and included in that night’s tallies.

New York: Cuomo wants early voting in New York | Capital New York

Governor Andrew Cuomo is proposing early voting in New York State that “is at least one week long, and includes the weekend before a scheduled Election Day,” according to an outine of the governor’s State of the State speech distributed by his office today. The day before the legislative races last year, Cuomo announced a loosening of rules govering emergency ballots to help address needs facing residents displaced immediately after Hurricane Sandy.

New York: Early voting in New York easier said than done | Post Star

Democrats in the state Assembly are pushing to institute early voting in New York, but local elections officials say it would be costly and difficult to implement. “Our democracy thrives when we have as many citizens as possible participating in the electoral process,” said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, in a December press release. Silver has introduced legislation to establish early voting in New York, legislation he said will be a priority in the legislative session that opens Wednesday. Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Westchester County, has introduced companion legislation in the state Senate.

New York: Cecilia Tkaczyk not giving up election fight in NY 46 Senate District | DailyFreeman.com

Democrat Cecilia Tkaczyk has appealed “hyper-technical mistakes” that invalidated more than 300 paper ballots cast in the race for the state’s 46th Senate District seat, her attorney said on Friday. Republican candidate George Amedore was expected to file a response to his opponent’s appeal by 4 p.m. Friday, but Amedore’s spokesman could not be reached for confirmation of that. Acting state Supreme Court Justice Guy Tomlinson on Dec. 18 certified Amedore the winner of the 46th Senate District race by a margin of just 37 votes, 63,141 to 63,104. The ruling was made public the following day, at which point Tkaczyk’s campaign indicated she would file an appeal. That appeal was filed Wednesday with the state Supreme Court Appellate Division, Third Department.

New York: Early Voting Option for New York State? | wgrz.com

Back in 2010 voters saw a major change as voting machines went from the lever over to the scanner. And now in Albany as we approach a new year, State Assembly Democrats including Speaker Sheldon Silver are talking about voting for another change in the way we run our elections. “Early voting” would start two weeks before the designated Election Day. That is similar to what Ohio, Florida, and other states now allow.

New York: Election Postmortem Focuses on Poll Workers | Epoch Times

For the sixth time since 2010, the New York City Board of Elections (BOE) was called before the New York City Council to hear recommendations for improving on elections logistics with an aim to boosting voting rates. The marathon hearing—over six hours—was much more subdued than past hearings, due in large part to a format change: groups that promote good government testified first, the BOE last. Plenty of suggestions were made to improve all aspects of the election process, including the human element—the election poll workers. Improvements in the selection of workers, the training process, and working methods were discussed as a fundamental way to shorten long lines, which was the chief complaint from the 2012 presidential election.

New York: Lever voting machine sales draw a light turnout | Times Union

They are complex machines, controlled by rows of switches and reset by a giant lever that activates a series of dials, switches, counters and a little bill. For decades these iron behemoths put a mechanical imprimatur on the annual rite of democracy, locking in the selections of millions of New Yorkers, from FDR to Nelson Rockefeller. Now they’re worth less than $42. The 2002 Help America Vote Act led to the statewide replacement of the old lever voting machines in time for the 2010 elections with paper ballots logged by electronic scanners. Since then counties have been either warehousing or auctioning off the old machines, or wondering in general how they can rid of them. “They have very little value anymore,” Saratoga County Republican Elections Commissioner Roger Schiera said.

New York: City Officials and Watchdogs Urge Overhaul of Elections | NYTimes.com

A day after New York City voters encountered waits lasting hours and chaos at many poll sites, elected officials and government watchdog groups agreed that the city’s election process needed major change. But there was little consensus about what to do or how it could be done. “It’s time for a comprehensive scrutiny of the way we handle elections in this city and state,” said Jerry H. Goldfeder, one of the state’s most prominent election lawyers. “The system needs radical reform,” he added. Christine C. Quinn, the speaker of the New York City Council and a leading contender for mayor should she run next year, said that the city’s election process needed a “major soup-to-nuts overhaul” and that the Council planned to lobby Albany to enact changes.

New York: Nassau to probe voting machine failures | Newsday

More than 200 new electronic voting machines in Nassau County jammed on Election Day, forcing voters to cast some 20,000 paper ballots and delaying final tabulations in some close races, election officials said. About 4 percent of the 463,000 Nassau voters who went to the polls Tuesday had to place paper ballots into emergency ballot boxes when the machines malfunctioned, said Democratic Board of Elections Commissioner William Biamonte. In 2010 and 2011, such breakdowns affected less than 1 percent of voters, he said. Similar problems were reported in New York City. Suffolk Republican Deputy Elections Commissioner Bill Ellis said the county experienced only minor issues “that were easily corrected.” Suffolk uses a different vendor than Nassau and the city.

New York: Voters will be allowed to vote in any polling place | Reuters

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday New Yorkers affected by superstorm Sandy will be allowed to vote in Tuesday’s U.S. election in any polling place by presenting an affidavit. Cuomo said he was signing an executive order on Monday that will allow voters to cast ballots at voting stations other than the ones to which they are assigned.

New York: Cost of Oneida Co. election ballot spelling error: $75,000 | The Observer-Dispatch

A pallet of about 130,000 printed Oneida County election ballots with the incorrect spelling for the name of the president of the United States is sitting in a print shop in Albany. The cost: about $75,000. The cost to print the corrected ballots: about the same. County Executive Anthony Picente learned of the print job Friday amid a public dispute with the county Board of Elections over an apparent $115,000 budget shortfall in the department.

New York: Digital signatures creating headaches for election officials | democratandchronicle.com

County election officials are running into an unexpected problem with the Department of Motor Vehicles’ new online voter registration system: faulty signatures. Without clear copies of voters’ signatures to compare to poll books, the identities of New Yorkers who registered online might be challenged on Election Day, elections officials said. Digital scans of applicants’ signatures “are not as crisp as we are used to getting, and they could be blurry. They could be distorted,” said Louis Babcock, Rockland County Republican election commissioner. “It could be brought into question by a poll inspector.” Uncertainty over a signature would not keep people from casting a vote, but it might require them to submit an affidavit ballot, which would allow commissioners time to obtain a better copy for verification, he said.

New York: Glitch found in N.Y.’s online voter registration tool | Press & Sun-Bulletin

County election officials are running into an unexpected problem with the Department of Motor Vehicles’ new online voter registration system: faulty signatures. Without clear copies of voters’ signatures to compare to the poll books, the identity of New Yorkers who registered online might be challenged on election day, elections officials said. Digital scans of applicants’ signatures “are not as crisp as we are used to getting, and they could be blurry. They could be distorted,” said Louis Babcock, Rockland County Republican election commissioner. “It could be brought into question by a poll inspector,” he said. Uncertainty over a signature would not keep people from casting a vote, but it might require them to submit an affidavit ballot, which would allow commissioners time to obtain a better copy for verification, Babcock said.

New York: Digital signatures creating headaches for election officials | democratandchronicle.com

County election officials are running into an unexpected problem with the Department of Motor Vehicles’ new online voter registration system: faulty signatures. Without clear copies of voters’ signatures to compare to poll books, the identities of New Yorkers who registered online might be challenged on Election Day, elections officials said. Digital scans of applicants’ signatures “are not as crisp as we are used to getting, and they could be blurry. They could be distorted,” said Louis Babcock, Rockland County Republican election commissioner. “It could be brought into question by a poll inspector.”

New York: Teen admits vandalizing New York City Congressman’s office | WSJ.com

A teenager with a guilty conscience has complicated a New York congressman’s claim that there was a politically motivated break-in at his campaign office. The eighth-grader confessed to a guidance counselor at his school on Tuesday that he and a friend were the ones who smashed windows over the weekend at the Staten Island campaign office of Republican U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm, said New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne. Police called it a random act of vandalism. They said the teen only became aware his target was Grimm’s office after a wave of news reports about a possible break-in. The boy was expected to be charged with criminal mischief as a juvenile, Browne said.

New York: Staten Island Rep. Grimm calls break-in ‘attack on free elections’ | SILive.com

An overnight intruder smashed several windows and gained entry into Rep. Michael Grimm’s New Dorp headquarters over the weekend, possibly tampering with computers inside the office, authorities said. Grimm’s staff discovered the damage Sunday morning — two large chunks of cement and some smaller rocks had been hurled through three, 4×8-foot vertical windows, according to a campaign spokeswoman. They also believed that someone had deleted computer hard drives. The congressman and his campaign staff believe the vandalism was staged to cover up the computer tampering. On further inspection it was determined the intruder had caused a different type of damage — someone installed the Linux operating system on the office’s computers, Grimm told the Advance Sunday night, and in the process wiped the hard drives clean. “All of my polling data, all of the data from my IDs of voters, and a bunch of other campaign information. But fortunately we had everything backed up from literally hours before, so we don’t lose anything because we have backups,” Grimm said. He has no doubt his office was targeted, and called the incident cowardly.

New York: New York City Voters Annoyed by Hard-to-Read Ballots | NYTimes.com

Some states want their voters to take ID cards to the polls. In New York City, you may want to bring a magnifying glass. Voters who trekked to the polls for Thursday’s primary races were handed ballots with candidates’ names printed in an eye-straining 7-point type, akin to the ingredient list on the side of a cereal box. Now the city Board of Elections is facing outsize criticism over the mite-size font. Civic groups and lawmakers are calling for reform. And some voters are wondering why the instructions on the ballot were displayed in larger and clearer typefaces than the names of the candidates and the offices they were running for. “I just stood and squinted,” recalled Elinore Kaplan, a semiretired teacher in Manhattan, who said she was upset and disappointed to have so much trouble ensuring she voted for the person she wanted to vote for. “It shouldn’t be a challenge,” she said of the ballot’s design. “It should be an invitation.”

New York: Independence Party Decides to Nominate No One for President | Ballot Access News

According to the New York State Board of Elections, the ballot-qualified Independence Party has decided not to nominate any presidential candidate. This is the first time a ballot-qualified party in New York has declined to nominate anyone for President since 1984, when the Right to Life Party had declined to nominate anyone for President. Before that, the last time in New York state was when the Conservative Party nominated no one. However, the only reason the New York Conservative Party ran no one for President in 1968 was that the party wanted to cross-endorse the Republican nominee (Richard Nixon) but the New York Republican Party refused to let the Conservative Party cross-endorse the Republican slate.

New York: New York Voters Crash Online Registration System | GovTech

When New York added the ability for voters to register online earlier this month, officials hoped it would add a lot of citizens to the state’s voter rolls. According to the office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, fewer than 64 percent of eligible New York residents are currently registered to vote, which ranks the state 47th in the country in voter registration. The addition of the new online registration capability was especially timely, given the Aug. 19 deadline for those wishing to participate in the state’s primary election, scheduled for Sept. 13. “At the DMV, or in their own homes, New Yorkers will now have a convenient and secure way to ensure they are able to register and exercise their right to vote,” said Cuomo in a statement. And New Yorkers seem to have gotten the message. Twitter activity on Friday suggested that an influx of would-be voters brought the new system to its knees.

New York: State now allows online voter registration through DMV | WSJ.com

New York is joining 13 other states that allow voters to register online in an effort to improve voter turnout and save money. The initiative announced Thursday also expands opportunities for voters to register in languages other than English. In addition, voters will be able to update their addresses and party enrollments online. Ten states have had online voting dating back to 2001: Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. California, Connecticut and South Caroline have passed laws, but haven’t started online registration yet. Arizona reports more than 70 percent of voter registrations are done online since the state made the move in 2003, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Arizona’s registrations claimed 9.5 percent from 2002 to 2004, while saving money on staff and paper registrations and increasing accuracy, the national conference said.

New York: NYC Board Of Elections, Meet The 21st Century | New York Daily News

After the hullaballoo over reporting primary-night results in the NY-13 race, the board commissioners voted today to have the flash drives (aka “memory sticks”) that capture results from electronic voting machines transported to police precincts and downloaded directly into BOE laptops. The change will, it’s hoped, avoid the lost in addition/transfer problems that led state Sen. Adriano Espaillat to prematurely concede to incumbent Rep. Charlie Rangel the night of the June 26 Democratic contest. Bronx GOP Commissioner J.C. Polanco, who lobbied heavily for a change from the old cut-and-add system, called it “a good day. “I think New Yorkers are going to appreciate having accurate tallies at the end of the night. I think that working closely with the NYPD, we’ll be able to get it done and make sure that the numbers that are reflected in the unofficial results are close to the results on the scanner,” Polanco, who’s presumably still waiting for that apology from Espaillat, told The Daily Politics. Under the new plan, cops will take the memory sticks back to precincts, where BOE staffers (under bipartisan supervision) will dump the results into the computers. The change will cost about $300,000 in new laptops. “The good thing about this proposal is that it eliminates the potential for human error that is present when we have our co-workers tallying results at the end of the night and doing data entry back at the precincts,” Polanco said. “That’s why I’m excited about it and that’s why I’m happy it passed unanimously.”

New York: Voting machines in the primary between Charlie Rangel and Adriano Espaillat didn’t count hundreds of votes | NY Daily News

More than 500 votes in the controversial Democratic primary contest between Charlie Rangel and Adriano Espaillat were never counted for any of the candidates. A Daily News review of official precinct-by-precint results for the 13th Congressional District shows that electronic vote scanning machines the Board of Elections has used for the past two years failed to record any voter choice on 436 ballots. Those nullified ballots represent 1% of all votes cast in the race — a significant figure, given that Rangel won by only a 2% margin. The Board of Elections discarded another 78 write-in votes as “unattributable” to any candidate, The News’ review found. It defies logic that 514 people went to the polls in this hotly-contested race and voted for no one. The biggest number of both “unrecorded” votes (104) and “unattributable” write-ins (20) came in the 72nd Assembly District in Washington Heights/Inwood, where insurgent candidate Espaillat had the most support.

New York: The cost of democracy? $36.30 per voter in Onondaga County | syracuse.com

New York’s June 26 primary where Republicans chose Manhattan lawyer Wendy Long as their nominee for U.S. Senate just missed setting a record-low for voter turnout in Onondaga County, according to the final unofficial tally. A total of 4,105 people voted out of 85,374 active Republicans enrolled in Onondaga County, according to the Board of Elections. It amounts to a voter turnout of 4.8 percent. That means the record-low of 4.6 percent is safe for now. That record was set it in the 2006 U.S. Senate GOP primary when John Spencer defeated K.T. McFarland for the party’s nomination.

New York: Rep. Rangel voting snafu sees pols unite for change | NY Daily News

Alarmed by the shifting vote tallies that have turned Charlie Rangel’s apparent reelection into a court battle, legislative leaders say they want to fix the way city votes are counted. The operation needs to be totally computerized, rather than having a bungle-prone process that requires the city Board of Elections to count paper ballots by hand, said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan). “That should definitely be something they do — just collect all the flash drives (from the voting machines) and bring them to [BOE] headquarters,” Silver said. “I don’t think you’ll change the outcomes as a result, but you’ll certainly know the results faster.”

New York: Troubling actions by New York City Board of Elections members | NY Daily News

Vote counting in the fierce congressional battle between incumbent Charlie Rangel and his insurgent challenger Adriano Espaillat is no longer a matter of the usual incompetence of the Board of Elections. Troubling signs have now emerged that some officials at the board crossed the line in an all-out effort by the Democratic Party establishment to ensure a Rangel victory, and that the board’s staff wrongly disqualified hundreds of paper ballots. Board officials began their tally Thursday of some 2,600 paper ballots. Those are either mail-in absentee votes or “affidavit” ballots from people who went to the polls last week but were told their name was not on the rolls. That count showed Rangel increasing his slim 807-vote overall lead by another 131 votes, although Espaillat’s main base area of Washington Heights and Inwood has yet to be counted. But until now, no one has mentioned more than 2,000 additional paper votes the board’s staff tossed out this week as invalid.

New York: Rangel Primary Lead Grows During First Day Of Paper Ballot Count | NY1.com

Voters in the 13th congressional district went to the polls in Manhattan and the Bronx more than a week ago, but votes in the Democratic primary race for Congressman Charles Rangel’s seat were still being counted Thursday. New numbers showed Rangel’s margin growing to a lead of 945 votes over his chief rival, state Senator Adriano Espaillat. “It seems that both sides are cooperating with each other and with the board and we are making good progress,” said Board of Elections counsel Steven Richman. It could take a couple of days to count all of the more than 2,000 absentee and affidavit ballots in the race. BOE officials began opening them in Greenwich Village on Thursday morning.

New York: Rangel opponent files for re-vote in increasingly tight primary | The Washington Post

What at one point looked like a big primary night victory for Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) has gradually become a close race — enough so that Rangel’s opponent is now filing for a possible do-over election. State Sen. Adriano Espaillat this week filed with the state Supreme Court seeking either a recount or a highly unusual redo of his June 26 primary with Rangel. Espaillat has lodged accusations of voter suppression and has pointed to faulty administration and vote-counting by New York City elections officials. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., salutes surviving members of the Montford Point Marines, during a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, June 27, 2012. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais — Associated Press) The race appeared over and done last Tuesday night, with Rangel holding a double-digit lead in early returns. He delivered a victory speech, and Espaillat conceded. As the night wore on, though, Espaillat closed the gap significantly, and a continuing manual counting of the ballots now has Rangel up just 802 votes out of nearly 40,000 cast. A couple thousand absentee ballots still have yet to be counted.