New York: Legislation Would Allow New Yorkers to Track Absentee Ballots Online | Observer

Without the satisfying pull of a lever or the little sticker that says “I voted,” mailing in an absentee ballot can leave a voter a little uncertain this his choice will actually count—and Councilman Ben Kallos is looking to change that. Mr. Kallos is introducing legislation today that would require the Board of Elections to provide a secure website through which New Yorkers could track their absentee ballot—from the moment the city receives the request for a ballot until the moment the vote is counted. “The tracking system we’re asking for is something the Board of Elections should have in place for their own internal tracking purposes, and we’re asking them to have it in place not only for themselves but for the general public,” Mr. Kallos told the Observer.

New York: Lawsuit looks to force Gov. Andrew Cuomo to set special election for Congress | SILive.com

Eight people have filed a lawsuit against Gov. Andrew Cuomo, arguing his failure to set a special election date to fill the congressional vacancy violates the constitutional rights of residents of Staten Island and of southern Brooklyn. Cuomo is constitutionally required to call a special election to fill the vacated seat. The election must take place within 70 to 80 days of when he announces it. However, the governor has discretion as to when to call for a special election, which could prevent it from taking place until the next general election in November. Former Rep. Michael Grimm resigned last month after pleading guilty to felony tax fraud in connection to a Manhattan health food restaurant he used to co-own before being elected. As recently as this week, Cuomo said he had no timeline for when a special election would be set. The suit requests that the court compel the governor to set a special election.

New York: Disabled hope to retire lever voting machines for good | Legislative Gazete

Legislators joined disability and voting advocates at a press conference on Tuesday, Jan. 13 in Albany to call for an end to the use of lever voting machines in local elections. Although lever voting machines have been replaced in most elections in New York since the implementation of the Help America Vote Act in 2002, many are still in use in village, school district, and other local elections due to repeated extensions by the state Legislature. Some local municipalities and schools prefer to use lever machines because some do not own newer voting machines and must borrow or rent them from the Board of Elections or pay a private company to conduct their elections using more modern voting machines. But advocates say voters with visual, mobility and cognitive disabilities are unable to use the lever machines privately, needing the assistance of a caretaker or poll worker to help them vote.

New York: Man Seeks to Turn Tables on Officials in Voter Fraud | New York Times

John Kennedy O’Hara spent most of 2003 picking up garbage in city parks and cleaning public toilets as part of his sentence for illegal voting in Brooklyn. Also, he had to pay a fine and restitution amounting to $15,192. His supposed crime was that he registered to vote using the address of a girlfriend on 47th Street in Sunset Park, where he claimed to live part of the time. But he also maintained a residence 14 blocks away. While this sounds like pretty serious punishment for virtually nothing — the state election laws are so remarkably elastic on matters of residency that a former head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party was actually living in Queens during his reign — we cannot be sure if Mr. O’Hara got more than his unfair share. There are, after all, very few people to compare him with. Practically no one. It appears that the last person to be convicted of illegal voting in New York State before Mr. O’Hara was the abolitionist and suffragist Susan B. Anthony, who cast a ballot in Rochester in 1872, flagrantly disregarding that she was a woman and therefore not allowed to do so. She was not sentenced to pick up garbage in the parks, but was fined $100. She never paid.

New York: McCoy denies he meddled with redistricting | Times Union

County Executive Dan McCoy told a federal judge Wednesday that he kept his hands off the county’s controversial 2011 redistricting process after he created the commission charged with carrying it out. “When I put the commission together, I gave them no guidance after that,” said McCoy, who was at the time chairman of the Albany County Legislature and the county Democratic Party. His testimony, which last 35 minutes, came on day nine of the trial in a lawsuit challenging the political map. McCoy asserted he did not recall many of the details of the contentious political maneuvering that embroiled the legislature’s sharply divided Democratic majority during passage of the electoral map nearly four years ago. Democrats including McCoy split 16-14 in favor of the law creating the map, which ultimately passed 22-14 with Republican support.

New York: Voting rights accord rejected | Times Union

County lawmakers on Monday forcefully rejected a proposed settlement to a three-year-old voting rights lawsuit, sending the case back to federal court with an emphatic rebuke of County Executive Dan McCoy. The settlement would have ended the complex and increasingly costly case alleging racial imbalances in the county’s political map by, among other things, establishing a fifth legislative district in which minority voters are a majority. And while several of the majority Democratic lawmakers said that they support that goal, they blasted McCoy for freezing the legislature out of the settlement process and accused him of overstepping his authority in trying to dictate how the new lines would be drawn. High on the list of grievances is that the settlement would have prescribed the makeup of the county’s redistricting commission, a task legislative leaders said is clearly lawmakers’ prerogative. The vote was 34-3, with even some of the Democratic executive’s Republican allies opposing it.

New York: Early voting would come to New York City under new bill | NY Daily News

New Yorkers would be able to cast their ballots early under new legislation set to be introduced in the City Council Wednesday. The bill sponsored by Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan) would open select polling places for local elections two weeks before election day. “New York is currently last in the nation for voter turnout,” Kallos said. “And part of that is because two thirds of the United States and Washington DC offer early voting to residents, and New York doesn’t.”

New York: Election Boards Look to Modernize Vote Counting, Finance Filing Systems | Gotham Gazette

In the next two years, the New York City and State election boards may finally arrive in the 21st Century. The New York City and New York State Boards of Election are planning major technological upgrades to their vote counting and finance disclosure systems, staff told State Assembly members at a hearing Friday morning in Manhattan. By late 2015, voters in the city may know the results of most elections by 10 p.m. on election nights, thanks to tablets at every polling site that can upload vote counts just minutes after polls close. And in late 2016 or early 2017, the state board plans to launch a new campaign finance filing system, replacing a two-decade-old network that candidates say is difficult to use. On election night in New York City, poll workers and police officers usually transport memory sticks filled with vote count data to police precincts, where they are counted.

New York: Dispute over election delay derails redistricting settlement | Times Union

County lawmakers scrapped a vote Tuesday to settle a three-year-old voting rights lawsuit after the ruling Democrats failed in a closed-door caucus to muster enough support to withstand County Executive Dan McCoy’s veto and just hours after McCoy sued to stop them. The chief sticking point was a provision that would have delayed next year’s legislative elections until 2016 ostensibly to accommodate redrawing the county’s political map to include a fifth district in which minority voters are a majority. A coalition of minority residents sued the county in 2011 alleging the redistricting plan violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting minority voting power. But McCoy, a Democrat also up for re-election next year, said he saw no justification for stalling the races when the new district has already essentially been drawn and ballot petitioning won’t begin for seven months.

New York: Bill would let New Yorkers register to vote online | NY Daily News

New Yorkers would finally be able to register to vote with a click of a mouse under a bill to be introduced in the City Council. Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan) will introduce legislation to allow would-be voters to register online. Currently, the Board of Elections requires paper registration forms to be mailed in the old fashioned way. “We hope to have a city where everyone who is eligible can vote easily,” Kallos said. “We make it really hard to register, really hard to vote, and we can make it a lot easier.”

New York: Ballot Item Would Reform Redistricting, at Least in Theory | New York Times

It has divided good-government groups, alienated some liberals and reformers from the governor, been ruthlessly edited for veracity by a State Supreme Court justice and, with Election Day just a little more than three weeks away, virtually ignored by the voters. Still, Proposal 1 will be on the statewide ballot Nov. 4 and, given the way things work in Albany, is likely to benefit whichever party wins control of the State Senate after the next decennial census in 2020. Democrats comfortably control the Assembly; the Senate has teetered between the two parties. In theory, at least, the compromise proposal would amend the State Constitution to change the way state legislative and congressional districts are drawn after every census, a process that traditionally has been meticulously, if sometimes awkwardly, designed to favor incumbents.

New York: Board Won’t Fight Order to Alter Election Ballot | New York Law Journal

The state Board of Elections will not appeal last week’s ruling to change the description of a referendum question on the Nov. 4 statewide ballot proposing a new redistricting commission, a board spokesman said Monday. The board is altering the ballots to reflect the decision by Albany Supreme Court Justice Patrick McGrath that the word “independent” must be deleted from the ballot itself, as well as a description and abstract of the proposition, because it inaccurately describes the nature of the commission.

New York: New York’s crazily complicated ballots, explained | The Washington Post

Even if New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo lost his Democratic primary on Tuesday, he’d still be on the ballot in November — as a candidate for three other parties. That seems unlikely, but it’s not the extent of Cuomo’s ballot issues. If insurgent candidate Tim Wu beats Cuomo’s chosen running mate, former congresswoman Kathy Hochul, Cuomo could actually end up stealing votes in November from none other than himself. Wu, the Columbia law professor who was recently endorsed by the New York Times, would be Cuomo’s Democratic running mate if he wins Tuesday. But several other minor parties in the state have already sided with the Cuomo-Hochul ticket. And while it would seem that these minor parties could simply swap in a Cuomo-Wu ticket, that actually might not be the case, because they all need at least 50,000 votes on their line to automatically be on the ballot in the far-more-exciting 2016 presidential election. Why might Cuomo wind up running against himself? Well, it has everything to do with New York’s long and confusing ballots. Below, we explain.

New York: Teachout Can Stay on Ballot Against Cuomo, Appeals Court Says | New York Times

A New York State appeals court ruled on Wednesday that Zephyr Teachout, a law professor who is running against Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the Democratic primary, can remain on the Sept. 9 ballot. Mr. Cuomo’s campaign, which had sought to disqualify her, said it would not appeal. The campaign had questioned whether Ms. Teachout, who teaches at Fordham Law School, met the state’s five-year residency requirement to be governor, arguing that in recent years, she had intended for Vermont, where she grew up, to be her legal residence. It cited a variety of records in which Ms. Teachout used a Vermont address. But a State Supreme Court justice rebuffed the challenge last week. Mr. Cuomo’s campaign appealed that ruling, and the appeal was argued in Brooklyn on Tuesday.

New York: Group challenges New York redistricting plan | Associated Press

A government watchdog group is challenging the wording of a New York ballot question on redistricting, saying it is deceptive and should be replaced with more neutral language. A lawsuit announced Tuesday by Common Cause-New York seeks to reword the referendum, which critics say is misleading and could confuse voters into thinking they’re voting for an independent redistricting commission. The question on the November ballot asks voters to authorize a new commission to handle redistricting beginning in 2022. That’s the next time the state’s political districts will be redrawn to account for population changes.

New York: Redistricting amendment language set, critics object | NCPR

The state board of elections approved the language for a ballot amendment that would change the way redistricting is done in New York. But not everyone is happy with the wording or the amendment. The November ballot amendment would permit the Senate and the Assembly to appoint members to what the amendment describes as an “independent” commission to redraw legislative district lines every ten years, as required by the census. The state Board of Elections approved the language for the proposal at their August meeting. Board commissioner Andy Spano says he’s satisfied with the final wording. “We all talked about it,” Spano said. “It made a lot of sense because it defined what was the initial intent of the legislature and the governor.”

New York: Nick Di Iorio, longshot GOP candidate for Congress, signed to star in reality show about ‘unwinnable’ races | NY Daily News

A longshot congressional candidate in Manhattan apparently makes for a sure-fire winner on reality television. Nick Di Iorio, a Republican challenging veteran Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, has been signed to star in a proposed reality show about candidates running in “unwinnable” races. In a draft opinion released Monday, the Federal Election Commission said Di Iorio can appear on the series — as long as he doesn’t get paid. Di Iorio and his campaign manager, Joseph Shippeee, have a production deal to do the show if the project is picked up by the Esquire network, a new channel that is set to debut this fall, Shippee told the commission.

New York: FEC tells congressional candidate to go ahead with reality TV show, but he can’t get paid | The Washington Post

If you can’t win a seat in Congress, why not parlay your failed political dreams into reality TV stardom? (We call this the reverse-Sean Duffy.) Manhattan congressional candidate Nick Di Iorio is probably not going to win in November. And he knows it. So when producers approached him about appearing in a reality TV show about long-shot political campaigns, he was interested. Di Iorio, a Republican running to unseat incumbent Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), and his campaign manager, Joseph Shippee, would be featured campaigning in a district “considered unwinnable,” Shippeewrote in a letter to the Federal Election Commission in early June. The producers, who had hoped to option the idea to Esquire Network, sought candidates with low odds, and as Shippee wrote, “Nick appears to fit this description.” The show would not air until after the election. Shippee wanted to know: Could they get paid? And if not, could they do the show at all?

New York: Twenty-six votes could be all it takes to become mayor of this tiny New York town | The Washington Post

Things are getting tense in the nail-biter that is Dering Harbor’s mayoral election. Never heard of Dering Harbor, you say? That could be because the tiny village boasts only 11 full-time residents, according to the most recent census. Its current mayor, Timothy Hogue, is fighting for his political life after last month’s election resulted in a 25-25 tie with his challenger, retired Wall Street banker Patrick Parcells, who wrote himself in, according to Newsday. A second election is being held today in the 35-home village on Shelter Island, N.Y.

New York: Lawmaker promises voting rights to illegal immigrants | Haaretz

A New York lawmaker wants to grant many of the rights of citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants and non-citizen residents, including the right to vote in local and state elections, under a bill introduced on Monday. The New York Is Home Act is the first bill in the United States that would provide such broad rights to non-citizens who can show they have lived and paid taxes in New York for at least three years, according to the bill’s sponsor, state Senator Gustavo Rivera. “Nearly 3 million people in the state of New York currently reside here and make New York their home, but can’t fully participate in civic, political, and economic life,” Rivera, a Democrat who represents the Bronx in New York City, said in a telephone interview. He described the bill as a response to the stagnation of immigration reform efforts in the U.S. Congress.

New York: City’s Pricey Primary Runoffs Could be Eliminated Under City Council Plan | DNAinfo

A bill to end the city’s current primary runoff system could put an end to the pricey, low-turnout process by the next mayoral election in 2017, potentially saving the city millions, advocates say. Many voters and elected officials were outraged last fall when the city had to spend more than $13 million dollars on a single runoff between then-City Councilwoman Letitia James and State Sen. Dan Squadron — after neither candidate got more than the required 40 percent of the vote for Democratic Public Advocate. Under the new system, primary voters would rank candidates in order of preference in a process known as instant-runoff voting, or IRV, in the voting booth on primary day. The candidate with the least support gets dropped, and the vote for that candidate gets transferred to the voter’s next choice. The process continues until a candidate reaches the 40 percent threshold.

New York: Cabrera to introduce internet voting bill | Capital New York

Bronx councilman Fernando Cabrera will introduce a bill on Wednesday to create an internet voting system for local elections. Cabrera said he hoped such a system could counteract low voter turnout, especially in districts like the one he represents in the Bronx, which include Kingsbridge, Morris Heights, West Bronx, and University Heights. “There are other cities, and some 20 countries that have some form of online voting,” Cabrera told Capital. “Only ten percent of the registered voters will turn out for a primary,” he said, adding that turnout is even worse when it’s a rainy day or if the polls close early.

New York: Board Of Elections Website Hacked To Protest… World Cup | Gothamist

It’s unclear what the New York State Board of Elections has to do with the World Cup, but its website was hacked this morning by Anonymous in a protest against the Brazilian government’s spending of $11 billion to bring the World Cup to the country. The website was down for most of the day, impacting at least dozens of people who tried to visit it and putting Brazil’s World Cup efforts in peril.

New York: NYC Board of Elections wants to raise poll worker pay, already among nation’s highest | NY Daily News

The city’s embattled Board of Elections is lobbying City Hall for $7.4 million to boost the salaries of its 36,000 temporary pollworkers — many of them party insiders — by $100. The request, made to the City Council for the budget year that begins July 1, would raise the pay for the average pollworker to $300, and hike the pay for supervisors to $400. Pollworkers and supervisors receive an additional $100 for six hours of training. The board has been excoriated for running sometimes-chaotic elections that have left voters frazzled, frustrated, and, at times, disenfranchised. Board officials say raising the pay will help to attract more capable workers to staff elections.

New York: Court OKs improved polling places for disabled | Associated Press

A lower court judge acted properly when she ordered changes at New York City polling places to improve access for the disabled, a federal appeals court said Wednesday. The written decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan came in a lawsuit filed in 2010 on behalf of more than a half-million New York residents with mobility and vision disabilities.

New York: Push for combined primaries hits partisan roadblock | Brooklyn Daily Eagle

It’s hard enough attracting voters to primaries, except in “big” votes like presidential elections. And when there’s two primaries in the same year, forget about it, not to mention the increased costs to the state! That’s the situation New York state is in. Primaries for federal offices take place in June, but primaries for local offices and state offices take place in September. It’s been this way since 2010, when a court decided that under the terms of a new federal law, the September primary didn’t give enough time for military absentee ballots to be processed. Now, state Assembly and Senate Democrats, backed by good-government groups, have instituted a bill for a joint primary in June. However, the bill is being stalled at the state Senate level by the Republican majority, which prefers a combined August primary.

New York: State joins ‘National Popular Vote’ compact with 9 other states | Staten Island Live

The Empire State has joined the National Popular Vote compact with legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. States that have signed on to the interstate agreement will award electoral votes for president to the candidate who receives the majority of the national popular vote. “With the passage of this legislation, New York is taking a bold step to fundamentally increase the strength and fairness of our nation’s presidential elections,” said Cuomo. “By aligning the Electoral College with the voice of the nation’s voters, we are ensuring the equality of the votes and encouraging candidates to appeal to voters in all states, instead of disproportionately focusing on early contests and swing states.”

New York: National Popular Vote: New York State Climbs Aboard | The New Yorker

On Tuesday, the State of New York took a baby step—or maybe a giant leap!—toward making the United States of America something more closely resembling a modern democracy: Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill joining up the Empire State to the National Popular Vote (N.P.V.) interstate compact. As I’ve explained many times (fifty-one, to be exact), N.P.V. is a way to elect our Presidents the way we elect our governors, our mayors, our senators and representatives, our state legislators, and everybody else: by totting up the voters’ votes—all of them—and awarding the job to whichever candidate gets the largest number. And it does this without changing a word of the Constitution. Impossible, you say? No. Quite possible—even probable—and in time for 2020, if not for 2016. Here’s how it works: Suppose you could get a bunch of states to pledge that once there are enough of them to possess at least two hundred and seventy electoral votes—a majority of the Electoral College—they will thenceforth cast all their electoral votes for whatever candidate gets the most popular votes in the entire country. As soon as that happens, presto change-o: the next time you go to the polls, you’ll be voting in a true national election. No more ten or so battleground states, no more forty or so spectator states, just the United States—all of them, and all of the voters who live in them.

New York: Legislature approves National Popular Vote | Capital New York

The New York Legislature approved a bill tonight that would award the state’s presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote, if enough states agree to do the same. Both the Assembly and Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure that would allow the state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which seeks to circumvent the Electoral College. With New York’s 29 electors, the interstate compact would have 160 electors, or the 60 percent of the 270 it needs to take effect. The bill has been teetering between the chambers for years, and this is the first year it has passed both chambers. The bill now returns to the Senate, and requires the signature of Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has not taken a public position on the legislation.

New York: Elections Board head claims agency deliberately underfunded | New York Post

The head of the city Board of Elections stunned City Council members on Tuesday by claiming that the long-battered agency was purposely shorted funds by the city so it would fail. BOE director Michael Ryan made the conspiracy-laden accusation as part of a pitch to secure a whopping $55 million in additional funding from the city’s coffers, even as his agency remains under investigation by the city. A recent Department of Investigation probe identified a host of failings at the agency — including nepotism, voter roll deficiencies and poor training of poll workers. “While the board has historically been a convenient foil for public criticism, it has at the same time been the victim of a funding scheme that seems to have been intentionally designed to ‘cash starve’ the agency to accomplish some unknown and ultimately inconceivable goal,” Ryan said of the city’s preliminary $75.6 million fiscal 2015 budget for his agency.