John Minchillo/AP Photo
Cages loaded with ballots in U.S. Postal Service bins rest behind a worker at a Board of Elections facility, July 22, 2020, in New York.
New York’s primary was more than a month ago, but the race between Democratic incumbent Rep. Carolyn Maloney and her challenger Suraj Patel in New York’s 12th Congressional District has yet to be called. The New York City Board of Elections’ counting has been slowed by an increased number of mail-in ballots. Patel sued the New York State Board of Elections over the number of absentee ballots being thrown out. In the Mahoney-Patel race alone, The Intercept estimates that about 20 percent of ballots could be thrown out for errors, including postmark issues.
The Mahoney-Patel race is just one example of the Election Day difficulties that occurred in the Empire State. While New York avoided long lines at polling places and the other easily observable signs of disarray, it was only after the election that the extent of the state’s voting problems became clear—as well as the Board of Elections’ inability to respond to them.
But New York’s imperfect implementation shows how difficult it can be for any state to transition its election systems during a pandemic in a presidential-election year, and how long it can take to count votes when problems occur.
Leading up to the election, New York rolled out alternatives to in-person voting that had been deemed necessary by voting experts across the country. Before those changes, voters had to cite one of 19 pre-approved excuses as to why they couldn’t vote in person. Gov. Andrew Cuomo also issued an executive order on April 24, which allowed all New Yorkers to request an absentee ballot. Last year, state lawmakers also implemented early voting for the first time, so New Yorkers could head to the polls ahead of Election Day, if they preferred to vote in person.
GOV. CUOMO LEARNED from Wisconsin’s mistakes. In Wisconsin, state officials failed to either expand alternatives to in-person voting or delay the state’s April primary election during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Cuomo’s executive order was a necessary addition to voting procedures, but it’s now clear that the Board of Elections was not equipped to handle the surge of interest in voting by mail.
Before Election Day, about half of New York City voters had not received their absentee ballots. In the outer boroughs, the statistics were even worse leading up to the June 23 vote: Only about 33 percent of voters in Brooklyn and about 40 percent of voters in Queens received their mail-in ballots.
The New York City Board of Elections blamed the delay on statewide confusion about whether or not the Democratic presidential primary should be on the ballot. After then-candidate Bernie Sanders dropped out of the primary, New York initially decided to take the race off the ballot until a lawsuit forced the presidential primary back on the ballot.
The elections board was quick to respond to people about the status of their ballots, even taking to Twitter to connect with potential voters. Most New Yorkers were able to navigate the new procedures and vote by mail. But others never received their ballots, and some did not receive a ballot until Election Day, the last day to drop a ballot in the mail eligible for counting.
But absentee ballots had prepaid postage, which caused confusion. Some ballots were not postmarked, which makes it impossible for Board of Elections officials to know if a ballot was sent before the deadline.
This situation posed problems for the Maloney-Patel race, prompting Patel to file his lawsuit. Emily Gallagher, a community organizer who upset a longtime incumbent for a North Brooklyn State Assembly seat and was declared the winner of her primary last week, also sued the New York State Board of Elections over this discrepancy.
VOTERS WHO CHOSE to go to the polls on Election Day also had issues. An unknown number of voters did not receive the entire ballot. Reports across all five boroughs from election monitors found that at some polling sites voters were given just one page of the two-page ballot—which meant some voters only got to vote in the presidential primary and not their more competitive local primaries.
New York’s imperfect implementation shows how difficult it can be for any state to transition its election systems during a pandemic in a presidential-election year.
During a post-election hearing hosted by the New York City Voter Assistance Advisory Committee on Zoom, community members shared their frustrations with incomplete ballots on Election Day. One voter from Lower Manhattan said that she was only given the full ballot after complaining about the issue at her polling site. In her testimony before the committee, the voter recalled asking what would happen to the voters at her polling site who came to vote before her and did not receive a full ballot. There was no reply from the Board of Elections then. And there’s still no remedy for this error now. The committee also said it was unclear whether they could even find out how many voters were affected by this issue.
The Board of Elections was proactive in implementing Cuomo’s executive order in April; however, now they’ve gone silent. The NYC Board of Elections tweeted that it “can’t comment on a USPS error,” completely shifting the blame to the Postal Service. There has been no update yet on the number of voters who only received half their ballots.
While New York avoided Election Day operating problems like those now anticipated in states like Georgia, it shows the bureaucratic obstacles that can occur when a state changes its voting procedures so quickly. Many more states may face these same woes this November as they try to retool their traditional procedures to prepare for an election where significant numbers of people will choose to vote by mail.
