When the New York City Board of Elections announced Tuesday night that it had screwed up in tallying the votes for mayor, lawmakers reacted with anger — but not much surprise.
After years of watching the board make errors, they have grown accustomed to problems.
The board mistakenly purged about 200,000 people from voter rolls before the 2016 election. It forced some voters to wait in four-hour lines on Election Day 2018. It sent erroneous ballots to nearly 100,000 New Yorkers seeking to vote by mail last year.
And those are just the recent blunders.
For decades, since nearly the founding of the election board, critics have complained about its structure, its history of nepotism and its lack of accountability. New York is the only state with local election boards whose staff members are chosen almost entirely by Democratic and Republican Party bosses.
In 1940, a city investigation found that the board was plagued by “illegality, inefficiency, laxity and waste.” In 1971, a New York Times editorial derided it as “at best a semi‐functioning anachronism.” And in 1985, another city inquiry said it had an “almost embarrassing lack of understanding” of its job.
In recent years, some lawmakers have proposed reforms, but they have failed to gain much traction. The election board’s structure is enshrined in the New York state constitution, so it is difficult to change. Political leaders also have little incentive to support reform because the current system gives them a lot of power.
Earlier this year, State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat from Manhattan, unsuccessfully proposed a bill to make the board’s operations more professional.
On Tuesday, following the latest high-profile mistake, another Democratic state senator, Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn, vowed to push the state to finally tackle the problems.
“If you’re an upset voter tonight, I hear you,” Mr. Myrie, who leads the Senate’s Elections Committee, wrote on Twitter. “We have to do better for you. And we will. Stay tuned for a hearing date and bring all the energy, concerns, and ideas for change to the table. We stand ready to listen and where possible, implement.”
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
