Fix the vote: Tear down the terrible city Board of Elections
It's
a depressing-as-hell comment on people whose job it is to collect and
count ballots: Leaders of the New York City Board of Elections always
hope for low turnout, because they simply can't handle large number of
voters coming out to exercise the franchise.
Which
is why when New Yorkers, bless them, turned out in droves for Tuesday's
midterm election, the system broke down at polling place after polling
place.
Scanning
machines jammed and were taken offline for hours, apparently because
some ballots had a little water on them. (Who'da thunk it might rain? On
planet Earth?)
Paper poll books, as usual, dragged out the check-in process. (You want an electronic database of voter names? Sorcery!)
After a Chaotic Election, City Leaders and Watchdogs Call for a System Overhaul (NYT)
City officials can’t promise smoother voting experience in 2020(NYP)
Fix the Board of Elections before trying to change how New York votes (NYP)
Elections chief concedes ballot scanners were not up to the task on big turnout Election Day (NYDN)
The
two-page ballot, necessitated by stupid ballot questions and stupid
judicial elections, meant twice as much paper for the scanners to scan.
(Newsflash: An eight-year-old device designed solely to scan paper can't
do it consistently.) Expect an even bigger mess when the machines'
warranty expires in 2020, just when the next presidential election comes
around.
It's all par for the course from the boss-run patronage pit, where borough party chiefs pick the commissioners.
This
terrible status quo persists even as New York's supposedly enlightened
citizens tsk-tsk about electoral dysfunction and shenanigans in Georgia,
Kansas, Wisconsin and other states. Shame on us.
The state Legislature must dismantle and rebuild the city's Board of Elections.
And it can wait no longer to offer in the Empire State what is already law of the land in 37 states: early voting.
It's
egregiously undemocratic that single parents, people working hourly
wages and any number of other would-be voters who have a hard time
getting to the polls on a Tuesday have no other way to cast a ballot.
Especially when Election Day snafus throw wrenches in the works.
The real role of each commisisoner is to help the party leader that appointed him or her. It is very curious that the good government groups are not demanding changes from elected leaders, who have done all they can do to hid from responsibility of the corruption and incompetence of the BOE and are the only ones who can make real changes at the board. Pols only care about one thing getting reelected. The BOE is their flu shot against challengers. They will not change the BOE without a strong public protest.
The real role of each commisisoner is to help the party leader that appointed him or her. It is very curious that the good government groups are not demanding changes from elected leaders, who have done all they can do to hid from responsibility of the corruption and incompetence of the BOE and are the only ones who can make real changes at the board. Pols only care about one thing getting reelected. The BOE is their flu shot against challengers. They will not change the BOE without a strong public protest.
Election Day Angst: Voting Machines Crash All Over NYC (NY1)
Ballot Scanner Breakdowns Plague NYC Polling Places
What Went Wrong at New York City Polling Places? It Was Something ProPublica
'This Is Inexcusable; It Rains in NY': Brooklyn Borough President ... NBC
BOE History of Corruption and Incompetence Timeline
BOE History of Corruption and Incompetence Timeline Part 2
10 Areas Where DOI Can Investigate the BOE
The BOE was designed by Boss Tweed and his success to
keep party leaders in control of who gets elected. Over time the city's
establishment has made peace with the bosses and joined there control
star chamber. The BOE is filled with a bunch of patronage appointments
by the county leader.
Friends, relatives and political supporters who have demonstrated that
they cannot count or run elections.
The city Board of Elections is taking it on the chin once again, this time for its alleged mishandling of the vote count in the race between Rep. Charlie Rangel, state Sen. Adriano Espaillat and three others.
Did you think that there was no way to botch an election in this age of electronic voting machines and paper audit trails? Unfortunately, with the Board of Elections and the state laws that govern it, snafus are built-in.
It looks like the Election Night problems in this race were a result of a bizarre city BOE rule — but this controversy is a good chance to see the mess the whole agency has become.
The city Board of Elections is best understood as a pyramid built upon the Peter Principle (the rule that people tend to be promoted to their level of incompetence).
From its top managers all the way down to the Election Day poll workers — the public face of the agency — everyone at the Board is a political appointee.
Government agencies are usually headed by political appointees with little specialized knowledge of their agencies — but they typically have an experienced, professional deputy to run things.
Not so, the city Board of Elections or its borough offices. Many staffers are competent and dedicated workers — but not enough. The dominant role of political patronage is why BOE is lucky to get B-team talent; add in wounds inflicted by state law, and you’ve got real, systemic problems.
One start on fixing things would be to give the mayor control of the BOE, with City Council approval required for appointment of any chief clerk, executive director or deputy executive director.
Another improvement — in a bill from Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh and Sen. Martin Golden — would modernize and streamline the Election Night canvass procedure and other poll-closing tasks. End the requirement to manually transcribe results onto tally sheets, and let voting-machine memory sticks be used to report unofficial tallies to news organizations.
That bill passed the Assembly but the Senate failed to act. If it had become law, we’d have avoided the time-consuming and error-prone process that produced the Election Night snafu in this race.
Other ideas might work.
Bureaucratic and partisan paralysis is the root of the BOE’s persistent problems, which erode public confidence in our elections.
If politicians won’t reform, modernize and upgrade the agency, the voting public should demand it. And Gov. Cuomo could do worse than to make restoring public confidence in the integrity of the election process his next crusade.
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