Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022.Voters will soon have a reason to cast their ballots with a little more confidence in New York.that will prevent affidavit ballots cast at the wrong location from being immediately tossed out by elections officials – a rule that’s triggered nearly two decades of voter disenfranchisement across the state.
“You don’t walk into a Starbucks and they say, ‘Sorry, you can’t get coffee here. Yes, we serve coffee here, but this is not your Starbucks. You have to go to a different Starbucks,’” said Jarret Berg, co-founder of VoteEarlyNY, a nonpartisan nonprofit that has been leading advocacy on this issue. “Running our elections that way is just counter to our lived experience with every other transaction.”analyzing election data from across the state.
The “wrong church” rule stems from another very close legislative race. In 2004, Democrat Andrea Stewart-Cousins, then a member of the Westchester County Board of Legislators, was challenging state Sen. Nicholas Spano. The count dragged on for weeks after the election as lawyers for both campaigns challenged the validity of certain ballots.
Weakening election laws is not the way to improve trust.