12 JULY 2, 2020 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
City must act now to improve elections
Who won and who lost last
week’s primaries in New
York City isn’t as important
as how the primary was conducted.
To be blunt, it was terrible.
Nobody expected things to go
completely to plan in an election
marred by the COVID-19 pandemic,
when New Yorkers were advised to
vote by absentee ballot. The Board of
Elections was inundated with ballot
applications, and it’s apparent they
couldn’t keep up with the demand.
More than 700,000 absentee ballots
were sent to registered Democrats,
at their request, but as of June
26, the board only got back 150,000
of them. That’s not even a quarter of
the ballots distributed.
Some New Yorkers got their absentee
ballots the day of the election
— or after.
One of them was Queens state
Senator Jessica Ramos, who tweeted
on June 26 that she got her absentee
ballot that very day, three days after
the primary. Ramos had voted in
person on June 23 after not getting
the ballot before then.
This was the very thing the city
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Some New Yorkers got their absentee ballots the day of the election, and some received them after the
primary. Photo via Getty Images
and state sought to avoid weeks
before the June 23 primary, when
New York was in the throes of the
COVID-19 pandemic. The objective
was to let New Yorkers cast their
vote with minimal contact.
The Board of Elections did everything
possible to make the polling
sites safe — from masking workers
to doubled sanitation efforts and enforcing
social distancing. Yet none
of these efforts could guarantee
that a poll worker or a voter would
avoid infection.
On top of that was the usual
gambit of election day mishaps one
would find in a normal New York
City contest — from broken ballot
scanners to incorrect ballots being
sent to a voting district.
The Board of Elections must learn
from the mistakes of the June 23
primary and act fast to fix them —
because November is coming, with
the all-important presidential election
topping the ballot.
Action must be taken now to expedite
the distribution of absentee
ballot applications, followed by the
ballots themselves.
Larger polling stations should
also be secured to safely accommodate
voters appearing in person,
with all appropriate safety measures
taken.
Moreover, early voting hours
should be expanded dramatically,
and voters should be encouraged to
make use of it like never before.
The voters of this city cannot
afford a repeat of June’s primary
mess.
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