A major error at the New York Board of Elections has resulted in the failure to ship ballots for the November 2010 Congressional and Gubernatorial election to New York City expatriate voters – including most resident in Israel .
“[Expatriate citizens] should never, ever be denied the right to vote,” said an outraged Sen. Chuck Schumer (Democrat), who pushed a 2009 law establishing deadlines for mailing absentee ballots.
New York election officials were required to ship the ballots to U.S. citizens living overseas by Sept. 17. Because New York primaries were held Sept. 14, the feds granted local officials an extension until Oct. 1. Several New York counties blew past the extension – including all five of New York City ‘s counties.
Schumer urged election officials to rush delivery of the ballots to ensure that expat votes are counted.
“Put these ballots on the next plane,” Schumer demanded. “There is absolutely no excuse for failing to get this done.”
New York State Board of Elections officials informed the Federal Election Commission late last week of their failure to meet the Oct. 1 deadline, which also occurred in Westchester, Putnam, Erie and Niagara (City of Buffalo ) counties.
There are an estimated 29,000 registered overseas voters in New York State resident in Israel for the current election, including both full time residents as well as students on one year programs in yeshivot and universities.
City election officials said the absentee ballots for expatriate New Yorkers began getting shipped out on Sunday – 10 days past deadline.
City election officials, still reeling from a string of primary election snafus Bloomberg deemed a “royal screwup,” said they were delayed because primary results weren’t certified until last Tuesday.
Election officials reminded overseas voters that they can now sign up online at www.elections.state.ny.us to receive ballots.
The 2009 Federal MOVE Act requires states to mail overseas ballots 45 days before the general election scheduled for Nov. 2 this year.
Absentee votes are counted until 13 days after Election Day.
State election officials said they would extend “the deadline for receiving those ballots back to New York State as much as we possibly can in compliance with our state election calendar.”
Asked about the goof-up today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Republican-Independent), stated:
“I don’t know whether that’s true or not. If it’s true, it’s a disgrace. We send our young men and women overseas to fight and die to protect our right to vote, and then we don’t let them vote. Did it actually happen? You’ll have to talk to the Board of Elections and people, I just don’t know.
“But it wouldn’t surprise me given their record in the past. It’s not been great. And the ways you’re going to fix this is you open up the Board of Elections to the best and the brightest who will go to work there and not have it just prizes for being in either Democratic or Republican party, which is what it is now. It’s just not the right ways to select people. There’s no accountability.
“We’ve given them an enormous amount of money and they have not done the job. If any, if you ever saw an agency that obviously has too much money, this one is exactly it. They’re going to say, ‘Oh, no, we can’t do the job unless we get more money.’ Yeah, that’s always the excuse of an agency that isn’t well-run, and that’s exactly what this is.”
In a related development, Los Angeles County Board of Elections confirmed that it accidentally shipped almost 100,000 overseas absentee ballots without the computerized ballot included in the package. Los Angeles election officials have stated they will accept handwritten votes within the official return envelopes, which were properly mailed to Angelenos overseas.
The combined errors in New York and Los Angeles represent a particularly significant blow to Israeli voting interests in the forthcoming American election. Los Angeles County has the largest concentration of Israeli-American dual citizens of any election district in the United States , with just over triple that of New York City’s five boroughs.
