Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office sent out 400,000 letters that are sowing confusion and distress among voters, some of whom were erroneously warned they were inactive and at risk of having to vote by affidavit in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections.
Voters took to social media this week with pictures of the letters they’d received from the mayor’s newly-created Democracy NYC initiative, started earlier this year to improve access to voting and civics engagement.
The letters warned voters they’d been marked as “inactive” and would have to vote by affidavit if they didn’t get their registration sorted out by Oct. 17.
The warning came via mail after the deadline to register to vote and in some cases two days before the stated deadline to confirm their address with the city’s Board of Elections.
“You were marked as inactive by the New York City Board of Elections, but you may still be eligible to participate in the upcoming election,” the letter reads.
But some of the voters who got the letters said they were in fact "active" when they checked with the State's Board of Elections.
— Nathan Holbert (@McLargeH) October 15, 2018
Hell’s Kitchen resident Deirdre Kilmartin , 40, said she received the letter Monday, and was baffled. She’d voted in the primary in September and a registered an active voter for nearly 13 years she’d lived in the neighborhood.
“I was really worried that I got dropped from the voter rolls,” she said. “I’ve heard about some stuff happening in Georgia... so I was really concerned that somehow I had been dropped.”
But when she followed the letter’s advice and checked her registration on the state’s website which confirmed what she’d thought. She was an active voter.
“It’s very important for me to be able to vote in the midterms,” Kilmartin said. “I’m just worried that even if they say now everything's fine when I get there on the day that I won’t be able to vote.”
Tuesday morning, she got through to the New York City Board of Elections who told her to disregard the mayor's letter.
Several others who'd posted about the letters on social media with similar concerns, confirmed to WNYC they too double checked with the Board of Elections which confirmed they were in the clear for Nov. 6.
New York City’s Board of Elections, which runs elections in the five boroughs, is overseen by the state Board of Elections, not the mayor’s office. Raul Contreras, a deputy press secretary for de Blasio, said the mailers had gone out to 400,000 voters who had been deemed inactive according to a list the Democracy NYC initiative got from a third party vendor.
"We helped the vast majority of the 400,000 [people.] The list isn't going to be perfect," he said. "There’s a universe of people who are inactive voters who got this and now they're able to participate in our Democracy."
"There's nothing wrong with having an active voter get this, that person goes on and confirms that they're OK," he said.
De Blasio announced the creation of DemocracyNYC In February, after yet another year with dismal voter turnout. Fewer than a quarter of eligible voters showed up to the polls in his reelection in 2017.
In early October, Ayirini Fonseca-Sabune was appointed to lead the initiative, and within days, the New York Post revealed that she had failed to vote in four primaries between 2014 and 2017.
After the confusion over the mass mailer this week, the group NYC Votes took to Twitter to calm worried voters. NYC Votes is an arm of the city Campaign Finance Board, and is not part of the mayor's new Democracy NYC office.
"You should be all set to vote without issues on November 6," the group tweeted. "But if you run into trouble, and you aren’t in the poll book remember that you can still cast an affidavit ballot. Just ask for one at your poll site. Sorry for the confusion!"
De Blasio press secretary Eric Phillips tweeted, "Because the BOE’s involved, no list is perfect. But we’re cutting a wide universe to ensure people check and fix it if they must. This is a good sign!"
The Board of Elections confirmed they'd received a spike in calls on Monday and Tuesday, about twice as many as a day this far ahead of the elections. Executive director of the City's Board of Elections Michael Ryan said all of the calls that he had heard about involved voters who were active, not inactive.
"Voters have been calling expressing concern this was a scam, somehow they were being scammed..and that it was some form of voter suppression," Ryan said at a weekly meeting of the board Tuesday afternoon. He added that no matter what a voter's status they can still vote by affidavit if necessary on Nov. 6. "Vote by affidavit, fill the affidavit envelope out completely, sign it in the two places where it needs to be signed, and we'll count your vote."
"That part of the process is not a scam," he said.
Anyone can check their voter registration status in New York State here.
This post was updated to include comments from the Board of Elections.