New York GOP and Voter Confidence

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, again, everyone. With me now is my colleague Brigid Bergin, WNYC's senior political correspondent and host of the live Sunday noontime call-in show The People's Guide to Power. Who's been reporting on the Republican legal challenge to voting by mail in New York State in these midterm elections, and a real head-scratcher on the head of the Manhattan Board of Elections complaining that voter turnout might be too high. Wait, what? Thanks for being here, Brigid. Hello.

Brigid Bergin: Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take the mail-in or absentee ballot case first because some of our listeners may have even sent theirs in already. What can people do as things stand and what does this Republican lawsuit seek to change?

Brigid Bergin: Well, what they can do is if you've applied for an absentee ballot, you can still fill it out, send it back in. This lawsuit, which is a story that, thankfully, I have been able to team up with my colleague John Campbell to do because there is a very upstate component to it and he's based out of Albany. This is a suit filed in Saratoga County, just north of Albany, that seeks to change the absentee ballot rules. Ultimately, the case was filed by the state's Republican and Conservative parties along with a host of other folks, and they are objecting to the state's new law for how absentee ballots are canvassed.

That's the process of inspecting absentee ballots for errors on the oath envelope and then preparing them to be counted, and then also for the excuse that was created initially under the COVID-19 pandemic. It was originally an executive order that former Governor Cuomo had instituted that would allow people to apply for an absentee ballot using COVID-19 or the threat of COVID-19 as an excuse since in New York State we have a law that requires an excuse to apply for an absentee ballot.

That executive order expired, and then the legislature passed a law that is actually set to expire at the end of this year, but that would grant voters the ability to apply for an absentee ballot under a temporary illness excuse, which could include COVID-19 or could be something else. The plaintiffs, in this case, said that violated the constitution. It was overly broad. If the judge rules for them, that could be very problematic because once those ballots-- it will be very difficult for boards of elections to have to deal with the fallout from that ruling.

Brian Lehrer: People who were using mail-in ballots since COVID started we'll see the instructions that you can check the temporary illness box for the reason that you're using an absentee ballot, even for just the fear of contracting COVID by going to a crowded polling place where a lot of people are breathing on you. People can check that temporary illness to signify that. Let me ask you why. Why try to stop people from doing that? Isn't that just a way of making it harder for people to vote?

Brigid Bergin: Well, I think you have to think of it in a larger context in terms of how the Republican and Conservative parties specifically view-- they would use language similar to what you're using, voting by mail. Technically in New York, we are not a vote-by-mail state. We are an absentee ballot state and under our absentee ballot rules, you must have an excuse to apply for that absentee ballot. Just last year there was a ballot question for all voters that would allow for no-excuse absentee voting and the Conservative and Republican parties invested millions of dollars in a campaign that was largely targeting voters upstate called The Just Say No campaign, to defeat those ballot initiatives, which they did.

It was a media campaign that really blanketed airwaves upstate. There was some lawn signs upstate. Those valid initiatives failed. There wasn't a lot of campaigning in response because I think we saw Democrats were focused on a lot of other issues. There was that really spirited fight up in Buffalo for India Walton who was running for mayor against Byron Brown, had won the primary and was trying to defeat him as he mounted a write-in campaign and so a lot of the energy and progressives were rallying--

Brian Lehrer: Went to that instead-

Brigid Bergin: went to that.

Brian Lehrer: - of the ballot measure and so that ballot question that would have allowed permanent absentee ballot, balloting with no excuse, failed. At this point, since absentee voting has already begun in this fall election, would that mean invalidating votes that have already been cast if the court rules in the Republicans' favor?

Brigid Bergin: I think it's going to be really interesting to see how this judge who-- it is worth noting. The judge is a Republican. This case was filed in Saratoga County. The Saratoga County Republican Party is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. This judge was a vice-chair of the Saratoga County Republican Party at one point before she became a Supreme Court justice. If she decides to rule and invalidate that excuse, that may require boards of elections to go back to voters, if they are able, and find out what the reason was for applying for an absentee ballot.

Ultimately, it will really just cause chaos, and cause chaos very close to an election, which is something that I think we have seen happen in other parts of the country. I think we need to be aware that it is something that could happen here in New York, too.

Brian Lehrer: We will await this ruling. Obviously, if it comes down and does knock out a lot of absentee balloting for this election, we will tell you what to do if you've already cast an absentee ballot or plan to. The other election-related piece of news that you have for us that also seems quite partisan, Manhattan Board of Elections Commissioner Frederic Umane, a Republican, has said that he is concerned that voter turnout might be too high this year. Wait, what? Is this from The Onion or something? What exactly did he say and what did he mean by that?

Brigid Bergin: You need to understand how the New York City Board of Elections is structured to understand this story. Background is, in New York City we have an elections commissioner from each party, from each borough. There are 10 election commissioners who ultimately have to make a lot of the decisions about how the agency itself operates. There's certainly staff that do the work, but they are required to give approvals to a lot of things from what mailers go out to personnel decisions.

In this particular case, the board made a decision to send out a mailer to all voters across the city letting them know when the election was, where their poll site was, times that it was open. Nothing particularly unusual other than the fact that they're only required to send a mailing like that out once a year. Given the fact that we've gone through this massive redistricting process and lines have changed, and therefore election districts have changed, and if your election district has changed, that might change your poll site, they thought it might help reduce voter confusion to just do another mailer and tell people this is when the election is, this is where you vote.

Nothing that seems too controversial, but for the fact that, as we know, there are a larger number of registered Democrats in New York City as compared to Republicans. Democrats outnumber Republicans here in the city by about six to one. That's not the board of elections fault, of course, but it is just a fact. The question that Commissioner Umane raised was, "Well, if we are reminding voters here in the city that there is an election and giving them this extra reminder, what about in other parts of the state where there are more Republicans?

Aren't we potentially just doing a get-out-the-vote effort for Democrats by letting people here in this city know about the election," which struck me as, as you said, Brian, rather partisan and rather alarming. In the course of reporting this story, it was really important to me to go back to Commissioner Umane and say, "Is this really what you meant by that?" In the process of clarifying what he said was, he was not trying to suggest that he didn't want voters to turn out, but it was just a fact that there could be a partisan ramification, which is true. However, he is a Commissioner for the New York City Board of Elections, not the New York State Board of Elections.

Brian Lehrer: In our last 30 seconds, does this go in a category of saying the quiet part out loud. It's in the interest of the Republican Party that fewer New Yorkers in the city vote at all. He wants the board of election practices that don't encourage voting.

Brigid Bergin: That was exactly how one of the voting rights advocates who heard this framed it to me. I think it again raises the question that we in New York have been grappling with. Is this the best way to run our elections? Is a bipartisan system the most effective way to administer them? State senator Moore issued a report last fall after doing a series of public hearings across the state, gathering input from voters, and then also talking to elections officials and commissioners from across the state.

Among the recommendations were some reforms to how we run our elections. It's something that doesn't tend to get as much traction in Albany because it requires lawmakers to change the system they know. It's something that seems like it keeps coming up. I think it's a question that people will ask again when they head back to Albany in January.

Brian Lehrer: WNYC, Senior political reporter, Brigid Bergin always saying the quiet parts out loud. So we understand them. She also hosts until the November election of the live Sunday call-in show The People's Guide to Power, Sundays at noon, we'll be listening then. Brigid, good luck this Sunday.

Brigid Bergin: Thank you.

 

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