In New York, only registered voters enrolled as a Republican or Democrat may vote in the party primaries.
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In a letter to BOE Executive Director Michael Ryan, Mr. Stringer ticked off a litany of problems constituents had reported at the polls today, including one voter who reported arriving at 6 a.m., when voting begins, to find their Williamsburg polling site wasn’t open and wouldn’t be open any time soon.
But in Upstate counties, polls are open from noon to 9 p.m. on primary day.
“Say you come in and you’re not in the Democratic or Republican book”, says Thomas Ferrarese, Monroe County Election Commissioner. It is one of the most important days in the presidential campaign, and can have an enormous impact on the election, potentially helping to give Bernie Sanders the further momentum he needs to challenge firmly entrenched establishment forces, or conversely cementing Hillary Clinton’s status as the “inevitable” nominee.
Trump leads the GOP race with 744 delegates, ahead of Cruz with 545 and Kasich with 144.
The suit, filed by Election Justice USA, said in a statement Monday that it has “heard hundreds of stories, with desperate pleas for help”.
The day before the primary, it was revealed that some 126,000 Brooklyn Democrats were purged from the Board of Elections’ roll count, and for no discernible reason. “Some people vote in the morning, and this precludes that”.
Monroe County Democratic Elections Commissioner Tom Ferrarese was not aware of those specific instances, but does say officials sometimes run into problems when voters think they are registered with a particular party but they really aren’t.
After all the organizing, campaign spending and speeches, the outcome will a simple strategy: Getting more of your voters to the polls than your competitors, said Steven Greenberg, a spokesman for the Siena Research Institute, which regularly polls New Yorkers.
“I went in and I made my case before the judge, saying I had always voted Democrat, registered that way in 2008”, she said, standing in the sun outside the government building.
“There are a lot of new voters – voters I’m not used to seeing”, Arduino said. That was telling, Lenihan said, because it was a working-class area that typically gets a major influx of voters after work. Michele Frangakis said she was first in line there but was not allowed to cast a ballot.
And yet, there are eleven states (plus the District of Columbia) that offer same-day voter registration. And as someone who writes a lot about politics for a living, I feel like a giant hypocrite for not casting my ballot.
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Ryan’s response? The Board was “a little behind” updating the voter databases – six months to a year behind – because of staff retirements and illnesses. The restrictive voting rules – NY has the earliest deadline in the nation for primaries – seem to have a disproportional effect on Bernie Sanders supporters, a group that includes a larger percentage of independent voters. By 8:30 a.m., more than 60 people had voted at Grace Episcopal Church and Living Christ Church – nearly double the usual number.
