Seems that many of my friends who share my outrage over the election laws recently instituted in Republican states are suddenly defending the Byzantine and highly restrictive election laws in New York.
“The rules are the rules,” I have been told. “Setting the rules and letting the contestants know what they are before the game starts? Totally fair.”
Voters aren’t contestants, and despite what Donald Trump might have to say, an election is not a game show or a reality TV show. You can vote with a gun permit but not with a photo ID issued by a state university? No problem, you knew the rules before the game started. 92 years old, no birth certificate? No problem, you knew the rules before the game started. They closed the motor vehicle offices in all the majority-black counties? No problem, you knew the rules before the game started. Who needs the Voting Rights Act as long as everybody knows the rules before the game started.
What are the rules in New York? You can’t make this stuff up. If you want to change your party enrollment, you send in the form to your county board of election. They place the form in a locked box, which is opened once each year. The deadline for getting your entry, I mean your enrollment change form, into the Board of Elections is no later than 25 days before the general election. The box is opened on the first Tuesday after the general election, and that’s when your party enrollment change is entered on your record. If you wanted to switch parties to vote in a 2016 primary, you needed to submit your form and get it in the sealed box no later than October 9, 2015.
Did I mention there are THREE primaries in New York this year? The presidential primary on April 19 was just the first one. There is a Federal primary (for Congress) on June 28 and a state and local primary on *September 13.*
To put it simply. If you want to change parties to vote for your cousin in the state and local primary on September 13, 2016, you need to get your party change form in the sealed box no later than October 9, 2015, slightly more than 11 months in advance.
New York county, town, and city elections are partisan events. Town supervisors, town council members, county legislators, all need to get on the ballot by winning a party primary or by running as an independent.
Folks outside of New York have never noticed this bizarre rule in the past, because presidential primaries are usually inconsequential. The state and local elections are what matters, particularly for the party leaders who keep tight control of the game. It’s not a one party thing, either, as the Nassau Republicans are just as tight a machine as the Bronx Democrats. They want tight control of who votes. They don’t like a sudden and unpredictable influx of stray voters. They don’t like surprises.
So, it’s not about Hillary or Bernie or Donald or Ted. It’s all about who can get on the ballot for Town Council in the Town of Oyster Bay or for the 65th Assembly District in Manhattan.
I spent ten years working on local newspapers, reporting on local politics in New York. I know the rules. They are the most restrictive in the nation, designed as a barrier between outsiders and the ballot. I don’t have standing, as I have been voting in Massachusetts for 26 years. However, as an American, I do have a say in how states should handle federal elections, and I hope someone challenges the New York laws under the federal Voting Rights Act.
Christopher says
…if it is not a racial disparity issue? I know other times I’ve said the deadline is too far out, but the way you describe it it sounds like the idea is you make up your mind what party you are loyal to one year at a time. For those of us who value the idea that voters have a stake in and stick with a given party it almost sounds less bad.
jcohn88 says
If a party wants to restrict an election to its own members, then it should have a caucus and pay for it itself. The state pays for primaries. They are state-funded, state-administered operations. By that measure, they should not be excluding anyone. I’m fine with MA’s hybrid system as opposed to a fully open system, but there is no reason for the state to treat a primary as a private affair if it has to pay for it.
Christopher says
Parties do not vet registrants. Every taxpayer/voter has an equal opportunity to register and participate. If a taxpayer doesn’t think he is getting his money’s worth he is free to join a party and benefit from its membership.
johnk says
and this election was already over a month ago.
Agree on principle that states should make it easier for people to vote though. In this particular primary we had an Independent running within the Democratic primary. Those who were enrolled as Independent or a 3rd party didn’t have enough time to register for the Democratic primary. These same people are the ones who would be switching back after the primary, but whatever, they can do that if they like. That was the difference, you had a person who was not affiliated with the party running within it’s primary and we see the issue.
SomervilleTom says
I appreciate this succinct summary.
I don’t know or claim to know the right answer for New York voters, I’ve never lived in the state.
In this case, though, the issue was as this comment summarizes. An independent candidate ran as a Democrat. Independent voters wanted to support that candidate in the Democratic primary. Based on their aspersions of the Democratic Party and of Ms. Clinton, many of those voters would not have remained registered Democrats even if they had been allowed to vote.
I, frankly, don’t see why any political party should be required to embrace people who actively dislike the organization and who have no interest in remaining part of the organization beyond a single primary.
Peter Porcupine says
FWIW, my contention is that Sanders and Trump have little to no affinity for the parties they are running in, and have merely used them for ballot access which the 2 major parties have severely limited over time. The Constitution Party adventure of 2000 taught social conservatives that they cannot win as a stand alone, and the adherents came crawling back parasitically back.
But they had valid point that they were denied access in many states.
Also FWIW, I would favor a single Choose A Party Day, with a national registration deadline for all states, with caucus vs. primary type details to remain local. And I have always favored closed primaries
JimC says
n/t
JimC says
The odd symbol is supposed to be a greater than symbol ( > ).
Christopher says
…to tell the website when you want the symbol to actually appear rather than assume it’s HTML coding. On the merits I would argue that parties are not and never were intended to be democracies.
SomervilleTom says
There is a way, it’s called “encoding”, and the string of gibberish that jimc is referring to is how it’s done. The issue is that the technology of this blog doesn’t handle that correctly when it appears in a title.
The general formula for such encoding is a literal ampersand, followed by a mnemonic name string (in this case “gt”, meaning “g-reater t-han”), and terminated by a semi-colon.
When writing text inside a comment, these encodings work just fine. Sadly, they are not properly handled when they appear in titles.
Christopher says
…but it also flew right over my head:)
Peter Porcupine says
We live in a Constitutional Republic.
jcohn88 says
One, what I’ve found very depressing this election cycle is seeing Democrats (namely, Clinton supporters) adopt the logic of conservative majority Supreme Court decisions. We’ve seen that in the reduction of corruption to “quid pro quo” and the belief that the “appearance of corruption” is a non-issue (and that corporate donations certainly don’t create it). And we’ve seen it in the defense of NY’s restrictive voter laws, in which Democrats are actively disagreeing with the dissent which Justices Brennan and Marshall (two of the most progressive in the Court’s history) signed on to: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/04/19/1517467/-What-Justices-William-Brennan-and-Thurgood-Marshall-Thought-about-NYs-Voting-Restrictions.
(2) Primaries are not private affairs. They are funded and administered by the state. As such, there are no grounds for excluding people based on party membership. Why should people’s tax money go to the administration of an election they are banned from participating in? If you want to shut people out, have a caucus. Caucuses are run by and funded by the parties, so they can set their own rules.
(3) Closed primaries suppress turnout. Open/hybrid primaries increase it. Anyone who favors robust civic engagement should favor the latter: http://www.electproject.org/2016P.
JimC says
I don’t see how we can close our primary. The more I think about this any voter should be able to vote in any primary, as long as they don’t vote in more than one.
So in ours for example … if I decided stopping Trump is more urgent than speeding HRC’s all-but certain nomination, why can’t I help stop Trump? He got 50% here. There’s no way that was the usual GOP primary crowd, there must have been a lot of first-time voters. Which is fine, and something we should encourage.
Christopher says
If you don’t like Trump you are free to vote against him in the general election should he be their nominee. Your example is exactly what I don’t want to happen, especially if the shoe were on the other foot.
JimC says
n/t
Christopher says
The Dems the left shoe and the GOP the right shoe:) Put them both on and our system is able to walk.
JimC says
The parties have duopoly control over the system. The voters own it.
Granted, the voters could do a better job of enabling more parties.
Christopher says
I wouldn’t want to ban other parties or candidates, and I assume such a ban would be unconstitutional, but I like that we don’t have to cobble together coalitions the way many parliamentary systems do.
centralmassdad says
that anything other than the federal level, party affiliation doesn’t provide much information about policy preferences, and (because it does give that information at the federal level) is likely to be outright deceiving in state and local politics.
Most states, including ours, would likely be run far better under a parliamentary system.
jconway says
You and anyone else Jim could help at least *one* other party stay on the ballot. You can be a member for just five weeks so we can keep our access and you can walk after that. And I won’t ask you to make this decision 6 months in advance 😉
JimC says
I don’t follow. Doesn’t recognition hinge on election results?
jconway says
We need to enroll 43,000 voters to stay on the ballot *or* win 3% of the vote in a statewide election. We did the latter in 2014, but we don’t have a presidential candidate to do that this cycle so the former is all we need. And the tally will be on Election Day, so joining before and leaving after still counts. You can even wait until after the September primary if you’re local one is competitive, but we need the members after that.
Peter Porcupine says
…who voted in Dem primaries for Kucinich, Dukakis, etc al perceived to be weaker in the general.
Pablo says
In this post, I am not taking a stand on open or closed primaries. If I had my way, I would advocate for something a little less open than Massachusetts, where an unenrolled voter can wander into the polling place, pull a primary ballot, and retain ones unenrolled status. If you pull a ballot, that enrollment should stick for a little while and require a little effort to head back to unenrolled.
On the other hand, something that presents a barrier to enrollment change eleven months before a local primary is a huge barrier to participation. This is especially true in areas where the primary is tantamount to election; if you can’t vote in the primary you have no vote in the process. This gives tremendous power to the party machines.
jconway says
And something I am somewhat shocked to see anyone on BMG disagreeing with. Are we really that clouded by this contentious primary and blind partisanship that we betray the small d principles we are supposed to uphold? I don’t get it. More voters the merrier in my view.
centralmassdad says
The problem isn’t that there are closed primaries, or open primaries. The problem is that these private entities– the two major political parties– are the de facto only means of access to the ballot.
The irony is that the NY procedure is the result of progressive era reforms designed to curtail the practice of voter rolls being determined by party bosses shortly before the election. That’s why there is all of the stuff about the locked boxes, only opened on a certain date, etc.
I agree that that the cumbersome procedure decreases turnout. It may have cost Sanders a few votes as voters registered in the NY Socialist Workers Party may have been kept out of the primary.
I am not convinced that this ancient procedure, seemingly kept in place by the interests of incumbency, is the same as voter suppression, as happens with the various Voter ID laws, or old poll tax statutes, literacy tests, or the like, which are targeted, either intentionally or sub rosa, at specific groups of voters in order to affect the outcomes of future elections.
In my view, it is unfortunate that this NY procedure is being analogized to actual malicious voter suppression, because that argument tends to cheapen and undermine the arguments against the latter, which are under enough pressure as it is without extra help from the left.
Christopher says
…for minor parties and truly independent candidates can get on the general ballot. NY even allows voting for the same candidate on a choice of lines through their fusion system, right?
merrimackguy says
That’s the only conclusion one can draw.
centralmassdad says
The rules to which everyone objects were established by statute over a century ago. A court challenge to the rule was rejected by SCOTUS in 1973. So, for some time, the only way to change the rule has been by new legislation.
Prior to 2009, the NY State Senate had a Republican majority for decades, with the help of conservative Dems who caucused with the GOP. That finally came to an end in 2009, but ended again after the 2010 elections, when the GOP recovered control of the State Senate.
So NY Democrats had an opportunity from July 2009 through January 2011 to make this change. Unfortunately the governor at the time was almost astonishingly unpopular (Patterson, the guy who succeeded Spitzer after the latter’s call girl scandal) and the state had severe budget crises that consumed all political oxygen during that time.
So, you’re saying that the only conclusion one can draw is that Democrats didn’t change a century-old rule during an 18-month window in which they had control of the NYS government, during which there were a stream of political and budget crises, because they wanted to suppress turnout in a presidential primary two election cycles in the future?
That doesn’t seem like the only conclusion one can draw.
merrimackguy says
that anything the Republicans do is part of some evil plan. Democrats in NY create a system where large numbers of people can’t vote, and THAT has defenders. BTW if something was a century old in Alabama, no one would be okay that the legislature was too busy to change it.
jconway says
I really think people are allowing their partisan loyalty and loyalty to a particular candidate to cloud their judgment about what is and isn’t fair or truly democratic in a particular set of elections. Doesn’t Hillary herself back automatic registration and same day registration? Why should party primaries be any different? This is the vote for the presidency, it should be open to all citizens, especially the majority of citizens who aren’t part of a party.
Christopher says
It is a vote for a presidential nominee, and nobody said it was or intended to be absolutely democratic, though again, anyone CAN choose to participate by registering. I don’t know off hand what HRC supports in this regard, but I can assure you this is a principled rather than candidate-driven stance for me.
judy-meredith says
Some of us tried to establish fusion here in Massachusetts a number of year ago. I know a lot of people here didn’the like it.
I don’t want to start a protracted or even short discussion here, but they manage to educate folks pretty well on the voter registration process.
The Working Families Party has pushed the political debate to the left in the states where it’s already active. Now—in the era of Occupy and Bernie Sanders—it’s ready to take that fight nationwide.
Read More:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/working-families-party/422949/
doubleman says
I like the Working Families Party a lot. The mistype in your headline “Working Famines Party” seems absolutely Freudian – that’s a great name for the situation many face and what the party is trying to reverse.
jconway says
But my party is taking up the same mantle. If we still exist and can compete in 2018 I would be open to putting it back on the ballot. I suspect the jungle primary would have the opposite effect here its proponents seem to think it would, but I’m open to that too. IRV in primaries is a must in my view, and somethings where Christopher and the DSC actually could have an impact on reducing DINO domination of primaries in even liberal districts.
jconway says
They obviously have done great work in NY state for quite sometime.