By: Hellen Zaboulani
New York got a push to overhaul the state’s election agencies from one of the state’s most powerful county executives. Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, a Democrat, is now insistent that a new law be passed to professionalize all of the NYS’s election agencies — including but not limited to the infamous New York City Board of Elections. “It’s not just a New York City problem,” Bellone told The Post. “We had people at Suffolk polling sites waiting in line for four hours during early voting. That’s unconscionable.”
Suffolk is currently the most populous county outside of the city. Bellone said he himself waited in line for an hour and 40 minutes to vote at a polling site in West Babylon on Nov. 3. As reported by the NY Post, he blamed the hiring process for the county elections commissioners –saying they should be merit based rather than patronage driven. As of now, the county elections commissioners in the state and in NYC, as well as other full-time and seasonal poll workers, are selected by the local Democrat and Republican party leaders.
Bellone argued the election boards should not be installed by party heads as favors, but moving forward should be placed under the state’s merit-based civil service system like other government agencies. ““It’s long overdue that we reform our election boards. They shouldn’t look like an old Tammany Hall patronage operation,” he said. “These are good-paying jobs. Any resident should have an opportunity to get a job. That doesn’t exist right now.”
Bellone said he will be talking to other county executives, state lawmakers, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Mayor Bill de Blasio so that election reform becomes a priority in the 2021 legislative session. “We want to make sure people have full confidence in the democratic process. If we don’t have confidence in the electoral process, we are undermining democracy,” Bellone added.
Bellone received immediate nods from the elections committee chairmen. ”Everything should be on the table next session,” said Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, chair of the election panel. “With record turnout and unprecedented attention to our democratic processes, voters expect a world-class democracy and it’ll be important for us to have a robust discussion on what that looks like all across the state.”
The NYC BOE struggled to handle the record voter turnout with noted botches in the positioning of early voting sites, equipment, staffing, flow of voters, and.absentee ballots.
