The Perennial Call To Fix New York's Electoral Process

going beyond the false vote count fiasco [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [VIEW IN BROWSER]( [DONATE]( [WNYC Politics Brief] New York Senate Plans Statewide Hearings On Elections, With Voters Taking Center Stage [By Brigid Bergin]( [voters fill out ballots on primary day] Scott Heins/Gothamist After a tumultuous primary election season in New York City that's renewing perennial calls to overhaul how the state runs its elections, the head of the New York State Senate Elections Committee, State Sen. Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn, announced plans on Monday to hold a series of hearings across the state to gather input from voters about their experiences at the polls. "We're going to go out to Syracuse and Rochester. We're going to hear from Westchester, Hudson Valley, and Long Island voters about what they think should be changed," said Myrie during [an appearance on The Brian Lehrer Show](. "So it won't just be a panel of experts and folks who work in this space regularly. We're going to hear from the voters." The announcement made good on a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins, who described the New York City Board of Elections' recent release of [faulty ranked-choice voting tallies]( as a "national embarrassment." She pledged to hold legislative hearings this summer to develop reform proposals. The first State Senate hearing is expected to take place at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn on July 28th, with additional hearings scheduled for other cities in the final week of July and first week in August. Myrie said the process will culminate in Albany in September at a hearing that will also feature testimony from experts in election administration and good government. These State Senate hearings come in addition to one previously announced by the Assemblymember Latrice Walker, who chairs that chamber’s Election Law Committee, specifically on the topic of ranked-choice voting. That hearing is scheduled for Monday, July 19th at 250 Broadway in Manhattan. Myrie, whose 20th Senate district overlaps in Brownsville, Brooklyn, with Walker’s Assembly district, said he thinks the issues with election administration go beyond the city’s implementation of ranked-choice voting, pointing to problems in other cities, particularly related to the implementation of early voting. Case in point: Last month, State Attorney General Letitia James announced she won a lawsuit against Rensselaer County over its refusal to establish an early voting site in Troy, the most populous city in the county with the largest population of people of color. That decision forced the Rensselaer County Board of Elections to establish an early voting site in Troy ahead of the June primary. Most changes to the structure of the city’s Board of Elections, specifically related to its bipartisan composition, would require a state constitutional amendment, which would need to pass both chambers of the state legislature in two consecutive legislative sessions before going before the voters as a ballot referendum. In all, it's a three-year process that could take until 2024 at the earliest. While the hearings are a first step in a reform process, Myrie said he hoped there were other "tweaks" to election law that could improve the process sooner. "My mantra has been, 'taking New York from worst to first,'" said Myrie. "We are going to continue to live by that as we go through these hearings." --------------------------------------------------------------- 🗳️ --------------------------------------------------------------- Here's What Else Is Happening Black candidates won big in this primary. Assuming Eric Adams and Alvin Bragg go on to win their general elections for mayor and Manhattan DA, respectively, they'll join a group of Black Democrats who already hold the positions of public advocate, state attorney general, State Senate majority leader, and State Assembly speaker. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who may one day become the first Black speaker of the House, said after the primary that "our community is closest to the pain, and therefore, Black candidates are uniquely positioned to speak powerfully to the needs of working-class New Yorkers." ([The New York Times]( ) Ranked-choice voting flipped the outcome in two City Council primaries. Close watchers of ranked-choice elections say that in the vast majority of cases, the candidate with the most first-choice votes after the initial round of counting ends up winning. But in the 9th City Council district, in Harlem, first-time candidate and community organizer Kristin Richardson Jordan overtook the initial leader, incumbent Bill Perkins; and in City Council District 25, which includes parts of Jackson Heights, activist Shekar Krishnan narrowly beat small-business owner Yi Andy Chen in the last round of counting ballots. ([Gothamist]( A Staten Island Republican City Council candidate is under investigation for possible election fraud. Federal and state investigators are looking into whether Marko Kepi, a pro-Trump candidate who ran to succeed outgoing City Councilmember Steven Matteo, forged over 1,000 absentee ballots. (Some signatures didn't match, there were duplicate ballots submitted, and two ballots had a dead person's name on them.) Either way, Kepi lost to opponent David Carr by 196 votes after the ranked-choice tabulations were run. ([Gothamist]( Antonio Reynoso, the next likely Brooklyn borough president, will bring an environmentalist's perspective to land use decisions. Reynoso, a 38-year-old progressive Democrat who currently represents Bushwick and Williamsburg in the City Council, has said he wants to tear down the BQE (and replace it with a modernized thruway), bring back composting, put "containerized" trash bins in public parking spots, and make the land use decision-making process — an area where borough presidents are actually influential — more inclusive. ([Gothamist]( The Adams and Biden teams said a lot of nice things about each other after yesterday's meeting at the White House. Joe Biden and Eric Adams, two candidates who beat wonkier, more progressive candidates in recent Democratic primaries by appealing to working-class voters, met in Washington on Monday to discuss gun violence and policing. Praising the president, Adams referred to himself as "the Biden of Brooklyn"; a Biden pollster in turn noted the similarities between Adams and Biden's "values-oriented campaigns." Rev. Al Sharpton, who knows both men well, predicted they'd get along great because they're "both kind of straight shooters," and said that a good working relationship could mean more resources for New York City. ( [Politico]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 🗳️ --------------------------------------------------------------- [Meet The Comptroller Candidate: Brad Lander]( Outgoing City Councilmember Brad Lander, who won the Democratic primary for comptroller, talks about his plans for the job, and what the position actually entails. [LISTEN FOR FREE]( Support WNYC + Gothamist Make a donation to support local, independent journalism. Your contributions are our largest source of funding and pays for essential election coverage and more. 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