Provides remedies for disrupted elections

Showing the cosponsors who are on Agora, A to Z. The official record may list more.

• Democratic43

Shown in neutral colors by design; Agora is non-partisan.

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Andrew Gounardes says this is needed

New York State has made many reforms in recent years to expand access to voting, protect voter rights, improve transparency in election adminis- tration, and shore up confidence in democratic institutions, including the creation of early voting, consolidation of state and federal prima- ries, voter preregistration, improvements in the absentee balloting process, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, and more. Our considerable progress in this arena is undercut, however, by the fact that we have no rapid response solution to address natural or human-caused incidents that interrupt voting at poll sites. Section 3-108 of Election Law, one of few sections of state law to contemplate this scenario, allows local or state boards of elections to schedule an additional day of voting in the event of a "fire, earth- quake, tornado, explosion, power failure, act of sabotage, enemy attack or other disaster" and where less than 25% of registered voters city or countywide have voted. Additionally, subdivision four of § 8-600 of the Election Law mandates that polling places be open for eight hours each day of early voting, and one could argue that a failure to adjust for a disruption which truncates these eight hours is a violation of the law. There are four very real problems with the existing protections of § 3-108 and 8-600, however. Firstly, there a number of modern-day scenar- ios which can feasibly impact voting and fall outside of the narrow definition of disasters described in Election Law § 3-108: lost keys, medical emergencies, bomb threats, inaccessible facilities, lengthy or large-scale connectivity or equipment malfunctions, flooding due to a superstorm or torrential downpour, acts of violence, false fire alarms, and localized emergencies, to name a few. All of these phenomena have become common in an era of increasingly extreme weather events for which we are ill-prepared, as well as an era of rising political violence and polarization. Real-life examples of poll site disruptions in recent years include: a 2022 bomb threat targeting the Jackie Robinson Educational Complex in Manhattan's East Harlem neighborhood, which robbed general election voters of at least two hours of early voting while the NYPD evacuated the area; a polling place fire in the town of Champion in Jefferson County during the 2022 primary election; and, most recently, in October 2023, a technological malfunction affecting e-poll books that canceled voting on a Saturday morning at every polling station in Orange County. In November 2022, a driver accidentally drove into a polling place at the Linderman Creek apartment complex poll site in Ithaca. Notably, both Hurricane Sandy and the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, happened on election days. Secondly, the provisions of Election Law § 3-108 apply only if at least a quarter of voters city or countywide have not turned out, leaving broad incentive for bad actors to target a few key election districts in a close election. Thirdly, § 3-108 only permits boards to provide an additional day of voting, failing to contemplate shorter disruptions that do not warrant an additional day but nonetheless suppress turnout. And finally, both § 3-108 and 8-600 require local boards of election to proactively take action to remedy disruptions, which they have little incentive to do when at least one party definitionally stands to benefit from lower voter turnout. Instead, boards typically deadlock along partisan lines - leaving enforcement of these core tenets of Election Law to election lawyers, who rush to the courthouse seeking judicial orders and praying they get them in time. This bill addresses the disincentive that partisan boards of elections have to extend voting hours by creating a default statutory remedy for disruptions of more than one hour. Once notified of an interruption affecting voting, boards would be required to toll and extend the time of the interruption on the back end of that same day, or extend th

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.