FROM THE WESTCHESTER COUNTY BOARD OF LEGISLATORS

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

The Westchester County Board of Legislators will convene a Committee of the Whole (COW) meeting on Wednesday, July 29 at 10 a.m. to hear from the Commissioners of the County's Board of Elections (BOE) about how to improve voting conditions in November in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pursuant to Governor Cuomo’s Executive Order No. 202.1, as extended, in order to protect public health and maintain necessary social distancing, the meeting will take place without in-person public access, but, as with all our public meetings, the proceedings will be streamed live and archived on our website, www.westchesterlegislators.com.

A live link to the stream will appear on the Upcoming Events section of our online meeting calendar at https://westchestercountyny.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=1 when the meeting begins.

"Fearing nightmare scenarios such as attacks on voter registration databases and state websites tallying results, U.S. officials are leading simulated training exercises to get ready for Nov. 3. The "tabletop exercises,”..., will include thousands of state and local election officials in addition to intelligence and cybersecurity officials in Washington amid concerns about threats from Russia, China and other countries.”

Are Westchester County Board of Elections commissioners participating in these simulated training exercises?
Allegra Dengler

“Oh, Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.”

I’ve been singing that Animals’ tune for a month. I move my lips, but I’m not sure my words are understood.

It begins with a stone-cold fact: Mail-in ballots are lost by the millions—especially the ballots of low-income young and minority voters, those folks often called, “Democrats.”

The seminal MIT study, Losing Votes by Mail, warns that 22% – more than one in five ballots – never get counted.

2020 ELECTION
Mail voting is the safest method in a pandemic. But pitfalls could trip up a potentially decisive number of people.

July 18, 2020, 3:30 AM CDT
By Jane C. Timm

New Yorker Sasha Aickin, 43, has no idea if his vote counted.

FROM THE INTERCEPT: "IN THE LEAD-UP to the election, Cuomo touted a change in the law that allowed absentee ballots to be dropped in the mail in New York as late as Election Day, June 23. Now those ballots are the ones least likely to be counted; a major reason the Cuomo-run Board of Elections is using to invalidate ballots is a lack of a postmark if the ballot arrived at the BoE after that date. Cuomo could fix this issue easily by issuing an executive order accepting all signed ballots that come in within a few days of the deadline….If a major Brooklyn post office was not postmarking ballots, that means voters who cast legitimate, timely ballots won’t have theirs count through no fault of their own. Return mail that is postage-paid, like a ballot, is generally not postmarked — the mark is used to make sure a stamp isn’t re-used, but since there’s no stamp, the postal service doesn’t need to mark it —"

Quote of the Day: "How much of a hassle it is to vote is generally a matter of design, not accident, according to Carol Anderson, the author of One Person, No Vote and a professor of African-American studies at Emory University. ‘Long lines are deliberate, because they deal with the allocation of resources,’ Professor Anderson said. She said it’s frustrating to see long lines reported in the news media as evidence of voter enthusiasm: ‘What they really show is government ineptness. And oftentimes a deliberate deployment of not enough resources in minority communities.’”

On Primary Election Day, Tuesday, June 23, 2020, I voted at Nepperhan Community Center in Yonkers. I was fortunate not to arrive until about 9am, when I found a line outside in the parking lot of perhaps 25-30 people, many of whom had already been waiting for a long time. It took another 45 minutes before I was admitted to the building to vote. I was told by election inspectors that it had taken hours before a Board of Elections employee had arrived to help them set up the voting machines. The machines we voted on were Dominion ICE hybrid printer-scanners. So these expensive new machines, apparently, did not save us any time on Election Day. Or perhaps the problem was inadequate training of poll workers.

Dear Legislators,

Thank you for your investigation of the recent primary and the serious effort you are making to restore a functioning democracy to Westchester. The most alarming aspect of the Commissioners’ conduct has been their insistence that their infrastructure and voting machines are impervious to cyberattack. This cavalier attitude towards cybersecurity is disturbing. There are many vulnerabilities in Westchester. The voter database and electronic pollbooks are known to be vulnerable to hacking from enemies foreign and domestic. The commissioners insistence on buying and using the infamous Dominion ICE machines threatens the integrity of the vote count, as it can mark on and invalidate votes without the voter’s knowledge. Were the procedures recommended by the NYS Board of Elections to ensure secure operation of the Dominion ICE followed everywhere it was used? Mail in ballots are very vulnerable to fraud and loss, especially so when implemented in a rushed manner. Every effort must be made to ensure that we have an election we can believe in this November. That requires transparency and responsiveness that the current BOE commissioners seem unwilling or unable to provide. If the BOE won’t do it, you as the Board of Legislators can provide some transparency through a voter assistance website that would provide correct information and ballot tracking for voters, including updates on the length of lines.Would it be possible for you to utilize a county cybersecurity expert to oversee the BOE security? “It’s time America’s leaders got serious about voting security."

With all 50,575 in-person ballots counted, Bowman, ...leads Engel by more than 12,600 votes. Absentee ballots, meanwhile, are still being counted, with delays caused by the historic number of absentee ballots cast because of the coronavirus pandemic .... The Board of Elections has said it is not sure how long it will take to finish counting absentee ballots, though the Bowman and Engel campaigns say they’ve been told that it will take until early August….“We recognize that Mr. Bowman’s lead is substantial, but when the outstanding ballots are well more than three times that margin, it is also clear that primary voters deserve a clear and accurate count (with ballots in question examined fairly by each campaign), however long that requires,” Engel spokesperson Tom Watson said in a statement….Watson said the purpose of the lawsuit was to make sure the campaign had access to the ballot-counting process and to ensure that every ballot is counted. “It can go both ways, you can contest it to be included as well as contest it to be excluded,” he said. “In theory, you wouldn’t want all this to happen behind a curtain, where you’re accepted or not accepted, and there is no access to that process….As the pandemic has led to a surge in mail-in voting across the country, it is likely that it will take weeks for the results of the presidential election to be finalized if it’s a tight race.

Westchester residents spent about two and a half hours Wednesday night reciting a litany of harrowing stories trying to vote from their experiences during the June 23 primary.

Residents participated in the Board of Legislators’ Election Information Task Force virtual meeting Wednesday night to discuss what the Westchester County Board of Elections could do to improve voting for the November general election. Concerns are also expected in the fall about how to protect the health of poll workers and voters and how to manage a large turnout.

From Westchester County Legislators.

Let them know what your experience was with the recent primary.

• Email: BOLPublicComments@westchesterlegislators.com

• Online: To register to speak via the Board's Webex online teleconferencing system, please go to this link: https://westchestergov.webex.com/westchestergov/onstage/g.php?MTID=e544cf7dd60ae8922a643c64a2ea73444.

The Board of Legislators would like to hear first-hand experiences from those who voted this June as well. They are asking voters to share their experiences, as specifically as possible, by email at BOLPublicComments@westchesterlegislators.com.

Numerous problems with yesterday's primary. Some people didn't receive absentee ballots. Long lines (some voted after 11 PM, waiting 2 hours). malfunctioning machines. Fewer polling places than usual creating more lines. NYS must correct before November.

For the biggest city in the country, a dramatic and fast expansion of the mail-in voting system has come with challenges.

Watch this show!

Remember when we were watching the coronoavirus way over there in China, wondering if we should be concerned? PBS Newshour covered what just happened in Georgia. If you are wondering if that could happen here, the answer is yes. Unless NYC and NYS ban these voting machines, we’ll be standing on line to vote on them as soon as this November, The Westchester Board of Elections is pressuring Westchester to buy these Dominion machines used in Georgia, and the NYS Board of Elections is moving towards certifying an even more troubleprone and hackable ESS BMD (Ballot Marking Device).that the NYC Board of Electios is eager to buy.

Many New Yorkers say voting in the primary Tuesday was a nightmare.

Some people never got their absentee ballots, and others were waiting in line for hours.
The line to vote at Bronx Regional High School snaked around the block for most of the day Tuesday.

“The detection of this major problem was only because of diligent citizen oversight. The officials charged with the duty to fully test the equipment recklessly failed to responsibly do so, or to audit it,” said Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, which is demanding in court that the state scrap the ballot-marking devices.”

When are the primary elections?
Primary elections are June 23, but party members can vote early and, because of the coronavirus outbreak, may also vote by mail by requesting, then mailing in, an absentee ballot.

Early in-person voting will take place at designated locations from June 13 until 21.

Polls on June 23 will be open from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m.

How do I vote by mail?

‘New York Times: I Refuse Not to Be Heard’: Georgia in Uproar Over Voting Meltdown
"ATLANTA — Georgia’s statewide primary elections on Tuesday were overwhelmed by a full-scale meltdown of new voting systems put in place after widespread claims of voter suppression during the state’s 2018 governor’s election.

Scores of new state-ordered voting machines were reported to be missing or malfunctioning, and hourslong lines materialized at polling places across Georgia.

...In Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward — the neighborhood where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. grew up — Marneia Mitchell arrived at her polling place five minutes before polls were to open at 7 a.m. She thought it was early enough to vote fast, avoid trouble and get on with her day…..Three hours later, she was still waiting in line, having moved about 60 feet from where she had started. At first voters were told that the machines were not functioning, and then that poll workers did not have the passwords necessary to operate them....Ms. Russell, who wore a mask, said that she had bronchitis and asthma, and that she rarely left the house even when there was no pandemic. She said she had requested an absentee ballot but never received one. “I refuse not to be heard and so I am standing in line,” she said.
………………………………………………..

Westchester County closing pollsites

Westchester County Board of Elections will be heavily reducing the number of polling places available for early voting. In primaries in WI, MD, DC and now Georgia, huge failures were magnified as a result of closed pollsites. Westchester County Board of Elections is calling pollworkers who have already been trained and telling them they are no longer needed because there will be only a small fraction of the pollsites that were open in November. I am trying to get official confirmation of this information. I could not locate information about pollsites on the Westchester County Board of Elections webpage. I searched for addresses I know and got this result:
https://citizenparticipation.westchestergov.com/find-polling-place
Find a Polling Place
No records with that criteria found

Let your Westcheter County legislators and Board of Elections know that you want to be able to vote securely and safely, with no new hackable voting machines, and without long lines.

"A big problem in both places: Optimism about voting by mail encouraged election officials to slash the number of polling places and voting centers — in Washington from the normal 143 to a mere 20. In Baltimore, a city with 296 precincts, there were only six Election Day voting sites….One more thing: Mail voting means that ..it can take a long time to get to a final result. ..This means votes are still flowing in a week or more after the election. Americans need to be prepared for the possibility that because of mail voting, we may not know the winner until well after election night. Forewarning is the vaccine against the virus of Trump’s voter fraud claims….

"In Montgomery County, Md., where I live, our generally well-run government reported that less than a third of the vote had been counted three days after the election. If the presidential election is close, we could be waiting for days to know how, say, Arizona and Wisconsin voted — and thus to know the electoral college winner. What wild things might Trump say during that interlude?"