Posted on 04/19/2016 12:56:55 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Last week, I wrote a post titled, Hillary Clinton Will Win New York, Because New York is Running a Banana Republic Primary. Here’s an excerpt:
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ll know that New Yorkers go to the primary voting booths on April 19th. Unfortunately, only a small sliver of the population will actually be able to vote. First, it’s a closed primary, so you have to be registered as a member of one of the two corrupt political parties in order to participate. As the Guardian recently reported, 27% of New York state’s active voters were not registered in either party as of April 2016, meaning these people will have no say in the primary. Even worse, what about all those residents who aren’t active voters, but would very likely vote in this particular election given the increased turnout seen in other states? They’re iced out as well.
New York has one of the most archaic primaries in the nation. Not only is it one of only 11 states with closed primaries, but if you are a registered voter who wanted to change your party affiliation in order to vote in next week’s primary, you would’ve had to do it by last October. In contrast, if you weren’t yet a registered voter you had until March 25th to register under one of the two parties in order to vote in the primary. So if you live in New York and haven’t registered by now, you can’t vote.
Well the big day is finally here, and as expected, the primary is already riddled with problems.
First, as reported by the New York Daily News in the article, New York City Primary Voters Outraged by Broken Machines, Closed Polling Places:
New York primary voting at some Brooklyn and Queens polling places was a disaster Tuesday morning — with early morning voters arriving to broken machines and belated polling.
Queens resident George Mack said he came to P.S. 52 in Springfield Gardens to vote right at 6 a.m. He, and about 50 other early voters, learned all three machines on site were broken. Volunteers at the school told voters to place their ballots in a slot, and they would all get processed later.
Meanwhile, voters at the Cooper Park Houses in Greenpoint, Brooklyn couldn’t even get close to a machine. More than two hours after polls were supposed to open at 6 a.m., that site was still closed.
A similar snafu happened at the Atlantic Terminal site in Brooklyn, which didn’t open until after 7:30.
“They told me the key to the building had not arrived yet,” voter Tara McCauley told the News.
A Board of Elections representative arrived around 8, she said, and told voters he had been busy tending to problems at other polls. Voting finally started at Atlantic Terminal around 8:30.
“I am sure there are many people who tried to vote and had to leave who will not be able to come back,” she said.
Reps at the New York State Board of Elections could not immediately be reached for comment, and the press office’s voicemail was full Tuesday morning.
But that’s not all. We learn the following from USUncut:
New York’s Democratic primary is starting to look an awful lot like the Arizona primary.
Hundreds of voters, most of them registered with the Democratic Party, are filing a class-action lawsuit against the New York State Board of Elections on Monday morning, claiming their voter registration was changed to “independent” or “no affiliation” without their consent.
For more on what transpired in Arizona, see: American Democracy – Allegations of Voter Suppression Emerge from the Arizona Primary
In closed primary states like New York, voters who are not registered as Democrats or Republicans can’t vote in those primaries. Voters identifying as independents wishing to vote in the Democratic primary had to change their registration to Democrat by October of 2015 — the earliest registration deadline in the country.
I didn’t call it a Banana Republic primary for nothing.
New York voters angry about the mysterious change in their party affiliation have taken to a Facebook group titled “Voters whose registration was changed without their knowledge in NY” to share their horror stories. Shelly Berry discovered that someone had changed her voter registration in 2012, even forging her signature on the document.
The party affiliation barrier these voters are struggling with will undoubtedly play a role in the New York primary on Tuesday. Some advocates are calling for New York to open its primary to independent voters to avoid disenfranchising thousands of voters.
But hey…
Wonder who arranged the clusterf*ck??? Hmmmmmmmmmm.....
Oh, come on, I’m sure her pal Andrew Cuomo would never, ever, do something crooked for a political buddy. ;-)
There’s no thread for percentages in.
Is it only Democrats who are having trouble voting?
Hard to be sympathetic to the willfully ignorant.
What NY is running is a very fair process. I don’t like the situations where party members don’t have primaries to vote for candidates. Open primaries are an equally bad idea, at the other extreme. It seems totally reasonable that a person should have to be a member of a political party a month (or more) before the primary. That way, the party has time to make sure every party member has equal access to information about how delegate selection will be done. Another benefit is there can’t be any mischief such as “vote for the worst” or what happened to steal that nomination for Cochran.
What about all those who want to vote but aren’t citizens?
I predict they won’t have any problems.
As for me, I'll go with the Reasonable Person argument instead. Would a reasonable person expect that to vote in April, you must be registered by last October? No he would not expect that. Therefore, I am sympathetic to the iced-out voters here.
Notice that I'm not saying I'd excuse their mistake, but yes, I'd be very sympathetic.
Sometimes, that can blow up in your face – see 'operation chaos' as a great example.
——They’re iced out as well.——
well, no
they chose not to be involved in the primary process
they are independents
the process is difficult to weed out the riff raff
Oh, the horror, you actually have to be registered in a political party to decide that party’s nominee!
Heck, why even require U.S. citizenship to vote in the election? U.S. policy affects other countries, right, so just let everybody vote! Let them do it by e-mail from Zimbabwe if they want to.
Why should you even be limited to vote in only one primary for that matter? Everyone should get to vote in both the Democrat and Republican primaries. And you should get to vote in all 50 states too. It’s demoCRAZY!
I’m surprised they have that much cushion for their dropdead date, but glad. There will be enough questions with legitimacy and fraud in the current system. Imagine if they allowed you to register up to the last minute. Complete chaos.
Obama and the Democrats/Republicans in Congress have set the tone for law enforcement and discipline in the country. The “new tone” is one of slackness, blatant lawlessness, and no accountability.
That's very true. But soon there will be Internet voting everywhere. Then it won't matter who votes when, because the whole process will be cooked.
I agree with closed primaries, registration and party change deadlines are reasonable. I do see an issue if some had their party affiliation changed by someone else so they cannot vote, not sure how they would prove that but sounds like shenanigans.
I guess there is always a way to cheat, that is the real issue.
That's not exactly the case. If you were not registered at all, you could register up until a few weeks ago. It was only party-switchers that had to make the change by October. And I am actually okay with that - it helps prevent an "Operation Chaos" type of situation, where you have a lot of people switching parties at the last minute to sabotage the other party by picking the weakest general election candidate.
I think that the premise of this article is bogus. Political Parties can select their party nominee in any number of ways, subject to certain rules about gaining to each state’s ballot and certification that the nominee is qualified for the Office of the President. No one has a right to vote for a party nominee, although a state political party may choose to hold a primary election, and then may choose how to conduct the election subject to state laws.
Recall that Ross Perot run as an Independent in 1992 and used a grass roots organization to get his name on the ballot in all 50 states. There were no primaries. In 1995, Perot formed the Reform Party, but they did not have a convention, and they held a primary based on mailed ballots to those who had qualified as members of the Reform Party. Perot was nominated and once again, he qualified for the ballot on all 50 states, although in some states, he had to file as an Independent.
We tolerate this government/political party conspiracy for the purposes of having a state wide primary, but it’s not required and voters really don’t have any rights to participate in the process. Interestingly, everyone used to understand that the primaries were really just “beauty contests” that did not bind the parties or the delegates to their convention. We now have a later generation who believe that they have a right to vote for the candidate of their choice in a primary and that their political party is obligated to nominate whomever the primary voters selected. That has always been a fiction, but was encouraged by the parties who wanted to present unity to the TV audience at the national conventions. Of course, the real outcome has been to plant a false expectation among voters, decimate the TV ratings, and reduce the powers of the political parties. The liberals and the media have be the beneficiaries of this evolution of our election process.
What’s the problem? It’s a closed primary. In NYC, to vote you have to choose a party when you register. If your party is not running a candidate, you don’t get to vote. I switched my party to vote for Guiliani - I had been a registered Democrat simply to vote for the less left-wing mayoral candidates during primary season (Ed Koch, that means you). When Guiliani ran, I switched my party affiliation. Now, I’m going to have to switch back from I to R so I can vote for Trump in the primary in NJ.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.