Some precincts opened two hours later than they were supposed to, while some would-be voters’ names couldn’t be found on registration lists
By Deirdre Fulton / CommonDreams
A sign spotted in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. (Photo: kzoop/flickr/cc)
Amid charges of voting machine mishaps and names purged from voter rolls, New Yorkers cast their ballots Tuesday in high-stakes Democratic and Republican primaries—those who were able to, at least.
The results in New York’s closed primary could define the rest of the race, putting the Empire State in the rare campaign spotlight.
And the glare has been harsh.
There were reports that some precincts opened two hours later than they were supposed to, and would-be voters whose names couldn’t be found on registration lists.
The state’s “strict voter registration rules sparked mounting frustration and anger among Bernie Sanders supporters,” the Guardian reported, “as some discovered they were unable to vote in the primary election showdown with Hillary Clinton only after arriving at their local polling stations.”
According to the Guardian, some “registered voters arrived at polling stations claiming they had met all the requirements to switch party affiliation in time, yet still found themselves missing from the list, prompting angry scenes that may further hamper hopes of reconciling the two wings of the Democratic party once the nomination is decided.”
Gothamist managing editor John Del Signore wrote: “Some voters, including myself, are little confused about the ballot, which in the 12th Congressional District says voters can select seven delegates. But there are only six delegates listed as pledged for Bernie Sanders, while seven are listed as pledged for Hillary Clinton. I asked a poll worker if it was necessary to select seven delegates, or if I could just pick six, and she told me, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. Some people don’t even fill that part out.’ Whatever!”
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that “[a] number of voters said they showed up at their usual polling sites to discover the site had been moved without notice, sending them across the neighborhood searching for their new voting location.”
“I’m very concerned,” Richard Emery, a voting rights attorney on the Upper West Side, told the Journal. “This is the third location I’ve been to today to try and vote and I just ended up filling out an affidavit. The Board of Elections is a disaster.”
With 247 pledged delegates up for grabs on the Democratic side, the stakes are quite high—especially given both candidates’ ties to New York state.
“For Clinton, a single-digit victory in the state that elected her twice to the Senate, and where she beat Barack Obama by 17 points in 2008, would signal vulnerabilities,” Politico wrote on Tuesday.
While recent polls have showed the national gap between Sanders and Clinton has narrowed to basically nothing, the former secretary of state is ahead by approximately 12 points in New York, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls.
The Sanders camp, for its part, “is counting on big wins upstate to make up for Clinton’s expected strength downstate,” MSNBC added on primary day.
For what it’s worth, more people searched “How to vote for Bernie Sanders” in the last 24 hours than made similar searches about Clinton, according to Google.
When told by a television reporter on Tuesday afternoon that Clinton was saying a large victory in New York would spell the end of his campaign, Sanders responded by saying: “I think she’ll be disappointed.”
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Closed Dem primary in NY distorts reality of who won what. I was shocked to hear that this was closed primary and that you had to have registered Dem by last OCTOBER to be able to vote in the April Dem NY primary. OK, enjoy the victory Madam Secretary. It was not real.
The combination of the mess at NY polls described in this article, the archaic voter registration rules and the Dems super delegate set up just discourages more people from participating. Recent numbers indicate there are 226 million people eligible to vote in USA. 153 Million registered to vote. With voter turnouts of those registered running between 30 to 50 percent we have potential of 11 to 17% of eligible voters electing officials in close races.
Add the continued gerrymandering by Republican state legislatures of Congressional Districts and the Supreme Court decision that money equals free speech but you don’t have to tell who is “speaking”, we have neither a real democracy nor a representative republic. What we have is high school politics with money.
Feelin’ the burn? Back the Bern.
I support the idea of primaries open only to members of that party, but NOT the requirement of being registered 6 MONTHS ahead of the election. Before California primaries became open I would regularly change my party registration to DEM before the primary and then back to Green after election day. The open primary is more convenient for me.
But, I think primaries should be for voters registered in a party to tell the leaders who they want to run. That’s democratic.
Until the US of A changes from a two-party to a proportional representation system, the true convictions of many aren’t being represented anyway.
It always seems to come down to Big Media. This time the New York City and national television made more of Bernie talking about obsolete subway tokens than they did about the disenfranchisement of independents in Tuesday’s primary. The Gallup Poll has just found that nationally 43% of voters are registered as independents. The Guardian reported independents barred from voting Tuesday were 27% of the total registered in New York. That didn’t dissuade the sanitized and sanctified press from floating the notion that really, really important people wish Bernie would give up because “it’s hopeless, because delegates, because Jewish, because Socialist, because young people don’t vote…” And, oh yes, “because he’s hurting the Democratic Party.” There’s very little distance between the election coverage of The New York Times and, say, FOX News. The Times just takes longer to say it.
The MSM has been in cahoots with the Dem party leadership to get Hilary nominated ever since Bernie first declared. He hasn’t gotten a fair shake from them yet. (So much for that old right wing-nut trope about media being controlled by Jews.)
And media also must share some of the responsibility for Trump’s continued popularity; they gave him much more coverage than he merited when there were 17 in the field and have profited from the entertainment he has provided. Remember, prescient Paddy Chayevsky foretold all this in “Network.” That was 1976!