ABC News: New York presidential primary postponed amid record numbers of coronavirus cases

03.28.2020 / By Meg Cunningham
ABC News: New York presidential primary postponed amid record numbers of coronavirus cases

Common Cause New York, a voting rights group, had called on Gov. Cuomo and state officials to consolidate the primary, contending that officials have made it clear that they won’t have the bandwidth to conduct an entirely absentee election by late April. “We don't have the infrastructure in place to do it quite frankly, so that's anything from having enough paper to print all the ballots, to making sure that we have prepaid postage, to make sure folks can return their ballot. It's a lot of smaller logistical decisions and preparations that would need to have started weeks ago,” Sarah Goff, the deputy director of Common Cause New York had previously said.

New York — which has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic’s spread in the U.S.– will now be on June 23, the latest state to postpone or drastically change the status of its April 28 presidential primary.

Six states slated to vote that day have delayed or moved to expand absentee voting to continue on with their elections in the midst of the health emergency. …

Common Cause New York, a voting rights group, had called on Gov. Cuomo and state officials to consolidate the primary, contending that officials have made it clear that they won’t have the bandwidth to conduct an entirely absentee election by late April.

“We don’t have the infrastructure in place to do it quite frankly, so that’s anything from having enough paper to print all the ballots, to making sure that we have prepaid postage, to make sure folks can return their ballot. It’s a lot of smaller logistical decisions and preparations that would need to have started weeks ago,” Sarah Goff, the deputy director of Common Cause New York had previously said.

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