Voting Rights

Common Cause/NY released a white paper recommending a working group to reform the administration of elections in New York State. Various proposals have been bandied around, but the issue deserves serious study for lasting, meaningful reform.

Susan Lerner, executive director of the advocacy group Common Cause New York, said the state needed professionalized election administration staff who were hired based on their qualifications.

“I think that the pandemic and miscommunication from the State BOE slowed down the process,” said Susan Lerner, head of Common Cause New York which advocated for the city’s ranked-choice voting referendum and has been leading voter education efforts across the city. “The major vendors were well aware of the opportunity. ES&S, the current vendor for the voting scanning machines, has been in contact with our BOE since December of 2019, discussing rank choice voting. So, if ES&S were interested, they certainly could have bid,” she said.

Common Cause/NY vehemently opposes the certification of ES&S’ ExpressVote XL hybrid voting machine by the New York State Board of Elections.

“Our system is set up so that the boards of elections have relatively little, if any, oversight, and virtually no accountability.” – Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York

“New York voters should understand that we will not know the results of many close races until some weeks later,” said Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a government watchdog group. ”And that is not the death of democracy, but a sign of life.”