News Clips

In a letter, the New York Civil Liberties Union, Common Cause New York and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said the plan “will impose a severe burden on many of the City’s low-income voters.”

“The Board of Elections is doing the bare minimum to implement early voting, especially in Queens where there are more voters assigned to each polling site than any other borough,” Common Cause New York Executive Director Susan Lerner said. “This is not only inexcusable, but likely a violation of state law. We need between 50-100 voting centers across the city to serve New Yorkers in non-traditional locations, close to transportation, borough-wide, and including city and state facilities. Both the city and the state have devoted millions of dollars to make early voting a success. It’s time for the BOE to step up.”

“It’s a violation of voter privacy and I think it doesn’t follow the requirements of New York’s election law,” Susan Lerner of Common Cause NY said. According to Lerner, the law says the info can only be provided to people who use it for election purposes.

But one person’s transparency is another’s invasion of privacy. Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause NY, called the move "shocking," particularly after states, including New York, refused to turn over voter data to the federal government for President Trump’s now defunct voter fraud commission.

The BOE has proposed purchasing a new fleet of uncertified voting machines to solve the issues, but local officials say that will only add to the problems. “It’s hackable, the ballot is changeable,” said Susan Lerner with Common Cause.

“I think we are headed in the right direction,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of the Common Cause-NY good-government group which has long supported opening the budget process more to rank-and-file legislators and the public. “They still don’t know how to do a legislative process.”