Isn't that convenient BOE?

 

NY Post

An ex-con busted for robbery as a teen is among a group of employees of New York City’s embattled Board of Elections who cashed in with massive overtime payouts last year, records show.

The BOE, embarrassed by a huge gaffe in the vote count for the mayoral race, forked over $107,031 in overtime pay to Alvin Samuels in 2020 on top of his salary of $106,627, according to records compiled for The Post by the Empire Center for Public Policy.

“That’s just extraordinary, bringing in that much overtime. I can’t imagine what he’s doing for that much overtime,” said Ken Sherrill, a professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College and a former Democratic district leader.

Samuels, an administrative associate, was among 10 BOE employees pulling in more than $60,000 in overtime last year at the agency which has long been assailed as a patronage mill.

Antonio Ortiz Jr., a senior systems analyst, worked a whopping 2,342 overtime hours and took home $164,791 in extra pay, dwarfing his regular salary of $116,128. The payout was not an anomaly. The previous year he got $139,475 in overtime.

Candidates step in line to sue the Board Of Elections

 

Queens Post 

 Several candidates running for City Council seats in Queens filed preemptive lawsuits last week against the NYC Board of Elections (BOE) and their opponents ahead of the Board’s blunder yesterday.

At least six Queens Council candidates and two Queens borough president candidates have filed the lawsuits over the past week in order to maintain their right to have the courts review the final election count in their respective races.

They filed the suits after the Primary Election Day, which was held June 22. State law requires candidates to file suit no later than 10 days after an election.

Multiple candidates in particularly close races filed the lawsuits in advance of the certified ranked choice vote results. The preemptive suits secure their opportunity to present evidence to the court for or against tallying certain votes.

Council District 26 candidate Amit Bagga — who is currently in second place in a tight race — filed such a suit on Thursday.

“We have filed a suit against the Board of Elections to preserve our opportunity for judicial review of the Board’s counting of votes and administration of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) for the first time,” said Ali Najmi, Counsel to the Amit for Council campaign.

“Under State election law, there is a short 10-day statute of limitations to commence this proceeding, which means one must file in court before all of the results are known.”

The D-26 race frontrunner, Julie Won — who led Bagga by just 125 first-choice votes on election night — filed a similar suit Monday against the BOE to retain the right to review the vote count.

Won’s campaign manager Eugene Noh said the “bad guy” in the situation is not other candidates, but the BOE.

Noh also said the 10-day window to file a lawsuit made little sense in the context of this race. He said the official results may not be known for weeks.

 

...and now there's not

22,000 votes got spoiled in Queens election results

Queens Eagle

New York’s arcane election laws are preventing some candidates and election observers from reviewing nearly 22,000 invalidated ballots, say a group of Queens political activists.

The Board of Elections only allows candidates and election attorneys to review copies of ballot envelopes deemed invalid if they receive a court order to do so. A spokesperson for the BOE, Valerie Vazquez, said people who request copies of the envelopes with a court order also receive a notation of the preliminary determination, which explains why an absentee ballot was tossed by election officials. It could be that the envelopes were filled out incorrectly or were not postmarked, she said. Campaigns, usually through election attorneys, can then challenge those disqualifications.

Overall, 21,980 ballots were preliminarily disqualified, according to a handwritten breakdown provided by BOE officials to members of the New Reformers, a political organization that represents a slate of candidates for Democratic district leader positions. 

  In an email exchange shared with the Eagle, BOE attorney Steve Richman told attorney Arthur Schwartz, who represents 20 Queens candidates, that the candidates did not submit a request to review ballots by a Wednesday morning deadline. Schwartz countered that the deadline applied to a review of registration records and not to observe invalidated absentee ballot envelopes.

“Why do you have to be Mr. Difficult. Let the observers look at the envelopes which aren't being opened. Maybe it will enhance your reputation of being open and transparent,” Schwartz wrote.

Board of Elections kills democracy stupidly

NY Post


Major election snafus shortchanged democracy in New York City on Tuesday when poll workers failed to distribute the proper ballots — preventing some voters from taking part in both the Democratic presidential primary and local races.

The problem was apparently so widespread that the Board of Elections tweeted out a warning shortly before noon that said, “In the Democratic primary, voters may have a 2 page ballot!”

“Please check http://nyc.pollsitelocator.com to view your sample ballot,” it added.

In Queens, where Democratic Assemblyman Ron Kim is being challenged by NYPD Sgt. Steven Lee, a poll worker at Junior High School 189 in Flushing said some voters only got one ballot.

“There were two ballots, we didn’t know that. Early this morning, we just gave one ballot. So some people didn’t get two,” the worker said. “We found an hour into it. We didn’t get training because of the virus.”

The worker’s disturbing revelations were cut short by a BOE supervisor, Stella Lu, who insisted everything was fine. “There was just confusion because we are short people. We have half the staff today,” she said.

“The people who had this issue actually got the ballot. It was only because people had to wait a little bit longer.”