No citizenship, no vote

NY Post 

A New York City law allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections was struck down Monday by a judge who said it violated both the state constitution and various provisions of state law.

Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Ralph Porzio also issued a permanent injunction that bars the city Board of Elections from letting around 800,000 non-citizen residents register to vote.

In a 13-page ruling, Porzio said city officials can’t “obviate” restrictions in the state constitution, which “expressly states that only citizens meeting the age and residency requirements are entitled to register and vote in elections.”

“There is no statutory ability for the City of New York to issue inconsistent laws permitting non-citizens to vote and exceed the authority granted to it by the New York State Constitution,” he wrote.

Porzio said the city’s move also violated sections of the state’s Election Law and Municipal Home Rule Law.

City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island), among the plaintiffs who challenged the law, hailed the ruling, saying it “validates those of us who can read the plain English words of our state constitution” and accused the measure’s proponents of seeking to “skirt the law for political gain.”

“Opposition to this measure was bipartisan and cut across countless neighborhood and ethnic lines, yet progressives chose to ignore both our constitution and public sentiment in order to suit their aims,” he said in a prepared statement.

Diverse discrimination

NY Post 

A controversial new city law that will allow non-citizens to vote in local elections would unconstitutionally bolster the political clout of Hispanic and Asian New Yorkers — at the expense of African-Americans, according to a new lawsuit.

The suit, filed Wednesday in Staten Island Supreme Court by longtime political commentator Deroy Murdock and three other black New Yorkers, claims the City Council violated the 15th Amendment by approving the measure in December with the “discriminatory intent” to strengthen the voting clout of some racial groups over others.

“The Foreign Citizen Voting Bill accomplishes precisely what advocates intended: shifting the electoral power in New York City municipal elections along racial lines to Hispanic and Asian voters and reducing the power of other racial groups,” the suit says. 

J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a nonprofit representing the plaintiffs, said the process of getting the new law passed was “infested with racial motivation.”

 The suit claims former Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Manhattan), who sponsored the bill that later became law, has publicly said he drafted it with the intention of “increasing the power” of some racial groups.

This is the second suit challenging the measure, which became law last month. Last month, local Republican elected officials filed legal papers arguing that under state law only US citizens can participate in the city’s elections.

Mayor Adams OK's city voting rights for non-citizens

NY Post 

Mayor Eric Adams said Saturday he supports a controversial bill to allow hundreds of thousands of non-citizens living in New York City to participate in local elections.

Adams said in a statement he has and will continue to support the measure despite initially having “some concerns.”

The City Council approved the “Our City, Our Vote” measure in December, despite concerns from more than a dozen lawmakers, former Mayor Bill de Blasio and some constitutional experts.

The bill granted approximately 800,000 legal, non-citizen residents — such as green card holders and recipients of deferred action — the right to vote in municipal contests, but not state or federal elections.

“I believe that New Yorkers should have a say in their government, which is why I have and will continue to support this important legislation,” Adams said in a statement Saturday.

“While I initially had some concerns about one aspect of the bill, I had a productive dialogue with my colleagues in government that put those concerns at ease. I believe allowing the legislation to be enacted is by far the best choice, and look forward to bringing millions more into the democratic process,” the Democrat continued.

NYC Council plans to give voting rights to immigrants residing in the city and country for 30 days

Politics NY 

City Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Manhattan) led other elected officials and several dozen advocate organizations in a City Hall Park rally Tuesday celebrating a measure that will allow roughly 800,000 non-citizens living in New York City for at least 30 days to vote in all city elections.

The measure dubbed “Our City, Our Vote ” now has a veto-proof supermajority 34 out of 51 City Council supporting the legislation guaranteeing passage at the council’s stated meeting on Dec. 9. It comes as nearly half of New York City households have a member with green card status or other undocumented status. 

It also comes as a number of city lawmakers – once part of those immigrant households themselves – are leading the movement to pass the bill.

“My mom had all of her kids in a public hospital,” said City Councilmember and Brooklyn Borough President-elect Antonio Reynoso, who attended the rally. “My mom couldn’t vote for a representative that could ensure a quality education for her kids.”

Reynoso’s family came from the Dominican Republic and raised him in Williamsburg, which he now represents in the council. 

“It’s about time that we finally get an opportunity where we show these representatives what we want, what we need and what we deserve at the voting booth, where it most matters,” Reynoso said. 

He thanked Rodriguez and the work of the New York Immigrant Coalition, who have been organizing the rallies and the letters as part of the campaign to get the bill passed. 

While Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he has “mixed feelings” about the bill because he feared that allowing noncitizens to vote might remove the incentive for people to become full citizens, Mayor-elect Eric Adams has voiced support for it.

Under the proposed legislation the New York City Board of Elections (BOE) would issue a separate voter registration form for green cardholders and other noncitizens who have the right to work. Those voters would then fill out a ballot with only New York City offices on it at the polls. 

The bill also calls for training poll workers and community education campaigns to ensure every voter receives the correct ballot.

The primary results are...still not in

From QNS:

According to the newly released results for the borough president race, incumbent Donovan Richards currently holds the top spot with 51.1 percent of the vote (78.752 votes) after three rounds of RCV counting. Challenger Elizabeth Crowley, the former District 30 councilwoman, sits in second place with 48.9 percent of the vote (75,349 votes).

So it looks like Liz and Don almost evenly split Jim's #2 votes!

Here are the current council leaders for the Dems.

District 19: Tony Avella

District 20: Sandra Ung

District 21: Francisco Moya

District 22: Tiffany Caban

District 23: Linda Lee

District 24: James Gennaro

District 25: Shekar Krishnan

District 26: Julie Won

District 27: Nantasha Williams

District 28: Adrienne Adams

District 29: Lynn Schulman

District 30: Robert Holden

District 31: Selvena Brooks-Powers

District 32: Felicia Singh

Results are not yet official until thousands of absentee ballots have been counted which is expected to be completed and released by July 12.

Y'all are pathetic

Early voting complete! Day 9
•Manhattan - 60,649
•Bronx - 20,590
•Brooklyn - 65,516
•Queens - 35,361
•Staten Island - 9,081
Total Number of Early Voting Check-Ins 191,197
*Unofficial and Cumulative as of close of polls

— NYC Board of Elections (@BOENYC) June 20, 2021

Eric Adams, candidate for mayor, is pushing to qualify immigrants for the right to vote in city elections

 

NY Daily News

 

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and several lawmakers are pushing the City Council to revisit a bill that would give noncitizen immigrants who legally reside in the Big Apple the right to vote in city elections — possibly in time for this year’s mayoral contest.

The current iteration of the Council legislation seeks to revise the City Charter to permit voting by those it describes as “municipal voters,” a designation that would include immigrants with lawful permanent residency or work authorization who’ve been living in the city for 30 days or longer.

 We cannot be a beacon to the world and continue to attract the global talent, energy and entrepreneurship that has allowed our city to thrive for centuries if we do not give immigrants a vote in how this city is run and what our priorities are for the future,” Adams said. “Especially now during COVID, as immigrant communities face inequities that have led to unequal death and devastation in their communities, it is our moral and democratic responsibility to enfranchise taxpaying, hardworking legal immigrants and give them the voice they deserve.”

Adams, who is running for mayor, and City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, the bill’s sponsor, are planning to make their renewed push for the bill’s passage public Tuesday. Adams is calling on his opponents in the mayoral race to join him in supporting the proposal.

New York City Board Of Elections are very shitty at math

 

NY Post

The embattled city Board of Elections mismanaged key facets of its early voting program, The Post has learned, including allocating ballot scanners with little regard for demand and stuffing so many voters into balloting sites that it overwhelmed its system.

The examination of the BOE’s preparations comes as thousands of New York City voters again faced hours-long lines Wednesday to cast their votes in the hotly contested 2020 general election, giving the patronage-ladened agency its latest black eye.

Take two locations in Brooklyn: The BOE only sent five ballot scanners to the New York City College of Technology on Jay Street, even though it assigned more than 60,000 voters to the site for early voting. And Barclay’s Center was allocated the same number of scanners, despite being the early voting spot for another 32,000.

That pattern repeats in Manhattan. The Board of Elections provided only five scanners to the early voting polling site at the Church of St. Anthony of Padua in SoHo, despite assigning it nearly 81,000 voters — roughly one scanner per 16,000 voters.

Just a seven-minute walk away, BOE also set up its smallest early voting polling site in the city at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts near Washington Square Park. However, officials set up three scanners for the 8,300 voters who can use the site — roughly one scanner for every 2,800 voters.

The Post sent reporters to 15 early voting sites in the two boroughs and found the scanners were unevenly distributed and that even busiest sites had no more than seven such devices.

“It makes no sense, it shows you how poor their planning is and how unprepared they were for people to use early voting,” said John Kaehny, the executive director of the good-government group Reinvent Albany. “I think the BOE has completely misallocated resources and failed to the simple math to figure out how many poll books and scanners it needs based on the number of likely voters.”

Just say NO on June 23rd!

Hi folks,

Crapper here. If you've been following the blog for all these years, you are aware that John Ciafone has been somewhat of a problem, and has been in the news for his corruption as late as last December. I just wanted to call your attention to the fact that he is on the Democratic primary ballot, running for a judgeship.

So before you mail in your ballot, early vote or head to the polls on the 23rd, I thought I'd give you the heads up, so you can be prepared to Vote ABC: Anyone but Ciafone!

What's on the back of the ballot

Audit reveals that BOE is a mess

From the Times Ledger:

A report from city Comptroller Scott Stringer exposed massive dysfunction within the Board of Elections in a report which audited its performance over the course of three elections in 2016.

The city, which has one of the lowest voter turnouts in the nation, has disenfranchised the public through dumped voter rolls and widespread inefficiency at over 53 percent of the poll sites reviewed where state and federal election laws were broken, according to the audit promised by Stringer in April 2016.

The report revealed that out of 156 polling sites, 14 percent had mishandled affidavit ballots for people eligible to vote but who may not on the rolls. One site failed to inform voters of the option to vote via affidavit, a violation of federal law, and thus “disenfranc­hising” individuals.

Up to 10 percent of poll sites showed many voters went unassisted when issues arose. One example given by the report said a scanner had rejected a ballot and the distracted poll site worker did not notice until the person had already left. Staff at the site were forced to void the ballot and the person’s vote was not counted.

As you head to the polls today, remember...

Stop re-electing tweeders.

Separating the cream from the crap

From BQDA:

​With the growth of new development and renovation in our boroughs over the past five years, our professional associations are excited to collaborate on this event tailored to professions of the built environment that we all share.

In its second annual celebration, the Brooklyn + Queens Design Awards (BQDA) was established to encourage excellence in architectural design, raising public awareness of the built environment and to honor the architects, owners & builders of significant projects. The AIA Brooklyn and AIA Queens Chapters now in collaboration with AIA Staten Island and AIA Bronx Chapters will honor and recognize the best architecture and professionals that Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and The Bronx can offer.

Ladies and gentlemen,

It's your opportunity to tell the architects out there who think they are hot stuff what you think of their designs by voting in the BQDA 2017 People's Choice Awards. Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island are represented in these entries. Here's a sample, but go to this page to vote.

$10 fine for failing to vote

From the Daily News:

A state lawmaker from Manhattan wants to make it costly for New Yorkers not to vote.

Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, a Democrat, introduced legislation this week that would establish “compulsory voting” in the state and punish those who don’t vote with a $10 fine.

“Mandatory voting would drastically increase civic participation and transform the political arena by making politicians more reflective of the constituents that elected them,” Glick wrote in a memo submitted with the bill.

Under Glick’s bill, any eligible voter who fails to vote would be hit with the $10 fine unless they have a “valid excuse” why they couldn’t do so. The legislation does not specify what constitutes a valid excuse.

Any fines collected would be used to improve the electoral process, the memo stated.

Glick’s bill drew prompt scorn from Senate Elections Committee Chairman Fred Akshar (R-Binghamton), who gave it little chance of ever being enacted.

“Last time I checked, this was the United States of America and people have the right to vote or not to vote,” Akshar said.

CB7 suspicious about builder's plans

From the Queens Tribune:

Attorney Michael Michnias came to speak regarding the construction of two three-story, two-family dwelling on a mapped but unbuilt portion of Ash Avenue, with the addresses 42-29 and 42-31 149th Street. The project needed to face a vote from CB 7 because it was being built on an unmapped street.

The vote to approve the project might have been relatively routine, but board members quickly expressed suspicion that the houses were intended to be used as a boarding house rather than kept as two-family units as the application stated.

In all, each two-family house would have nine bedrooms, with two on the first floor, four on the second floor, and three on the third floor. There would also be a boiler and bathroom on each floor.

For many, that was another sign that the owner had intentions to further subdivide the property. They also noted that the number of rooms was large in proportion to the size of the lots, which are 25 feet.

The final vote regarding the construction of the dwellings was 35 to zero, one abstention because of conflict of interest and zero to allow.

Pol wants better voter participation

From the Daily News:

The Board of Elections would be required to send all eligible voters in the five boroughs a “voter history” card that will tell people how many elections they’ve missed in the past four years under a new bill being considered in the City Council.

Councilman Ritchie Torres, who proposed the legislation, said the tattle cards will encourage people to get off the couch and do their civic duty.

He said he felt compelled to introduce the bill, which has its first hearing in the Council on Monday, because of New York’s abysmal voter participation rate.

Nationally, New York State ranked 46th in the country in voter turnout, and only 25% of eligible city voters cast a ballot in city elections last year.

Maybe people just realize that whoever they vote for, they're probably getting screwed anyway.

Will council allow illegal aliens to vote in city elections?

From the Queens Chronicle:

This bill, first reported by the New York Post on Monday, would grant illegal immigrants the right to vote in city elections. And that’s where a crystal clear line in the sand has to be drawn: absolutely not. No way. Never.

The bill has not been introduced yet; no record of it exists in the City Council’s online legislative database. According to the Post report, it is expected to be laid on the table in the spring. And it was recently discussed at a gathering of the Black and Latino Caucus.

Bertha Lewis, the former head of the leftist group ACORN, which was disbanded over its shady practices, is among those lobbying for the measure.

“We want to expand the right to vote for everybody, not suppress the vote,” the Post quoted Lewis as saying at the ethnic caucus event. “What a radical idea.”

Yes, it sure is a radical idea — when you want to expand the vote to people who either broke the law as soon as they arrived in the country, or did it when they violated the terms of their visas by not leaving when they agreed to leave.

That’s going to be a bridge too far for all but the most radical members of the Council, and seeing who supports the bill will be a good measure of determining who really is radical. According to the Post report, Lewis has discussed it with members including Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Councilman Jumaane Williams of Brooklyn and Dromm. Among those three, only Williams has said he supports it so far. Dromm’s office declined to comment on it when asked this week by the Chronicle.

Zoning votes approaching; lobbying ramped up

From The Forum:

The MIH hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 9, at 9:30 a.m. in Council Chambers. The ZQA hearing is the following day, at the same time and place.

Testimony can be delivered at the hearing or submitted electronically: correspondence@council.nyc.gov.

From Gotham Gazette:

Community advocates are making it clear that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to rezone neighborhoods are not acceptable unless they include broader economic development initiatives like local hiring.

As part of his ambitious affordable housing plan, de Blasio has announced several communities the city plans to rezone first in an effort to create more density, build affordable units, and improve neighborhoods. When the mayor initially announced the start of the rezoning process, the blowback was severe. In East New York, which is slated to be the first area rezoned among 15 neighborhoods across the city, residents cried foul that the process involved limited community input, failed to consider local needs, and could lead to wide-scale displacement.

Residents and groups all over the city are concerned that new residential development and other aspects of neighborhood improvement will lead to rapid gentrification and displacement of current residents. Good employment opportunities for those locals can help avoid such pitfalls.

From Capital New York:

As Mayor Bill de Blasio's controversial housing plans come before the City Council this week, his union allies are joining forces with the AARP and the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce to form an organization that will push for the mayor's proposals.

The group, United For Affordable NYC, is being incorporated with city and state agencies as a 501(c)4, lead strategist Neal Kwatra told POLITICO New York.

The four founding unions are the Hotel Trades Council, health care workers union 1199 SEIU, building service employees' 32BJ SEIU and District Council 37 — the largest municipal labor organization in the city.

The fund-raising organization will begin with a seed grant from some of its members and the mayor's other 501(c)4, Campaign for One New York, according to a source familiar with the effort who would only speak on background. The donors have made a six-figure commitment for the initial grant, but the details are still being worked out, the source added.

From the Daily News:

The City Council’s progressive caucus is pushing for changes to Mayor de Blasio’s ambitious but controversial affordable-housing plan.

Apartments should be offered for people making less than the average 60% of area median income — $46,620 for a family of three — currently targeted in the plan, says the 18-member group, which represents about a third of the Council.

The caucus says developers should be discouraged from putting their affordable apartments at a different site — which they say worsens segregation — by requiring 40% affordable housing if they take that option, rather than 25%-30% if they don’t.

It also wants to reduce from 10 units to six the size where a building is exempt from affordable mandates and require half the units to be affordable when manufacturing zones are turned residential.

Recall power to the people

From the Daily News:

A bipartisan group of state lawmakers will be pushing legislation to give the public the power to recall elected officials, a move that could give voters a new way to clean up scandal-scarred Albany.

“It’s important that voters have a right to recall elected officials if they’re unhappy with their performances,” said Assemblyman Luis Sepulveda (D-Bronx), who is sponsoring the bill in the Assembly.

Sen. Tony Avella (D-Queens) has his own recall bill, and has been working with Sepulveda to come to agreement on joint legislation.

Sepulveda’s measure, which was still being fine-tuned over the weekend, would allow voters to petition to recall state and local officials as well as judges.

Currently, 19 states and the District of Columbia permit the recall of state officials, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

At least 29 states have provisions for recall elections in local jurisdictions.

Prepare to vote 4 times next year

From the NY Times:

Even the most civic-minded New Yorkers may become exasperated next year when they are asked to vote in four separate elections. This extra burden on voters is yet another sign of the enduring dysfunction in Albany. New York State lawmakers created this problem because it’s easier on the politicians, even though it’s costly and harder on the voters.

New York’s presidential primary is set for April 19. Congressional primaries are expected to be held on June 28, and state legislative primaries on Sept. 13, with the general election on Nov. 8. There is no reason the state primary can’t be held on the same day as the congressional primary, thus eliminating the extra election and saving the state $50 million.

Lawmakers should change the election schedule as soon as they return to Albany on Jan. 6. But that’s only one step in what’s needed to make it easier to register and to vote in New York.