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Can NYC's elections board block ballot questions on housing? The answer is unclear.
By
David Brand
and
Brigid Bergin
Published Sep 8, 2025
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Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images
By
David Brand
and
Brigid Bergin
Published Sep 8, 2025
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A political turf war over New York City housing decisions has a new front: the city’s Board of Elections.
The board says it typically plays only a procedural role in the city’s elections. But its members are now pondering whether they can axe a slate of proposals meant to speed housing construction and override City Council decisions. The board faces a crucial hearing on Tuesday, ahead of a deadline later in the week.
The questions, drafted by a commission organized by Mayor Eric Adams, are supposed to appear on the November general election ballot. Such ballot proposals usually sail through a pro forma process so that New York City voters can decide whether to approve them.
Not this time.
City Council leaders sent a letter to the 10-member election board last week asking it to block the proposed measures. The members are currently considering the question of whether they have the authority to do it, according to the board’s deputy executive director, Vincent Ignizio.
Good government groups and election experts are split on the answer. City Council leaders say the board is well within its rights because they claim the questions aren’t clearly written. But other elected officials, housing advocates and members of the commission tasked with proposing the ballot measures say the board would be acting outside its bounds.
“The fact that unelected, partisan, political hacks are conspiring to deny voters the chance to vote for more affordable housing is deeply corrupt and definitely outrageous,” Comptroller Brad Lander, who supports the ballot measures, told Gothamist.
The three ballot provisions, if approved, would change New York City’s charter — its governing document, much like a constitution — allowing the city to fast-track some affordable housing construction and create a three-member panel that could approve projects rejected by the Council. The measure is intended to break the influence that individual councilmembers have over housing and land use decisions in their districts because the full body traditionally defers to them in a final, binding vote.
If we have the power, as far as I know, we’ve never used it.
Board of Elections President Frederic Umane
Supporters of the ballot measures, including the Charter Revision Commission members, say the changes are necessary to help address a serious housing crisis. Just 1.4% of all apartments were vacant and available to rent, according to the city’s most recent housing survey. The vacancy rate dipped below 1% for apartments priced under $2,400 a month.
Lander said he feared the Board of Election members, particularly its five Republicans and Brooklyn Democrat Frank Seddio — an influential former party boss — would abuse a procedural tactic to block proposals that they oppose on ideological grounds.
“It’s Trumpian,” he said. “It’s preposterous to say [the questions] are not clear enough.”
Ignizio, the board’s deputy executive director, said board staff will present a legal brief to commissioners on whether it has the authority to remove the initiatives ahead of a public discussion and vote Tuesday, just two days before the deadline to set the final ballot.
Some Board of Elections members already appear to side with City Council leaders, who, in their letter, claimed the ballot questions are “a cynical political ploy to mislead voters” and do not adequately explain how the measures could limit councilmembers’ influence over land use decisions.
Councilmembers argue their influence allows them to extract concessions from developers and the city — like additional affordable apartments or other investments, like school and infrastructure funding — that are in the best interest of the communities they represent.
Seddio seemed to agree with the Council’s contention that the questions are not clearly written.
“I believe it’s at best, in my reading, ambiguous and at worst misleading,” Seddio said at a board meeting last Tuesday. “I’m very, very, strongly convinced that this will be a major change to the average person and the average community.”
City Council leaders pointed to a 1994 state appeals court decision affirming election boards’ authority to block ballot questions that do not sufficiently describe the measure before voters.
Charter Revision Commission Executive Director Alec Schierenbeck denounced that argument in a letter of his own Thursday, saying the board serves a “strictly ministerial” role and does not have the authority to block a question that “clearly explains how each proposal would alter housing and land use review in the city.”
The Board of Elections has previously described itself as only having a “ministerial” role to explain why it did not investigate allegations of large-scale ballot petitioning fraud uncovered by a Gothamist investigation or why it certified votes from dead people in a City Council primary centered in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Board President Frederic Umane, a Manhattan Republican, questioned the authority to block the measures during the hearing last week.
“If we have the power, as far as I know, we’ve never used it,” Umane said.
Grace Rauh, the executive director of the good government group Citizens Union, said the board doesn’t have the authority.
“Do we really want election commissioners, who are typically appointed by party bosses, to decide how ballot questions should be written?” she said.
But Susan Lerner, head of the the group Common Cause New York, said the City Council was raising legitimate concerns about whether the language of the questions sufficiently explained the potential loss of influence for the city’s legislative branch if voters adopt the changes.
“This is definitely a move of power away from the directly represented Council to the mayor and his appointed agencies,” Lerner said.
Election attorney Jerry Goldfeder said the board may have the authority to bar the questions from the ballot, given prior case law — but only if board members find the language unclear, not because they oppose it on ideological grounds.
“If they believe that the question is not sufficiently informative there’s an Appellate Division case that says they have the authority to reject it,” Goldfeder said.
Goldfeder said the dispute will likely go before a state Supreme Court judge after one of the sides sues to either block the questions or force their inclusion on the ballot. The board will certify the candidates and questions that appear on the ballots Thursday and then it will start mailing them to voters on Friday, Sept. 19.
“It would bollocks-up the ballot,” he said. “I expect it would be resolved expeditiously.”
Tagged
elections
housing
new york city
David Brand
David is a reporter covering housing for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 908-310-3960.
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Brigid Bergin
Brigid Bergin is an award-winning senior reporter on the People and Power desk. She is fiercely committed to telling stories that help people engage and support democracy. In 2022, she hosted a live, ten-week call-in politics show ahead of the midterm elections called The People's Guide to Power. Brigid's reporting in 2017 included some of the first coverage of a political newcomer now known as AOC. In 2016, she broke the news of a voter purge in Brooklyn just days before New York’s presidential primary, triggering city, state and federal investigations. Brigid also guest hosts The Brian Lehrer Show and All Of It. She graduated from the University at Albany and the CUNY Newmark School of Journalism. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-723-4719.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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