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New York Restores Voting Rights For Formerly Incarcerated People
By
Brigid Bergin
Published May 10, 2021
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Scott Lynch / Gothamist
By
Brigid Bergin
Published May 10, 2021
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New York took a major step towards expanding the number of eligible voters in the upcoming primary election when Governor Andrew Cuomo last week signed a bill that restores voting rights for anyone released from prison. If they’re released before May 28th, they could register to vote in the June 22nd primary election.
Since 2018, Cuomo has been using his pardon power to restore voting rights to most people on parole. This new law codifies that rule so that upon release from prison everyone automatically has their voting rights restored and can immediately register.
“As people are returning to their communities, this will give them the opportunity to partake in one of the more sort of civic-minded, community-focused things that we can do as citizens, and that is vote,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of the Voting Rights, Elections and Democracy project at the Brennan Center for Justice.
Morales-Doyle, who spent several years advocating for this change, said the new law was especially pertinent to people released over the next few weeks.
“While the governor was using his pardon power to restore rights to people upon release, there was a lag time between when they got out and when they got that pardon because he would get a list of everyone being released on parole every month and then his staff would have to review that list and individually grant pardons. Now it happens automatically,” Morales-Doyle told Gothamist/WNYC.
Each month, anywhere from 1000 to 1500 people are released from New York prisons, said Morales-Doyle, citing a Brennan Center analysis. Now those individuals should be provided notice of their voting rights, a registration form, and the opportunity to register on their way out of prison. People who are already on parole will also get notice of the opportunity to register to vote.
“That's been a pretty exciting advancement in the face of voter suppression elsewhere,” said State Senator Zellnor Myrie, who chairs the Senate Elections committee, and was a co-sponsor of the bill.
Other pending legislation could transform the state’s election laws. Two constitutional amendments, one that would establish same-day voter registration and another that would allow voters to request absentee ballots without having to provide a reason, are working their way through the legislature for the second time.
Both of these changes were passed by the legislature in their last session. If they both pass again, they could be on the ballot for voters to decide as soon as this November.
Another piece of election-reform legislation would address an issue that leads to affidavit ballots being disqualified because the voter is in the right county but at the wrong poll site.
An affidavit ballot is provided to a voter whose name does not appear on the active voter roll list. If a voter is in the wrong poll site, a poll worker is supposed to direct the voter to the correct one. But there are a variety of reasons for why that might not always successfully address the problem, whether it’s because a poll worker does not provide this information or a voter insists they are in the right spot.
“This proposal is a simple adjustment for human error that protects civil rights in a complex system,” said Jarret Berg, an election-reform advocate who leads a group called Vote Early NY.
His organization, which filed a Freedom of Information request to determine why most affidavit ballots were disqualified, found that the top reason was a voter was not registered to vote followed by invalidated affidavit ballots due to a voter showing up at the wrong poll site.
Berg found that 13,800 registered New Yorkers who voted in the correct county, but the wrong poll site had their ballots disqualified. The largest number of disqualified ballots was in New York City, where 9,481 voters saw their ballots tossed out. Those disqualifications did not affect the outcome of any city contests, but they did play a crucial role in a contest upstate.
In that 22nd congressional district, the last contest in the country to declare a winner, incumbent Democrat Anthony Brindisi lost to Republican Claudia Tenny by 109 notes. However, a court declared 128 ballots from registered voters who cast them in the right county but the wrong poll site invalid, a larger number of ballots than the margin by which Tenny won the race.
As the hugely consequential primary election barrels towards New York voters, people will begin to cast their ballots to select their nominees in the races for Mayor, Public Advocate, New York City Comptroller, City Council, Manhattan District Attorney and more.
As of Friday, the New York City Board of Elections mailed out 73,615 absentee ballots and launched their absentee ballot portal where voters can apply for and track the status of their absentee ballot application.
Voters can continue to request absentee ballots online from now through June 15th.
Tagged
election 2021
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
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