No, the Nassau County Board of Elections is not the worst Board of Elections in the state of New York.
That dishonor belongs to the New York City Board of Elections whose galactic level of incompetence and corruption was recently on display in the Democratic mayoral primary where a new system of ranked voting was being introduced.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams had a commanding lead when the polls closed on June 22 with 125,000 absentee ballots yet to be counted and ranked voting yet to be determined.
The board then released ranked-choice tallies for the election-night ballots that appeared to show that former city Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia had vaulted from third place into a near tie with Adams.
But there was a problem. The ranked-choice tallies showed 135,000 more votes cast than on election night.
The explanation came a few hours later. The 135,000 additional “votes” included in the second tally were not real votes, but part of a test run that the board had failed to clear from a computer before posting the numbers. Gadzooks.
This came on the heels of decades of incompetence in which voter rolls were accidentally purged, misaddressed absentee ballots were mailed and city residents faced unacceptably long lines.
And this latest fiasco could have been avoided. The supplier of the software that New York City used to tabulate votes in what is considered by many the most consequential primary in a generation had offered its assistance in counting the votes on several occasions.
The city Board of Elections refused the assistance each time. So the title of worst election board if not worst organization anywhere goes to the New York City Board of Elections.
But the ugly truth is that the Nassau County Board of Elections – like every other board of election in New York state – operates under the same out-of-date rules as the city Board of Elections.
Ever wonder why Florida could provide results of the presidential and congressional elections in the fall and it would take New York weeks to certify the results?
New York is the only state where local election boards are appointed by Republican and Democratic party leaders. The result is one of the state’s few remaining sources of old-school political patronage jobs.
In Nassau County, the Democratic and the Republican parties each get nearly $9 million in taxpayer money – $18 million total – to spend on the board’s 161 employees.
This is a good deal for Democrats and Republicans who together only account for 71 percent of the registered voters in Nassau County – with the Republican share accounting for just 31 percent of registered voters.
It is not such a good deal for upstarts seeking to buck the two parties, the 25 percent of voters who list no party affiliation as well as members of the Conservative and Working Family parties.
And $18 million is a lot of taxpayer money to win the hearts and minds of supporters and it has helped turn the two political parties into taxpayer-funded employment agencies – for politicians, their political friends and family members.
Best qualified for a position? Don’t be silly. In recent years, Anthony Santino did such a bad job as Hempstead town supervisor that he became the first Republican in more than 100 years to lose an election for the town’s top job.
After making sweetheart deals to party faithful in Hempstead, he resigned two days before the end of his term – to take a position as an administrative assistant at the Board of Elections. At a salary of $160,000 a year.
Democrat Robert Troiano, a former senior policy adviser to North Hempstead Town Supervisor Judi Bosworth and county legislator, was Nassau County Executive Laura Curran’s pick for traffic and parking violations commissioner.
Then it was discovered that Troiano had racked up more than $80,000 in federal income tax liens. His punishment? He was appointed to a position at the Board of Elections. At a salary of $140,000 a year. Troiano has now been picked by the Democratic Party to run for District 1 of the North Hempstead Town Board.
Former North Hempstead Democratic Party Chairman Gerard Terry, who recently completed his sentence for tax fraud, also had a job at the Board of Elections before stepping down when he faced charges. It was one of six politically appointed, taxpayer-funded jobs Terry once simultaneously held.
The current system of overseeing county and state elections is, in short, a mess.
Third parties are disadvantaged and taxpayers are forced to pick up the tab for Republicans and Democrats buying the allegiance of party faithful.
This undermines the public’s confidence in the election system at a time when the system is under threat across the country in the wake of the Trump presidency.
And it’s not as if the Republican and Democratic parties have distinguished themselves in using their advantage to select candidates.
In Nassau County, we witnessed in recent years the conviction of a number of Republican officials, including County Executive Ed Mangano and his No. 1 deputy, Rob Walker, and state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos as well as Terry, a Democrat.
Outside of Nassau, we have watched the downfalls of Democrats Gov. Elliot Spitzer, state Comptroller Alan Hevesi, state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silverman as well as many state senators and Assembly members.
And now Gov. Andrew Cuomo is under investigation.
The answer to the obvious unfairness of the current Board of Elections is a professional, nonpartisan agency where elections are run by trained officials whose first priority is getting things right and serving the people who pay their salaries.
This has been a longstanding dream of good-government reformers and examples of the system in practice exist around the country.
Standing in the way are members of the state Assembly and Senate – virtually all of whose positions in the state Legislature are owed to local Republican and Democratic parties.
But there is a glimmer of hope.
In the wake of city Board of Election’s latest fiasco, state Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat and majority leader, announced that she would hold Senate hearings to investigate the recent mishaps and try again for reform.
Now is the time for members of the public to lend their voices to those who say they have had enough of this travesty and want change.
