Early Voting and Election Reform

Early voting, one of many election reform laws passed by New York State this year, starts today. We now have nine days leading up to election day to cast our vote, making doing so much more flexible and accessible. Look up your polling location here. NYC residents can use this link. The results will give you your early voting location from Saturday, Oct 26th through Sunday, Nov 3rd as well as your normal polling location for election day, November 5th. The polls will not be open on Monday the 4th.

Most recently, Governor Cuomo finally signed into law the deadline extension to switch parties in order to vote in the primaries. The original deadline, to qualify for voting in the June 2020 primaries, was October 11th. The new deadline is February 14th, shaving off four months of unnecessary lead time.

In case you missed it, other reforms included:

• The consolidation of state and federal primary election days into one June date
• Closing the LLC loophole which holds LLCs to the same $5000 campaign contribution limit as corporations
• Allowing same day voter registration, eliminating an unnecessary 10 day advance registration requirement
• Allowing absentee voting without needing an excuse
• In-state transfers of voter registrations for voters who move
• Voter preregistration for 16 and 17 year olds

So what is on the ballot for this election? More election reform! Ok, this applies to New York City only and it's only true for one of our five ballot questions. But it's a big one - ranked-choice voting. Check out your ballot here.

I am in favor of ranked-choice voting. From the NYC voting guide: 

A candidate who receives a majority of first-choice votes would win. If there is no majority winner, the last place candidate would be eliminated and any voter who had that candidate as their top choice would have their vote transferred to their next choice. This process would repeat until only two candidates remain, and the candidate with the most votes then would be the winner. This proposal would eliminate the separate run-off primary elections...

My hope is that a rank-choice voting structure would encourage third-party candidates while eliminating their ability to inadvertently spoil elections. Perhaps this could be a step toward dismantling the two-party system that is entrenched in our democracy.

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Kings County Democratic Committee Update

A meeting was held on September 9th, but I was not able to attend. My fellow AD52 ED32 committee member, Malynda Rascoe, was my proxy. Being cautiously optimistic, it appears progress has been made in establishing more transparency and inclusivity in the party. Here is the New Kings Democrats' take and here is a local news story.

Malynda stops by to pick up my proxy... and my baby.