According to this story in City and State New York, an on-line and print publication covering government in New York city, the Board of Elections is being required to spend $1,000,000 just because the ballot-qualified Reform Party has two primary contests on June 26. NOTE: the article originally said $25,000,000, but City and State amended the story to say $1,000,000. Thanks to Jim Riley for pointing this out.
New York election administration is already terribly wasteful, because the primary for state and local office is in September, but the primary for U.S. Senate and House is separate, and is on June 26. The major parties don’t have any primaries for the U.S. Senate election, nor in many U.S. House districts, so many parts of New York state won’t have an actual primary on June 26. But the Reform Party set up primaries for itself in two districts. No one is on the ballot for either primary, but because voters in those two districts submitted an “opportunity to ballot” petition, the election administrators must hold primaries and tally any write-in votes. There is no write-in filing procedure, so all write-ins must be tallied. Furthermore, the Reform Party is exercising its rights to invite all independent voters to vote in its primaries, so enough ballots must be printed to accomodate thousands of voters, even though probably only a tiny number of the independent voters in those districts will be interested in voting in the Reform Party no-candidate primaries.
The Reform Party says its motivation is to force the state legislature to pass some sensible election law changes, including giving small qualified parties the option to nominate by convention instead of primary. Thanks to Michael Drucker for the link.
The obvious changes will be for the NY State gerrymander oligarchs to wipe out minor parties and independents even more.
Top 2
NO primaries.
—
PR and AppV – pending Condorcet.
It does not cost $25M to run a primary in 2 congressional districts, even in New York. The figure was probably $2.5M.
The reason it costs so much is the huge number of ballots that must be printed, due to the eligibility of independent voters to vote in those primaries. Also the story says 5,000 workers must be hired, and if they each get $200, that alone would be $1,000,000. Then there are rents that must be paid to the owners of the polling places.
“This article originally stated that the Reform Party’s write-in primaries would cost $25 million. The correct figure is $1 million.”
How much pollution from UN-used ballots ???
Recycled into junk newspapers ???
This must be awfully boring for the poll inspectors.
If someone wants to write my name in leave a reply and I’ll get you my email address and name. Maybe we can further demonstrate the problems with this system by nominating a candidate at the last second starting with these comments.
I’ve worked for board if elections many times and stand by my estimate of $2.5M. No BOE would print ballots for every potential voter, they know how to estimate turnout. The $1M estimate for the workers you came up with is spot on though.
The real outrage is that any Congressional District there is only one Democrat on the ballot (no primary) and zero Republicans (no primary). Unless the Reform Party comes through with a surprise candidate, voters will see only one name on the ballot in November. Remember when we used to make fun of the Soviet Union for doing that?
ALL gerrymanders —
1/2 or less votes x 1/2 rigged gerrymander areas = 1/4 or less CONTROL = Minority Rule OLIGARCHS Control.
Unequal votes for each winning hack legislator in each gerrymander area.
Unequal total votes in each gerrymander area.
See bad olde 1860 gerrymanders >>> 750,000-1,000,000 DEAD in 1861-1866.
—
New Age HACKS in USA = NOT much different from old commie/nazi hacks.
Think Civil WAR II — since the SCOTUS hacks are ALL so MATH STUPID —
IE — THE 3 RECENT ABSOLUTE JUNK GERRYMANDER OPINIONS.
Thanks to Jim Riley for discovering that the original article at City and State had been changed, from $25 million to one million.