The New York City Board of Elections starts counting absentee ballots in Staten Island on Monday, six days from its originally scheduled date. The rest of the boroughs begin on Wednesday. Those delays stem from what the city BOE is calling an “unprecedented volume” of absentee ballots cast for the June 23rd primary election.
According to their latest data it publicly released, the city BOE received just over 389,300 absentee ballots out of the estimated 778,100 they mailed. That is 17 times the number of absentee ballots counted in the 2016 presidential primary. Meantime, it remains unclear how many people applied for a ballot, regardless of whether or not they received them. The last time the city BOE provided that figure was on June 17th.
Despite the record return rate, many of these votes will not count. In some cases, people opted to vote in person after mailing their ballot. Other ballots will get thrown out for various technicalities that include the voter neglecting to sign and date their absentee ballot envelope. But there’s another reason some otherwise valid votes might get tossed: a missing postmark.
Listen to Brigid Bergin's report on the absentee ballot snafu on WNYC
While many more ballots will likely be invalidated for other reasons, such as a missing signature, in a close contest all votes will be fought over. Lawmakers will be watching. And what happens during the processing and counting will affect whether or not lawmakers decide to keep the expanded absentee ballot option in November.
Due to the pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed executive orders making it easier to apply for absentee ballots, allowing New York voters to cite temporary illness or the risk of contracting COVID-19 as a reason for getting one. The state also extended the deadline for when voters could mail back their ballots on primary day, from its original date of June 22nd, so long as they were postmarked June 23rd.
Another unusual part of this absentee ballot cycle involved the envelopes from the BOE. They were business return, postage paid. Normally, a voter must use stamps that the United States Postal Service postmarks to cancel so it cannot be used again.
Despite the change in procedures, a USPS spokesperson, Amy Gibbs, said the federal agency was ready for this election, employing a “robust and proven process to ensure proper handling of all election mail, including ballots.”
“Leading up to the June 23rd election, the Postal Service instructed employees in New York State about the Postal Service’s postmarking processes and procedures. As a result, we are aware of only one report of a postal customer whose request for a postmark was disputed at a post office in Caroga Lake, New York,” Gibbs added.
That single complaint was raised by Richard Kruger, a lawyer from Manhattan, who was staying upstate in the southern Adirondacks. On the evening of June 22nd, Kruger emailed the BOE to relay his experience at a small local post office.
“When I took my absentee ballot to the post office in Caroga Lake, NY, they refused to postmark it as it is business reply mail. This was even after I specifically requested a postmark.
Is this how it is supposed to work? If not, someone should tell the post office,” Kruger wrote to the state BOE. His email was forwarded to USPS officials who replied they would speak with local postmasters the next day, which was primary day.
State BOE officials there had already gone back and forth with the USPS in emails on June 10th confirming the federal agency would ensure election mail was postmarked, even though it was postage paid. One email even included an example of what the postmark should look like and an assurance that any ballot envelopes run through their automated machines would receive the necessary marking.
“There is always the possibility that some pieces miss going through machines and get worked manually,” Travis Hayes III, a USPS official out of the Florida-based mailing and shipping solutions center, wrote in an email to the state Board. “But that volume should be very minimal,” he added.
But that is not what state BOE officials were hearing.
“One of the big problems of going to a vote by mail system is that the Boards of Elections are now in partnership with the U.S. Postal Service for conducting the election,” said Doug Kellner, a Democratic commissioner and co-chair of the state BOE.
In a conference call with local election officials two days after the primary, Kellner said there were complaints the postmark problem was never resolved.
“Several commissioners were reporting that they got large batches of envelopes with voted absentee ballots without any postmarks,” he said.
“This has been a persistent problem,” said Dustin Czarny, the Democratic elections commissioner in Onondaga County in Central New York, and an officer in the New York State Elections Commissioners Association. He said they have had an ongoing issue with the postal service not postmarking election mail, even if it had a stamp.
What’s worse, Czarny told Gothamist/WNYC, is that without those markings election officials have little choice but to toss the ballot.
“The Boards [of Elections] are bound by the law and the law is clear. If a postmark is not on there and we receive them after June 23rd, we cannot count those ballots,” said Czarny.
That was precisely the concern of David Pecoraro, a retired teached in Rosedale, Queens, who applied for his absentee ballot the moment the city BOE made its online portal available.
Unlike many other voters, his ballots actually arrived. He mailed them back on June 3rd. “I remember specifically because that's my eldest son's birthday. And I mailed it in right before we left to visit him,” Pecoraro told Gothamist/WNYC.
He took the short half-block walk to his local post office, with a little extra incentive since he was actually on the ballot to be a delegate for the Democratic National Convention for presumptive candidate and former vice president Joe Biden.
“I waited on line. I asked the clerk at the window to postmark the envelope. She refused,” he said. When he asked to speak with her supervisor, the postal clerk told him she was the one in charge and they did not postmark business reply postage paid envelopes, like the ones mailed in this election. She told Pecoraro to just slide his envelope in the mail slot, which he did. And then he promptly called the BOE later to confirm they received it well before the deadline.
The thing is, not everyone is as engaged or as punctual as Pecoraro. For voters who mailed their ballots closer to the June 23rd cut-off, that postmark is what legally determines whether the BOE will count their vote. Without one, an otherwise valid vote could get thrown out, and that worries election lawyer Sarah Steiner.
“Now if the ballot actually arrived by the 23rd of June, then that itself is proof [it was mailed on time] and those would be valid ballots. But if you mailed it on the 23rd or the 22nd or the 20th or whatever, but it didn't get postmarked, I am concerned that the Board will invalidate those absentee ballots, from no fault of the voter,” Steiner said.
In a close contest, those invalidated ballots could make a big difference. Steiner has clients who may be affected: Assemblyman Michael Blake, a congressional candidate in the Bronx, and Aravella Simotas who’s fighting to keep her Assembly seat in Queens.
The city BOE declined to say how many absentee ballots they have received missing a postmark. Spokesperson Valerie Vasquez-Diaz said the Board will follow the law until they receive direction otherwise.
That means tossing ballots not only if the voter did something wrong but also if the post office did.
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