https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/campaigns-elections/new-york-city-purged-voters-2016-it-wasnt-mistake.html
In anticipation of voting in the April 19, 2016, presidential primary in New York, Kathleen Menegozzi checked her registration online. The Brooklyn resident, a registered Democrat since 2008, learned three weeks before the election that she had been struck from the rolls. Another Brooklyn Democrat, Casey James Diskin, who first joined the party in 2012, discovered five days before the primary that he was not registered at all.
In Manhattan, Michael Hubbard, a Democrat since 2015, checked his status online 17 days before planning to vote, only to find that he too was no longer registered. Meanwhile, in Queens, Benjamin Leo Gersh, who also had been a registered Democrat since 2015, checked on his voter status, and saw two weeks before the primary that he too had been purged.
Then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman would eventually reveal that they were among 200,000 New York City voters who had been illegally wiped off the rolls and prevented from voting in the presidential primary. But by January of 2017, when Schneiderman announced that he would intervene in a federal lawsuit against the New York City Board of Elections, along with the U.S. Department of Justice, the news fell on deaf ears.
The announcement had come just seven days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Although it was the first time the total number of purged voters had been disclosed, the media was consumed with a different statistic: the crowd size at Trump’s inauguration. At the same time, a snowballing narrative that Russia had hacked the U.S. election would overshadow the indisputable fact that a domestic government agency had committed election fraud.
The lack of media attention was in stark contrast to the recent barrage of headlines about a right-wing push to purge eligible voters from the rolls. Much of the media ignored New York’s proven case of election fraud, perhaps because it had been facilitated by Democrats, and not by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican with a national profile for championing stricter voter ID legislation.
Schneiderman’s lawsuit, which was initially launched by a coalition of three voter rights groups, never went to trial – the New York City Board of Elections didn’t even try to dispute the attorney general’s findings. “The New York City Board of Elections got caught with their hand in the cookie jar,” said Jose Perez, general counsel for one of the plaintiffs, Latino Justice PRLDEF.
In October of 2017, the city’s elections board quietly settled the lawsuit by admitting it broke federal and state election laws. It agreed to a vague list of reforms in a consent decree, including that it “overhaul its voter registration and list maintenance procedures, adequately train relevant staff, submit to regular monitoring of its voter registration and list maintenance activities, and review every registration cancelled since July, 1, 2013.”
But given the magnitude of the malfeasance, especially the extent to which board members – at every level – were accused of knowingly violating state and federal election laws, the settlement was a slap on the wrist.
The three original plaintiffs – Common Cause New York, Latino Justice PRLDEF and The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under the Law – praised the settlement as a triumph for New York voters, even though none of them could provide details about what exactly had changed to prevent the city Board of Elections from illegally purging voters again.
“This important victory sets forth a course correction in New York City,” The Lawyers Committee and Latino Justice said in a joint statement. “Today’s settlement represents an important victory for the future of New York City elections,” echoed Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York.
Despite the so-called “victory,” the matter was swept under the rug. The press accepted at face value that Schneiderman had imposed an effective penalty for the crime. But a year after the lawsuit’s conclusion, there’s scant evidence the city Board of Elections has done nearly enough to clean up its act – and there’s little sign that the Democrats who control much of New York have the political will to reform how elections are run in the state.
The Empire State was a big prize in the 2016 primary’s delegate race. New York offered the country's second-highest total of Democratic delegates (291) and fourth-highest total (95) of Republican delegates. New York is not a winner-take-all state: Delegates to the nation conventions are awarded proportionally by congressional district.
The primary was also a turning point in the Democratic presidential race, and the 73 delegates up for grabs in New York City were crucial to winning the state.
As the candidates entered the New York race, Clinton was leading Sanders by 209 pledged delegates. Although The New York Times, the Daily News and Newsday had endorsed Clinton, the momentum was with Sanders, who had come off seven straight primary wins. By April 2016, Sanders had narrowed Clinton’s initial 60-point lead with voters nationally, to 10 points, and appeared to be gaining on her. However, a Sanders victory in New York had been deemed a long shot, based on Clinton’s formidable support by the local Democratic Party establishment. “If endorsements and electoral history are any guide – and usually they are – Hillary Clinton has New York in the bag,” the Observer reported in October 2015.
Americans sure know how to play for keeps.
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