While early voting for the next mayor doesn’t start until Oct. 25, New Yorkers who vote by mail are already receiving their ballots and every one those ballots is flawed and every ballot to be used in early voting and on Election Day is flawed due to the bumbling and stumbling by the partisan-hack-by-design city Board of Elections.
There are two problems which are apparent in looking at the ballots. One of them is that Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani (on row A) is also listed as the candidate of the Working Families Party (on row D). He shouldn’t be. That spot should be blank.
In April, the WFP nominated a party member, Fordham Law Prof. Gowri Krishna, for mayor. She was just a placeholder, as the WFP was waiting to see who would win the June Democratic primary. After Mamdani won the Democratic primary, the WFP nominated Krishna for state Supreme Court justice in Manhattan. She won’t win one of the four seats, the four Democrats nominated will, but it got her name off the mayoral spot and the WFP put in Mamdani.
Since Mamdani is an enrolled Democrat, a provision of state election law called a Wilson Pakula authorization was needed. So far, so good, but there are special Wilson Pakula rules for the three citywide posts of mayor, public and comptroller. Those offices require at least three of the party’s five borough county committees to approve.
That’s no problem for the three other permanent parties, the Democrats, Republicans and Conservatives. But the WFP doesn’t have any county committees in the city, let alone the needed three. So they are not allowed to give their ballot place to non party members.
The Board of Elections said that no one challenged the Mamdani paperwork and so they let it slide. But it’s a prima facie violation of state election law. The Board should have rejected the certification as it was fatally defective and could not be cured. The same for incumbent Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. He is a Democrat and the WFP can’t give him a Wilson Pakula without three county committees agreeing.
The other problem on the ballots is that Andrew Cuomo is on row I in the Bronx, Staten Island and Manhattan (shown here) but he is on row J in Brooklyn and Queens. Cuomo’s name is at the same geometric position on all ballots, but the label is stupidly different. People believing in election conspiracies might latch on to this, but it’s just standard BOE incompetence.
Former independent candidate Jim Walden (who dropped out and endorsed Cuomo) is on row J in the Bronx, Staten Island and Manhattan while he is on row K in Brooklyn and Queens. And even more confusing, unknown independent candidate Joseph Hernandez is on row H in the Bronx and Staten Island, row G in Manhattan and row I in Brooklyn and Queens.
Likewise, having three different row labels are Marty Dolan and Ismael Malave Perez, who are running as a public advocate/comptroller ticket on their own independent line called the Unity Party. Democrats Williams for PA and Mark Levine for comptroller are certain to win, but should anyone want to vote for Dolan or Malave, their slate is on row K in Bronx, Staten Island and Manhattan, but row L in Queens and row M in Brooklyn.
The multiple rows for Cuomo and the others the Board claims is not an error, but because of the stupid way they assign rows for independent candidacies, which are determined by first come, first served. That is a mistake. It should by random drawing, like it is for the primaries. But either way, it should be consistent so that a citywide candidate has the same row label in all five boroughs. That should be obvious.
Either Mamdani or Cuomo will be elected mayor next month and the Board made errors with both their names on the ballot. Way to go. Why must we have to put up with such ineptitude regarding our elections?
