IS THIS TRUE? Rigging the New York Vote: Majority of Polling Places do not open UNTIL Noon?
If true, WHO Is this expected to benefit? From what I remember hearing on one of the corp. channels NYC and the suburbs are supposed to be favorable to Clinton. So people are saying it is standard practice for primaries but why? It would seem to disenfranchise a lot of people.
I checked today to see if this was a statewide phenomenon, or limited to the cheapskates on my own local Board of Elections. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that outside of New York City and the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Erie, where the polls will open at 6 o’clock in the morning, every other county in New York does not open for voting until Noon. Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, and Putnam counties are all essentially suburbs of New York City. Erie County, which includes Buffalo, is the only outlier in the bunch.
That means the voters in every other county in New York state will lose those six critical morning hours in which to cast their ballots. If you think this doesn't matter, think again. Many poor and lower middle class folks work swing shifts, which will make it much more difficult for them to vote in this election. If you think that seems unwarranted and unfair, and smacks of potential voter suppression, well join the crowd.
I called the New York State's official Board of Elections information number, (518) 474-6336, and was basically given the runaround. The woman who answered the phone was nice enough, but she had no answer as to why only the voters in Buffalo and NYC - and its six downstate suburban neighbors - are blessed with SIX more hours in which to vote, compared to everyone else in New York State. She took my name and phone number, and promised that someone with "more knowledge of the reasons why some voters are more equal than others,” but I suspect it will be a cold day in hell before I hear back from them.
Until I learned of this, to my mind, effort to suppress the votes in counties in which millions of people live (yes, Virginia, New York City and its burbs do not equal all of New York state, not by by a long shot), I had no idea that the polling hours would be so restricted across much of the state next Tuesday.
To give you an idea, the total population of the New York state is roughly 20 million people. Of that number, about 12.25 million (2012 estimates) live in those counties listed above where voters get 6 extra hours to vote on Tuesday, April 19th. The means roughly 8 million people reside in counties where we cannot vote from 6:00 AM until Noon on Tuesday, unlike more privileged New Yorkers, most of whom live in or around New York City.
This drastic change in voting hours has not been actively publicized to the electorate by the government of New York State or, as far as I know, by the local county board of elections where voting hours have been cut. I only learned of it by sheer accident.
If you are a New Yorker who lives in a county where your voting hours have been slashed, please call the New York State Board of Elections at (518) 474-6336 to demand that the polls open at 6:00 am as is traditionally the case in every election in New York State. Call your local board of elections, too. You can find their website here at this link and clicking on your county shown on the map displayed there.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/14/1515325/-WTF-Majority-of-New-York-Polling-Places-Don-t-Open-Until-Noon-Demand-the-Same-Hours-For-All
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Whether it's new or not, why does New York go to such great pains to prevent people from voting? First, you have to register nearly a half a year before the presidential primaries, then you have to be registered with a party and then you can't vote until mid-day.
You'd think a state as blue as New York would stop these voter suppression tactics. That's not very "Democratic" or "democratic."
