voting Archives - Page 8 of 13 - Ramblin' with Roger

The New York primaries: a review

I use the term “enrolled”, rather than the term “independent” because there is actually an Independence Party in the state of New York.

Someone in my office building asked me to explain what had taken place in the New York primaries on April 13. I said it was complicated and was willing to let it go.

But then the 2political podcast, featuring Arthur in Auckland, New Zealand, and Jason, in Washington, DC, gave it a go, and I thought I would do the same. For their benefit, I should note that the Republicans in this state only list the candidates, four in my Congressional District: Cruz, Kasich, Trump, and Ben Carson, who had dropped out of the race.

Democrats list the two candidates, Clinton and Sanders, and then the 4 to 7 delegates per Congressional district. (The districts may be of a similar population, but the number of Democrats vary). This article suggested voting for your candidate, but then voting for a mix of Bernie and Hillary delegates, since it’s unlikely that all of the delegates would go to either candidate. This argument made perfect sense to me, but to almost no one else.

There were several layers of voter issues/complaints I heard about, primarily from the Bernie Sanders supporters, because he was the insurgent candidate, who ended up losing by about 13 percentage points.

The thing that is the way it is, but could change

* New York is a closed primary state. This means that only people registered to vote and enrolled in a party can vote in that party’s primary can vote. I use the term “enrolled”, rather than the term “independent” because 1) it’s more precise and 2) there is actually an Independence Party in the state of New York that received enough votes in the last gubernatorial general election for someone to enroll in that party, or as a Conservative, Green, Working Families, Women’s Equality (essentially a creation of Governor Andrew Cuomo), Reform, and of course the Big Two.

In some primary states voting earlier, non-enrolled voters could vote in the Democratic primary OR the Republican primary (but not both). This is NOT the case in New York. The Democratic and Republican parties don’t want people not enrolled to select their candidates, rightly or not. Their concern that these nonenrolled voters might cause mischief. Those who lean toward the Republican party might pick the Democrat least likely to win in the general election, or vice versa.

There is legislation introduced in the state legislature to allow nonenrolled people to be able to vote in a party primary, but I don’t know what chances it has.

The things that are the way they are, but should change

* For already registered voters, any change to party enrollment was to have been requested by October 9th, 2015 in order for it to have gone into effect and be applicable for ANY primary election occurring in 2016. This is, BY MONTHS, the earliest deadline of ANY state. The cutoff to enroll in earlier voting primary states, such as New Hampshire, was MUCH later. I wrote about this in the Times Union blog on August 30, 2015, after analyzing the information offered at VoteForBernie.org.

And this October 9, 2015 enrollment deadline for existing voters is applicable for the LATER primaries in the state of New York, including the state and local primary races in September 2016. The deadline for new voter registrations and enrollment was March 25th. I DO think there was some confusion on this point, from people who thought they had until March 25 of this year to enroll in a party, whether or not they were new voters.

* In primary elections, voters in New York City and the counties of Nassau and Suffolk (Long Island), Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam (just north of New York City) and Erie (Buffalo), POLLS OPEN AT 6 AM and CLOSE AT 9 PM. At 15 hours, this is the LONGEST period of any primary in the country.

In all other counties, POLLS OPEN AT 12 NOON and CLOSE AT 9 PM, which, at a mere 9 hours, is the SHORTEST period of any primary state in the nation. And not being able to vote before work is rather annoying.

Real, actual problems

Anecdotally, I was reading on Facebook about people who had been voting regularly but were suddenly unregistered. A plurality of these in my area were in Rensselaer County (Troy). Periodically, the local board of Elections sends out a postcard to ascertain whether someone is still at that address. The postcard is not to be forwarded. If the BOE gets the card back, voters are usually stricken from the rolls.

More substantially, 120,000 voters were stricken from the rolls in Kings County (Brooklyn), and other irregularities were cited. Moreover, many people across the country, including New York and California, are reporting problems with their voter registrations being changed without their permission. In New York, at least, an investigation has been launched.

Unfortunately, some folks have conflated the three areas, making understanding the process even more muddled. The long deadline to vote in the primary is a form of voter suppression, I suppose, even more so in the later primaries in the year.
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Here’s how Albany County voted in the GOP presidential primary.

How God wants us to vote

“Any talk of using the Bible should start with a few acknowledgments, the first of which is that the Bible is not a book, rather it is a collection of books.”

A little over a year ago, a few of the bloggers of the Times Union newspaper met at the home of retired television news reporter Ken Screven, in the foreground of this picture. All the other bloggers I knew: historian/environmental activist Don Rittner; photographer Chuck Miller, and Unitarian minister Sam Trumbore.

The person I did not know was Liz Lemery Joy. She was a very charming and articulate woman. Her blog focus is “A Biblical stance on political/legislative issues.”

In March, she first promised to write about Christians and voting. “We’re going to go to the Word of God, and I’m going to show you what God says about the political and legislative issues we’re facing as a state and a nation.”

Later that month, she declared that It’s the Christians fault our country is in such a mess, because they do not vote in sufficient numbers.

Finally, she described Ted Cruz, a breath of fresh air in Upstate! He is, she describes, a “level headed candidate, who actually respects the Constitution, come and address voters in our area. People in upstate are hurting economically and the power-hungry Albany machine has done nothing to help.”

Her chief issue, though, is his opposition to abortion: “How a person values other people’s lives absolutely determines how they will govern in office. Why? Because how they regard the worth of another human life, determines where their moral compass is and how they will carry out everything they do in political office… If a leader doesn’t value life, they will also disregard and be callous to other matters of governing and legislating that require principle and virtue.”

This, unsurprisingly, generated lots of comments, many of them unrepeatable. TU blogger Heather Fazio, who disagrees with Liz, solicited, then summarized some comments about Liz’s posts here and here.

A TU blogger named Michael Rivest declared The Bible does not tell us how to vote, pointing to the scriptural inconsistencies in the arguments of people from both sides of the political fence.

While I certainly would not come to the same conclusion as Ms. Joy did, I tend to agree with her premise, so I don’t think Mr. Rivest is correct either. Cherry-picking Scripture, one can “prove” anything, or nothing, about how God wants us to vote, or anything else.

Walter Ayres addresses this point quite well.

Any talk of using the Bible should start with a few acknowledgments, the first of which is that the Bible is not a book, rather it is a collection of books. It is more like a library and, just as libraries do not all contain the same books, neither do Bibles… These books vary in nature; e.g., some are historical, some are legalistic, some are poetry.

Many times, when people claim that the Bible says something, what they really mean is that a particular book of the Bible says something. Another book of the Bible may say something else.

This brings us to the issue of proof-texting, a method of claiming Biblical support for a position by choosing selected texts, often out of context, to support a particular position. One example is using select verses to support or oppose to the death penalty without regard to the original intent of the author. Proof-texting does not lead to good theology.

And it gets more complicated…

In other words, interpreting the Bible in not always as easy as it might seem. People of good will can reach different conclusions. And we all should be very careful before we claim to speak for God.

What he said.

In a follow-up post, Ayres, who is a self-described Roman Catholic, quotes Pope Francis when he wrote: “An authentic faith… always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it.” He also writes about four principles of Catholic social teaching in the document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.

In the New York Times magazine article Donald Drumpf, American Preacher, Dartmouth professor Jeff Sharlet writes:

Drumpf…returns [faith] to the roots of Christian business conservatism, which is where he has been all along: Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 best seller, “The Power of Positive Thinking”…

“Positive Thinking” isn’t about serving God; it’s about “applied Christianity,” using God to achieve “a perfected and amazing method of successful living.” The method is like a closed loop, a winners’ circle of the soul. “The man who assumes success tends already to have success,” Peale writes, a tautological spirituality as instantly recognizable in Trumpism as the drumbeat of his words: “success,” “amazing.” Peale’s message resonated most with the upper middle class — those, like Drumpf himself, who saw themselves as winners. The prosperity gospel recasts the same promise to those, like Drumpf’s followers, who feel lost.

On the surface, the prosperity gospel is a simple transaction. The preacher is blessed, and you can be, too. All you have to do is invest. How? The usual way: You give him your money. Only, your money is just a metaphor. The good news is that faith will be repaid in kind. The deal — belief in return for relief, belief as a form of relief — is as old as religion, too fundamental to human consciousness to dismiss simply as a con. Pray for rain, sacrifice to the gods, keep kosher — you needn’t believe to recognize the power of trading devotion for the hope of well-being.

My fortnightly church group has been slowly reading Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. They write: “Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal and powerful.”

It’s no secret that on Tuesday, I’ll be supporting Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Presidential primary, who is the gold standard in presidential politics “on matters of economic equality, social justice, combatting poverty and human rights that Pope Francis has placed before the world and at the center of his papacy.” For ME – no, I’m NOT telling you how to vote – he is my clear theological choice.

Or maybe the “Ted Cruz” in this parody article is right, that Jesus IS too liberal to follow:

The most disturbing thing about Jesus, said Cruz, “is his obsession with caring for and hanging out with a bunch of losers, like poor people and homeless beggars, sick and unemployed people, strangers and immigrants (some of them undocumented!), and even prisoners.”

“I’m not making this up,” Cruz continued. “He — the real Jesus — is as radical as any longhaired punk camping out with street people in Boston or Philadelphia. If you don’t believe me, you can go read it for yourself, in the Gospel of Matthew, 25:31-46. Check it out. And don’t miss the part where Jesus says that showing kindness and generosity toward the least fortunate is the same as showing kindness and generosity toward Jesus himself. Now that’s just dangerous left-wing nonsense, worse than Obamacare.”

Presidential primary in New York is April 19

The polls do not open until 12 noon in most of upstate New York

A grumpy person’s guide to the Presidential primary in New York:

1. If you’re not enrolled in a political party (Democratic or Republican), you can’t vote, because they are closed primaries. New York has, arguably, the most restrictive primary voting regulations in the country. New voters had to enroll in a party by March 25, but previously registered folks would have had to have switched their party affiliation by October 9 of LAST year. There is pending legislation to change that, but it won’t affect this year.

Find out if you are registered to vote if you are enrolled in a party, and where you vote.

2. If you need to vote by absentee ballot, it’s too late to write the Board of Elections a letter requesting it. However, you can pick up an application, or print one out, and deliver the application in person no later than the day before the election, i.e., April 18.

3. The absentee ballot itself “must either be personally delivered to the board of elections no later than the close of polls on election day, or postmarked by a governmental postal service not later than the day before the election and received no later than the 7th day after the election.”

4. You may need that absentee ballot because the polls do not open until 12 noon in most of upstate New York, closing at 9 p.m. In New York City and the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Erie, the polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 9 p.m.

5. You will have the opportunity to vote for the candidates and, on the Democratic side, also their delegates. Whether or not you vote for delegates, the candidates will get delegates proportionate to his or her votes. So if there are seven delegate slots, whoever get more votes, based on the allocation, will be the first one or ones chosen to go to the convention.

The candidates on the Democratic side are U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The candidates on the Republican side are business mogul Donald J. Trump, governor John R. Kasich (OH), surgeon Ben Carson, and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (TX).

Here are some demographics of New Yorkers.

NYS voters: are you sure you’re enrolled in a political party?

Whenever your name does not appear in the official poll book, you will be offered an affidavit ballot.

New York is a closed primary state, which means only people registered to vote and enrolled in a political party can participate in the April 19 New York presidential primary for the Democrats and the Republicans. Check your party affiliation, and polling location, online by going to this state Board of Elections site.

I am registered, and enrolled!

If you were enrolled in a party, or no party, last year, it’s too late to change your party designation to vote on April 19. That deadline was October 9, 2015, which, I believe, was the earliest threshold in the country. Brand-new voters could register and enroll, but that deadline (March 25) has passed as well.

Anecdotal reports from New York State, as in other states, suggest that some voter registration records have gone from active to inactive, or from enrolled in a political party to nonenrolled. If your party affiliation was dropped or became inactive through the online registration process, check with your local board.

Upcoming deadlines:
April 12 – Last day to postmark an application or letter of application by mail for an absentee ballot.
April 18 – Last day to apply in-person for an absentee ballot
April 18 – Last day to postmark absentee ballot. It must be received by the local board of elections no later than April 26.
April 19 – Last day to deliver absentee ballot in-person to local board of elections.

Here’s a voters’ Bill of Rights. It notes: “Whenever your name does not appear in the official poll book, you will be offered an affidavit ballot.”

In New York City and the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Erie, POLLS OPEN AT 6 AM – CLOSE AT 9 PM. In all other counties, POLLS OPEN AT 12 NOON and CLOSE AT 9 PM, which I hate, because I like voting first thing in the morning.