Friday - October 29, 2010

Now that’s a real New York attitude

An odd trio of Conservative Party chairman Mike Long, New York Civic founder Henry Stern and billionaire cosmetics heir Ron Lauder gathered on the steps of City Hall today to start a campaign to make sure that once again local voters decide to institute term limits.

“The voters of the city of New York have voted twice for term limits,” Long said after the press conference. “Three strikes and you’re out- if you don’t listen to the people then you shouldn’t be in office,” he said referring to the previous two decisions.

The three are concerned that the placement of the term limit—on the flip side of the ballot—will mean that many voters ignore it.

“The difficulty is that it’s on the back of the ballot. If people are informed about it though, they’ll know to turn it over and vote yes to question number one,” Long said.

Stern said that he hopes voters recall that the city council overturned their previous expressed will in two citywide referendums.

“What we have here is a moral outrage,” Stern said. “The issue is that the people spoke out twice and the Mayor arrogated it twice.”

New Yorkers for Term Limits, a group financed through individual donations including reportedly million dollar donations by Lauder, created two 10-second television ads. The ads play on the anti-incumbency theme that has been so prevalent in this year’s races, saying “Politicians are so scared of bringing back term limits, they hid the question on the back of the ballot,” and telling voters to “Flip over the ballot. Flip off the politicians”.

Current NYC Mayor Bloomberg is said to be in favor of term limits too. Not that that stopped him from bending the rules for himself so that he could be the only 3 term mayor the city has ever had.

But the ballots themselves - or about half a million of them at any rate - are messed up. They have check boxes underneath the candidate’s area, but the printed instructions say to fill in the oval above or next to the candidate’s name. Guess they should have uses a non-union proofreader.

The Board of Elections said at an emergency meeting Friday that it will take action to avoid voter confusion about new ballots with misleading instructions.

Instructions on the paper ballots for the election on November 2 say that voters should cast a vote by filling in the oval above or next to the name of the candidate.

However, the ovals are actually below the candidates’ names.

“We are doing everything in accordance with the law. This is just the ballot the way it is and if you ask me if there is confusion? I don’t see any confusion,” said BOE Executive Director George Gonzalez.

Gonzalez said he does not anticipate a problem, but said there will be flyers inside booths clarifying how to vote and staff on hand to answer questions.

“This is the same ballot that was used in the September 2010 primary election. Over 400,000 cast their vote using this ballot. That specific issue was not brought to our attention,” said Gonzalez. “But again, to make sure that everything goes smoothly and minimal confusion for November 2, we’re taking every effort and step to take corrective action to minimize any possible problem the voter may have.”

BOE officials said it is too late to reprint the ballots for November 2, but they will correct the issue in future elections.

The ballot trouble is the latest mess to hit the Elections Board. Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the BOE’s performance on Primary Day a “royal screw-up.” Also, this week State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli released a scathing report this week detailing the mistakes.

I think the real anger is yet to come. Most New Yorkers don’t know that the new term limits question exempts the top 33 elected officials. So they can all run again if they want. And leave everyone wondering if they’ll just ignore this iteration of the will of the people as well.

Goldstein is taking some heat himself over the ballot questions, specifically the one on term limits. It asks voters if they want to return to a two-term limit for city officials, but sitting lawmakers will be exempt from any change.

“When people learn about this exception being made for 33 elected officials, they’re outraged,” said Morgan Pehme of New York Civic.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/29/2010 at 06:20 PM   
Filed Under: • Humor • Politics •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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