Ballots are examined and tallied | AP Photo New York cancels Democratic presidential primary

ALBANY — There will be no Democratic presidential primary in New York this year.

The state's election officials removed every Democrat except former Vice President Joe Biden from the presidential primary ballot on Monday, a move that has the effect of canceling the election. It was scheduled for June 23.


The cancellation will likely save the state millions of dollars and make it easier to increase the use of voting by mail in local elections in the coming months. But it also will anger supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had hoped to win some delegates in New York to increase their sway over the party’s platform.

“We should minimize the number of people on the ballot, minimize the election for the protection of everybody … and not have everyone on the ballot just for purposes of issues at a convention,” Democratic Board of Elections Commissioner Andy Spano said during the board's meeting.

The primary was originally scheduled for April 28 but it was delayed eight weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic. After that delay, language included in the new state budget extended the time that Spano and Democratic Board of Elections Commissioner Doug Kellner had to remove candidates who had suspended their campaigns from the ballot.

Five days later, Sanders suspended his campaign. He announced his intentions to continue gathering delegates, but that never factored into the Democratic commissioners’ thinking.

“I certainly understand why so many people want to continue the presidential primary,” said Kellner, who said he has received “several thousand” emails from Sanders’ backers in recent days.

“But we’re dealing with a statute [that] specifically says that if a candidate has announced that they’re suspending their campaign, that they can be removed from the ballot,” he said. “What the Sanders supporters want is essentially a beauty contest that, given the situation with the public health emergency that seems to exist now, seems to be unnecessary and frivolous.”

Kellner and other election officials had framed the decision as a logical one that will make it much easier to administer elections in a year with an unprecedented number of administrative challenges.

For one, it will make it much easier to manage a newly expanded system of voting-by-mail. There will still be a number of primaries for congressional, state, and local elections on June 23. But presidential ballots need to be designed differently, because of the way people elect delegates. That would have meant the ballot would need to be printed on a separate piece of paper and would cause at least a doubling in the paperwork involved.

“Mailing 6.5 million ballots for a presidential primary … in addition to whatever number is required for a state and local election, is likely impossible,” a board staff memo on the subject said. “Mailing a lesser number for a state and local election may be impossible as well, but it would likely be more attainable.”

And it’ll save some money at a time when the state's finances are in free-fall.

Most polling sites throughout the state will still be open because of other elections scheduled for that day. But that’s not going to be the case everywhere, and some counties will be able to avoid opening up sites.

“It’s going to make a considerable difference for our bottom line,” said Jude Seymour, Jefferson County’s Republican commissioner. “We walked into this budget year probably $15,000 off from where we needed to be, and honestly not having a primary will get us back into a position where I’m going to be comfortable we’re going to have enough money to fund the November elections.”

The board’s Republican commissioners canceled their party’s primary in March, after finding that President Donald Trump was the only candidate who qualified for the ballot.