It is time for all of us to question seriously whether or not the state of New York is ready for democracy. Not only does the state hold primary elections on a Thursday, but it splits the federal and state elections. And now that the primary process has come to a screeching, shattering halt, the state turns out to be as bad at running elections as it is in scheduling them.

This year's entirely predictable chewy cluster of fck began early, when the essential Rebecca Traister showed up to vote only to find that she'd been bumped off the voter rolls at her customary precinct. Pro Tip, New York Election Folks: a lot of writers live and work and vote in New York, and most of them have accounts on the electric Twitter machine.

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Guess who wasn’t on the rolls this morning at the polling place I’ve voted for four years? — Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) September 13, 2018

And, two hours later:

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Also! My next door neighbor, registered for years as a Dem, an RHA activist, extremely politically engaged, especially in local and state elections this season, is also not on the rolls at our polling place. She’s on her way to get a court order as we speak. — Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) September 13, 2018

Jess McIntosh, a Democratic activist, TV pundit, and the co-host of a (terrific) new radio show with Zerlina Maxwell, also found that she had been disappeared.

And Chris Hayes is hearing from folks, too.

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Ok, so in just my social circle I've now heard of *5* people who, like @rtraister, showed up at their normal polling place, only to be told they weren't on the rolls. What gives? — Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 13, 2018

Who knows? But the son of the mayor of NYC probably is asking the same question.



The whole thing is a mess, as this New York Magazine story makes clear, with on-the-spot, eyewitness, birds-eye lowdown coverage off the electric Twitter machine. Gothamist also reported similar rage and confusion, also ample evidence that some rats were being discreetly fcked.

Voters at predominantly Hasidic polling sites in Williamsburg were largely absent this morning, days after their community was targeted by a controversial mailer sent by the Cuomo administration that painted his primary opponent Cynthia Nixon as anti-Semitic. Poll workers who spoke to Gothamist said turnout was on par with other primary elections, which tend to be incredibly low. Outside of a voting location at IS 71 in Brooklyn, paid workers wearing white pharmacist coats with the logo of the The United Communities and Institutions Williamsburg organization handed out fliers with a sample ballot on them, instructing Hasidic voters how to vote. The choices represented the slate pushed forward by the Cuomo campaign, including current New York City Public Advocate Letitia James.

I firmly believe Andrew Cuomo to be the Ted Cruz of the Democratic Party—ambitious and largely friendless, except to the rich people who keep his political career alive. So, if you tell me he's rolling out the old James Michael Curley election-day playbook, I'll believe you.

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The tipster tells us their polling site, at 143rd St between Frederick Douglas Blvd and Adam Clayton Blvd, was not ready to let people vote until 7 a.m.:

When we arrived at 6:25 a.m. today, they were still closed! At 6:40, they told us it would be another 30 to 60 minutes before they would be open! At that point my Wife started complaining to the poll workers. They finally let us in about 6:48, though the Poll workers hadn’t taken the ballots out of the shrink wrap nor opened their voter books yet. We were first in line for our District, and we finally voted around 7:00am. The big problem is all the people who showed up between 6:00am and 7:00pm, saw the polls closed, and left. These are all lost votes. I am not sure if this was deliberate or just incompetence, but it should not happen or be tolerated.

A tough choice to make, since there seems to be as much that is deliberate about this activity as there is that is incompetent. Vox attempts nobly to explain what's going on.

The latest reports are a reminder, though, that many voters still don’t trust the New York election system. The New York City Board of Elections illegally purged about 200,000 voters off the city’s rolls in 2014 and 2015, an issue discovered during the 2016 elections. Suspicion around that purge has loomed over every election since, even after the board of elections agreed to clean up its act and institute reforms. And every time there are problems at the polls, this spurs concern and frustration that the city’s voting systems are still not up to par.

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“This is a perennial problem,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of voting rights organization Common Cause New York. “It’s very hard to maintain an active voter roll, but in New York City it’s particularly challenging because of the large number of voters, the way people move around readily and the fact systems are not user friendly.”

Needless to say, this vast bungling is the seedbed wherein a thousand conspiracy theories can blossom. Some of it may be deliberate; incumbent officeholders like to keep holding their office. But, more likely, a lot of it is local election officials being gun-shy about the whole "voter fraud" canard that the Republicans, especially, have been pushing nationally for over a decade. And a lot of it also has to do with the fact that we leave the most important act of our democratic republic in the hands of retired firemen, local clerks of varying abilities, and hopeless institutions like the state of New York.



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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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