Elections Professional and Activist
“voters lined up down the block outside a polling site … Dustin Czarny, Onondaga County elections commissioner, said 8,473 of the county’s 328,052 registered voters had checked in to the polls as of 1:45 p.m. .. surpassing the total votes .. in 2019.”
https://www.audacy.com/wben/news/politics/lining-up-for-hours-in-2nd-day-of-early-voting-in-nys
Early voter turnout in Onondaga County has surpassed the 2019 General Election Early Voting totals within only two days, according to Onondaga County Election Commissioner Dustin Czarny.
The application form allows people to designate someone to submit the in-person application and pick up an absentee ballot for the voter, Czarny said.
All you have to do is print out the form, fill it out, and put the name of the designated person on the sixth line.
The Board of Elections doesn’t require any additional paperwork, such as a doctor’s note or a letter from the health department, Czarny said.
Out of the over 5,000 voters that participated in the first day of early voting in Onondaga County, nearly 3,000 were registered Democrats, according to Onondaga County Election Commissioner Dustin Czarny.
“We expect a record turnout upwards of 75% or higher overall,” said @OCBOE Commissioner Dustin Czarny. “It is unknown how many people are expecting to come to early voting but recent opinion polling shows 30% of the public planning to vote early.”
https://cnycentral.com/news/local/early-voting-in-new-york-starts-saturday
I welcome back Jarret Berg of Vote Early NY. We talk about the third Early Voting period in NY history starting on Saturday and what it will look like in the middle of a pandemic. We also discuss the state of voting rights in NY and across the country. Finally our early voting information at votearlyny.org
https://www.facebook.com/dustinmczarny/videos/803814397109831
This episode of quiz the commissioners can be summed up with “Wear a mask, but nothing with a candidates name when coming to the polls”
https://cnycentral.com/news/local/what-can-you-wear-to-the-polls-yes-there-are-rules
And no matter how perfect the ballot and the ballot envelope are, it won’t be counted if it arrives too late, Czarny said….In June, 344 absentee ballots arrived too late, according to county data.“ There’s no cure that will fix that,” Czarny said.
“I was able to get one extra site than what we were legally required to do, but we were never able to have an agreement to have more. .. I do believe moving from VanBuren to Camillus helps … so I’m going to take it as a positive step forward.”
I haven’t been able to really dig in and do a wonky Wednesday in a bit but I have been compiling some data for my Data Show I plan to do Sunday night before the election. Here is some preview of some pertinent data as it stands in Onondaga County for the 2020 election. Hope you enjoy.
This is the registration states of Onondaga County by party for each month of 2020. We can see dramatic growth for both parties in the last month but overall on the year its the Non-enrolled that has seen the most gains, adding 6400 plus voters to their roles followed closely by the Democrats at 5800, and the GOP at about 2700 and 3rd party enrollment only rising by 233. In fact the Non-enrolled is closer than ever to surpassing the GOP in the county as it did inside the City of Syracuse.
The bulk of the registration gains we have seen in Onondaga County to get to our record registration level has been since the June primary. COVID pushed the registration activity to the last few months of the election necessitating OCBOE to work 12 hour days to catch up. IN the 8 months between the 2019 election and the June primary we only added 950 new registrations, since then 14631 new registrations. Nearly 13000 of those registrations were added between September 1,2020 and October 21, 2020
On September 25th I started tracking daily absentee numbers to track work flow. From the beginning it was clear Democrats were taking advantage of the expanded absentee process. Their request rate is more than the GOP and N/E request rate combined. In fact the N/Es have far surpassed the GOP on requests for absentees.
However it is not just requests for absentees that Democrats are excelling at. Its return of absentees as well. We see Democrats returning them at a higher number and a higher percentage rate then GOP and N/e voters with substantially over 50% returned.
Tune into my data show on November 1 to see more.
Dustin M. Czarny