Elections Professional and Activist
Democratic Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny said he expects turnout for the race higher than it was four years ago.
“Historically, city turnout has been trending downward,” Czarny said. “In 2009 and 2013, we were at 32 percent and 24 percent respectively. But the mayor’s race was not seen as competitive in those two races.”
“If people feel better leaving the polling place with a sticker on, and we can remind people that New York State gave suffrage to women a few years earlier than the nation did back in 1917, then this is a good thing,” Czarny said.
Czarny said they’ll have to see how this year goes before deciding if they’ll continue using stickers in the future.
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/news/2017/10/26/onondaga-county-voting-stickers
“The only thing that is anonymous about the voting process is who you actually vote for. Your name, your address, your party registration, whether you vote or not, how you vote, whether absentee or not is a matter of public records,” said Dustin Czarny, Board of Elections Commissioner.
https://www.localsyr.com/news/what-kind-of-voter-information-is-made-public-your-stories/
“The law was originally intended to keep party bosses from being able to get all their friends to register in the party and flip an election or flip a primary right before the primary happens,” Czarny said. “It’s a very long sequester.”
Czarny said that’s why there were complaints from people who were too late to vote in last year’s presidential primary.
“Instead of going door to door, people chose to collect signatures in large group gatherings,” Czarny said. “A lot of these people weren’t registered to vote, weren’t registered to vote at the right address, or weren’t even in the party.”
Candidates must get a certain number of signatures on a petition to make it onto the ballot. For Democrats, that number is 1,000. Republicans must get 508 petition signatures. An independent candidate without a party must get 1,349 signatures because they can get signatures from anybody in the city rather than only registered party members, Czarny said.
BOE Commissioner Dustin Czarny says his latest estimate in April showed about three percent of voters in the city of Syracuse were registered with the Independence party.
Onondaga County Board of Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny says there are two main reasons candidates can be knocked from the race: If they failed to collect enough signatures from registered Democrats within the city, or if their witnesses to those petitions were not qualified.
“Every candidate has had a general objection filed against them, which means that the possibility of specific objections against a any candidate could come in against any candidate over the next week or so. In all likelihood, maybe one or two won’t survive, but we just won’t be able to tell until the end of the challenge weeks.”
Dustin Czarny says there was no piece of the election here however impacted in any way by this hack.
“Election security is of the upmost importance to the Board and we believe our safeguards in place prevented anything from happening and we have no indication that anything did happen.” Czarny says.
He adds that the electronic voter lookups have been used the past few years at eight large polling sites in Onondaga County to help reduce the waiting time for voters who need help finding their election districts when they show up to a site.
Czarny says, “None of our voting machines are hooked up to the internet, these things were not hooked up to the internet as well they weren’t WiFi capable and all of the transfer of date happened via flash drives.”
Democrat Commissioner Dustin Czarny says it’s common to be in need of election inspectors following a big presidential election year. And Republican Michelle Sardo says that starting the scouting process early helps the training process.
https://www.localsyr.com/bridge-street/as-seen-on/onondaga-county-hiring-election-inspectors/
Dustin M. Czarny