(As Chair of the Democratic Caucus of NYSECA I will from time to time issue Memorandums of Support on Election bills before the NYS Legislature. I am posting them on my website for lawmakers and the public to know our positions. You can see my caucus’ legislative priorities here as well as the Bi-Partisan Legislative agenda for NYSECA here. If you agree with this bill consider contacting your local representative and asking them to support the bill.)
Summary: Relates to recounts of ballots conducted by the board of elections or a bipartisan committee appointed by the board
Justification
The NYS Election Commissioners Association Democratic Caucus supports A1014/A1259 which would alter the statewide manual hand count threshold put into effect in 2021. It is the experience of our county boards that only the closest of races where voter intent on the ballot comes into play can result in a lead change. We believe allowing for an alternative scan on races under ,5% but over .25% is sufficient to determine the machine counts are correct. This will allow Boards of Elections to expend their limited resources on the races that are truly deserving of the hand count, those races that are .25% or less separating the vote leader and those trailing. The same logic applies to the minimum vote count of 20 being reduced to 10. This keeps races that are not likely to flip away from the hand count at the end of the election.
This week I give a preview of the village elections happening on March 21, 2023 in Onondaga County. I also talk about the budgets released by New York State Assembly Majority & New York State Senate Democratic Conference today that each has assigned millions of dollars for County Board of Elections.
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(As Chair of the Democratic Caucus of NYSECA I will from time to time issue Memorandums of Support on Election bills before the NYS Legislature. I am posting them on my website for lawmakers and the public to know our positions. You can see my caucus’ legislative priorities here as well as the Bi-Partisan Legislative agenda for NYSECA here. If you agree with this bill consider contacting your local representative and asking them to support the bill.)
Summary: Makes commissioners full time employees of the board.
The NYS Election Commissioners Association Democratic Caucus supports S611/A10919 which would mandate that NYS Election Commissioners be full time employees of their Board of Elections. In 2019 the New York state legislature drastically changed the political calendar in New York by moving the September primary in June. This move created a full calendar’s worth of work for Boards of Elections. We now hold election events in March (Village), May (School Boards), June (Village & Primaries) and November (General election. Each event will have 6 months of preparation work along with year-round voter database management.
Full time commissioners are a must even in the smallest of our counties. Decisions need to be made year-round and often daily by the appointed officers of the Board. Often Elections Commissioners who are now part-time end up working full time hours without pay to carry out the reforms the NYS legislature has enacted. It will also help us recruit better candidates for open commissioner positions by offering full time employment in their county of appointment.
(As Chair of the Democratic Caucus of NYSECA I will from time to time issue Memorandums of Support on Election bills before the NYS Legislature. I am posting them on my website for lawmakers and the public to know our positions. You can see my caucus’ legislative priorities here as well as the Bi-Partisan Legislative agenda for NYSECA here. If you agree with this bill consider contacting your local representative and asking them to support the bill.)
Summary: Requires every board of elections to employ a minimum of four full time employees in addition to the appointed commissioners and two additional employees for every twenty thousand active registered voters beyond forty thousand active registered voters.
The NYS Election Commissioners Association Democratic Caucus supports S644/A1258 which would establish a minimum level of staffing for Boards of Elections throughout New York State. Under this bill over 20 counties will receive a mandatory boost in staffing as we prepare for the 2024 Presidential election. This staffing is desperately needed this year as online and automatic voter registration adds to our ever-increasing voter registration requirements.
By establishing a minimum staffing level counties can prepare their budgets next year and beyond. This will also provide basic support to every county in New York. By removing the wide disparity in staffing levels citizens will be able to avail themselves of the same basic level of services and speed no matter where they live in New York State. It will also inoculate Boards of Elections from irresponsible staffing cuts made by County governments that could disenfranchise voters.
(As Chair of the Democratic Caucus of NYSECA I will from time to time issue Memorandums of Support on Election bills before the NYS Legislature. I am posting them on my website for lawmakers and the public to know our positions. You can see my caucus’ legislative priorities here as well as the Bi-Partisan Legislative agenda for NYSECA here. If you agree with this bill consider contacting your local representative and asking them to support the bill.)
Summary: Increases the term of office of an election commissioner from two to four years beginning January first of each odd numbered year.
The NYS Election Commissioners Association Democratic Caucus supports S6933/A4777 which would mandate 4-year terms for Elections Commissioners in New York. We believe Elections Commissioners should be judged on the 4-year cycle of elections we have in New York. The Presidential and Gubernatorial election years are separated by two local years. Having a four-year cycle will allow election commissioners to navigate the challenges of each year before having to stand for re-appointment. It will also allow elections commissioners to make proper decisions based on Election Law, precedent, and proper equity in their Board decisions without having the shadow of a 2-year term hanging over their employment. It will also help recruit better commissioners by giving them a minimum of four-year job security.
Welcome back to the #WeeklyWonk. Each weekend I release an article on a subject relating to elections in Onondaga County and New York State. Often these articles will have detailed stats to consume but sometimes they will be a recap of a prominent issue or on relevant election law. I am turning my eye to the 2023 elections. This week I take a break from looking at the political subdivisions and focus on a work item from the Onondaga County Board of elections. Today I look at the Town of Lysander who will have competitive races this fall
The Town of Lysander sits in the Northwestern most point of our county and is seen as one of the more GOP leaning towns. The Town of Lysander has 17,561 voters. The Town of Lysander partisan breakdown shows a strong GOP lean. The GOP has 6438 37%) of the active registered voters, 5114 (37%) are registered Democrats, and in third place 4772 (27%) are registered non-enrolled. While a strong GOP plurality, Democrats are ahead of non-enrolled which indicates they have a fighting chance in this town. I have split the Town into 5 different distinct regions (Center, East, South, Village, and West. The Center are the eds from north of the village of Baldwinsville to the Oswego border and have 20% of the voters. The East are smaller denser eds bordering the town of Clay and have 23% of the voters. South are a set of eds in the southeastern corner of Lysander between Clay and Van Buren and touching Salina and has 24% of the voters. The village section is the northern half of the village of Baldwinsville that is part in Lysander and part of Van Bure with 19% of the voters. The West are the western most rural Eds that have 14% of the voters.
In a new feature I am bringing to the #weeklywonk this year I am doing a heat map for each political subdivision. I will be looking at the current partisan makeup of each individual ED and heat mapping its partisan lean based on the advantage for the Democrats and GOP. Lysander is a GOP town but there are eds where Democrats do have some advantage. The rural eds in the western part of the district are heavily GOP but as we move east it gets a little better. There are just 4 eds with actual Democratic advantage, we have slight leans in EDS 8,13,14, and a major advantage in ED 17. The other EDS have a variety of GOP advantages with slight leans in EDS 6,7, & 18, standard advantages eds 4,11, & 12, substantial advantage in eds 5,9, & 16, major advantages in eds 2 & 3, and overwhelming advantages in eds 1 & 15.
The Democrats in the Town of Lysander as well as the non-enrolled are making significant in-roads into the GOP plurality. This is partly due to a reaction to Trump in 2016 as we saw in other communities but really an ongoing process as the town grows. Since 2009 Democrats have gained 1261 voters. The Non-enrolled has grown the most with 1351 voters. The GOP has grown as well since 2009, but at a smaller rate gaining just 447 voters. This means the Democrats and non-enrolled have gained at 3 times the rate as the GOP.
When we look at the partisan breakdowns in the regions, despite the g=inroads Democrats have made, they do not have a plurality in any of the regions. The closest they are to the GOP are in the village section where they only slightly trail the GOP. They are also faring well in the Center and eastern portions of the district, as they are behind the GOP but just by a little more than the Village portion. In the southern and western portion not only do the Democrats trail the GOP, badly, they are also in 3rd place to the non-enrolled.
Looking at the growth of voters since the last redistricting cycle, 2012, we see that the regions are all growing, but at a different rate. The southern portion or Lysander is growing at twice the rate of the other regions gaining 1091 voters. The Center, East, and Village regions are all growing at a moderate pace. The Center grew by 599 voters. The East grew by 575 voters. And the Lysander portion of the Village of Baldwinsville grew by 554 voters. The rural western portion of Lysander grew the least gaining just 350 voters.
As noted, Democrats have been gaining and we can see that Democrats since 2012 have gained in every region. When we look at the partisan divide Democrats have closed the gap most aggressively in the East, gaining 9.74%. The South, despite being the most dominant GOP region, Democrats have grown as the region grows gaining 8.04%. The Village portion of Lysander has seen Democratic gains of 6.09%. The Center portion also saw modest Democratic gains of 5.38%. The Western portion Democrats have only made small gains, 1.44%.
When we look at the comparative races, we see a Town that solidly votes GOP in November with few exceptions. In the 2022 Governor’s Race the Town of Lysander voted for Governor Hochul’s opponent Lee Zeldin with 53.33% of the vote, 7.25% less than the rest of Onondaga County. In 2021 the town of Lysander voted for the GOP candidate by 60.39%, 12.91% less than Onondaga County as a whole. The only Democratic win was President Biden, carrying Lysander with just 50.53% of the vote, which was 8.35% than his countywide results. Lisa Dell, the GOP candidate for County Clerk, was able to win largely because of her performance in Lysander, where she was Town Clerk, with 67.75% in the 2019 County Clerk race, 15.49% more than the countywide results. The last local race of note was the Supervisor race in 2019. While the GOP candidate won the race, they only managed to get 48.01% f the vote in a 3-way race. The Democrat was second with 26.99% and the independent was third with 25.00% of the voter.
In 2023 the Lysander Town Democrats are currently passing petitions to challenge the supervisor race again. Kevin Rode was the Democrat who came in second in 2019 and subsequently won a seat on the Town Board is looking to challenge the supervisor again, this time one on one and he has the Conservative party endorsement. William Stowell is running for Town Board on the Democratic line and Ken Christopher is for Town Justice. It is noted in the past the Democrats had a coalition of GOP and Democratic voters gave them control of the Town Board and Supervisor before losing it in a caucus snafu in 2013. Past results show it is possible to form such a coalition, specially if turnout can be boosted, to achieve victory. Contact Vicky Freylue the Lysander Democratic Chair if you want to help at vickie.freyleue@gmail.com or find them on Facebook here.
That is, it for this week’s edition of the #WeeklyWonk. Next week I will dive into the Town of Manlius, one of the Democratic superstars of the last few election cycles, As always go to dustinczarny.com and subscribe to get all your content and election news updates. I run that website, along with these series of articles, as part of my voter education. I never take ad money or charge subscriptions paying for the site with my own personal funds. Subscribe here.
In this week’s episode I interview Joanna Zdanys of the Brennan Center for Justice. We talk about the push for funding the Public Campaign Finance board as well as the Brennan Center’s other work on making Democracy better in New York and throughout the US. Enjoy.
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The NYSIRC held a series of public hearings on their draft Assembly plan for New York’s 2024 elections. You can review their draft here.
Submitted Testimony to New York State Independent Redistricting Commission.
Draft Assembly Maps
March 8, 2023
I am submitting testimony today on the NYSIRC draft assembly plans to redraw NYS Assembly districts for the 2024 election. I was unable to attend the live hearings in Onondaga County in February due to work obligations. I have been the Democratic Elections Commissioner in Onondaga County since 2013. I have also been intimately involved in redistricting on the local level in Onondaga County and the City of Syracuse. I am submitting this testimony today as a resident of Onondaga County; however, I am drawing on my experience as elections commissioner and fair maps advocate. For the most part I will center my testimony on the divisions proposed in Onondaga County.
The NYSIRC should take a least change approach to Redistricting from the existing Assembly Maps.
The original NYS Assembly plan differs from the other maps passed by the NYS legislature during the 2022 redistricting process. Though the court has found that there was a process violation of the NYS constitution as the INYSIRC failed to submit second draft plans to vote on, they did not find the plans partisan in nature. The Assembly plan received bi-partisan support in its vote in the legislature. In practice in last year’s elections the minority party did not lose any seats, in fact the minority party gained seats in the 2022 election on the new lines.
Given the absence of any proof of partisan intent or effect of the Assembly districts passed by the legislature in 2022, the NYSIRC should adopt a least change map. New Yorkers have been confused by the tumultuous redistricting process in the NYS Senate and Congressional lines last year. I believe the court realized this when adopting to send this back to the NYSIRC instead of adopting a special master. The maps proposed in the draft map for Central New York is a radical unnecessary change to the NYS Assembly lines from 2022. This will once again cause confusion in 2024. If the court or evidence showed partisan intent in redrawing these lines, I would be in favor of a radical redraw. Since it did not, I believe the changes to the districts in Onondaga County are unnecessary.
Division of Syracuse
The NYSIRC map changes the way Syracuse is divided into two assembly districts. The City of Syracuse must be divided into two different Assembly districts due to its large population. For at least the last 20 years the City of Syracuse has been divided into two nearly equal portions population wise and paired with suburban towns. The NYSIRC chose to handle this division by having one Assembly district wholly inside the City of Syracuse and then a small portion of the city paired with some suburban towns and some rural towns. The division the NYSIRC made in Syracuse puts that portion of the city in a district so divided it could be lost in Representation.
Urban populations have drastically different needs than their suburban and rural counterparts. It is much preferred to pair equal parts of Syracuse with the Towns that share borders with them, like Dewitt, Onondaga, Geddes, & Salina. The new proposed 128 does pair the Eastwood portion of the City with Dewitt, however including Cicero & Manlius, exurban towns, and Lafayette a rural town, joins the city residents with disparate and different communities that will drown out the city residents. The Town of Onondaga does share a border with the city, but it is on the complete opposite side of Syracuse than the small section of the city it is paired with.
While I believe the City of Syracuse is better served with being equally divided and paired with towns that share the borders, if the NYSIRC insists on taking a small portion of the city to par with these towns, the Southeast corner of the city in the 17th Ward would be a better match to share with the communities in Cicero, Dewitt, Lafayette, Manlius, and Onondaga. If the NYSIRC wants to improve on the City of Syracuse division from the Assembly map it could look at a different division. Instead of having one Assembly district take inner city neighborhoods with a small connection through the east side to the suburban communities while the other district loops around, the commission could use more of the neighborhoods in the east side or university area giving a more cohesive and compact shape to the districts inside the city.
Division of Towns traditionally paired together will split up communities of interest.
Unfortunately, outside the City of Syracuse the draft map by the NYSIRC also misses the mark. While I commend the NYSIRC effort to keep towns whole in Onondaga County. Removing Lysander from an Assembly district that has other neighbors in Onondaga County will in effect less those citizens voices as it is paired with rural smaller Oswego County which has different needs from their representative. Splitting up the towns of Clay and Cicero ignores that they not only share the village of North Syracuse but will have common interests going forward with the introduction of the Micron development and the residents that will be coming here in the next ten years. As stated in the section above, Lafayette being paired with larger towns and the City of Syracuse threatens to put that town as the odd man out in that district.
In conclusion the NYSIRC should scrap its draft map and adopt a least change Assembly map based on the bipartisan maps passed in 2022. The maps in 2022 were not found to be a partisan gerrymander and elected representation that gave more power to the minority party in 2022. Keeping the 2022 legislatively drawn map with minor changes is the best option so far into this cycle. This would resolve the technicality found by the court while keeping the communities together that have already elected representation.
Welcome back to the #WeeklyWonk. Each weekend I release an article on a subject relating to elections in Onondaga County and New York State. Often these articles will have detailed stats to consume but sometimes they will be a recap of a prominent issue or on relevant election law. I am turning my eye to the 2023 elections. This week I take a break from looking at the political subdivisions and focus on a work item from the Onondaga County Board of elections. Today I look at the Village of Manlius who is having a special election this March.
The Village of Manlius is located inside the Town of Manlius. The Village Board and Mayor have decided to hold their elections in the traditional March election period. The Onondaga County Board of Elections have been running the Village of Manlius elections for over ten years. It is only recently The Town of Manlius Democratic Committee started running candidates on the Democratic line in 2022 when a Manlius Village Judge to fill vacancy and is doing so again this year for the regularly scheduled village board election. Thus, it is a great subject for my #WeeklyWonk series.
The Village of Manlius has 3,361 voters. The Village of Manlius partisan breakdown shows a strong Democratic lean. Democrats have 1284 (38%) of the active registered voters, 937 (28%) are registered as non-enrolled, and in third place 900 (27%) are registered GOP. With non-enrolled outnumbering GOP and Democrats well in first place it is typical of the other strong Democratic communities in our county. The village is split into four different election districts, Manlius 14, 20, 23, & 27. They are remarkably similar in size, with the largest being Manlius 23 at 911 voters (27%) and the smallest being Manlius 14 at 786 (23%).
The Village of Manlius, like the other suburban communities, have undergone a transformation. Once a dominant GOP village, the community was losing GOP voters on a steady pace until 2016 when the Trump election saw large party changes in suburban communities. Since 2012 Democrats have gained 276 voters while the GOP have lost 234 voters. Democrats had the most gains but the non-enrolled have seen a gain of 184 voters, and in 2022 they overtook the GOP as second in the village.
When we look at the four election districts in Manlius, we see a village that has strong Democratic communities in each corner. Democrats have strong pluralities in each of the four election districts. The strongest registration advantage is in Manlius 14 where the GOP is well in third place. Manlius 20 & 23 have strong Democratic pluralities however the GOP are ahead, if barely, the non-enrolled voters. Manlius 2 is the most even district with the smallest Gap between the GOP and Democrat but interestingly the non-enrolled have overtaken the GOP here as well.
When we look at voter growth the village of Manlius has gained 234 voters since 2012. The lions share of that growth has been in Election District 14 gaining 105 voters despite it being the smallest Election District. This is followed by 55 voters in Manlius 23 which is the largest ED. Manlius 27 has gained 44 voters. Showing the least growth is Manlius 20 with only 30 votes.
In terms of Democratic growth, we see a correlation with overall voter growth. The ED that had the largest growth since 2012 also saw the most Democratic growth. ED 14 has seen a growth of 19.61% in the Democratic plurality in the ED. ED 20, which had the least overall growth, has seen only a 3.33% increase in the Democratic plurality. Manlius 27 and Manlius 23 had similar Democratic growth and saw similar Democratic growth. Manlius 27 saw a growth of 11.85% and Manlius 23 saw a growth of 9.78%.
When we look at the comparative races, we see a village that solidly votes Democratic in November, but more evenly split when a March village election happens. In the 2022 Governor’s Race the village of Manlius voted for Governor Hochul by 63.09%, 9.31% more than the rest of Onondaga County. In 2021 the Village of Manlius voted for Democrat Ant%, 6.02% more than Onondaga County as a whole. Despite losing Onondaga County, Mark Kolinski carried the Village of Manlius with 51.65% in the 2019 County Clerk race, +3.92% ahead of the countywide results. The race for Village justice in March last year did not go the Democrats way with only 44.13% of the village voting for the Democratic candidate. The GOP does not run candidates on their party line preferring to run on independent nomination lines and they won the 2022 Village justice race with over 55% of the vote.
That is, it for my look at the March village elections in 2023. Only the villages of Fayetteville and Manlius have Democrats running in this year’s March elections. There are also village elections in Baldwinsville, Fabius, Jordan, and Skaneateles. Those elections are run by the village clerk and the Democrats aren’t running candidates on their party line, so I am not analyzing them this year. Next week I start to focus on the Towns of Onondaga County. I will be starting with the towns that the Democrats are running candidates using designating petitions instead of caucus, Lysander, Manlius, Salina, and Spafford. Next week we look at Lysander where Democrats have had recent success despite a heavy GOP enrollment. Remember to subscribe to dustinczarny.com for all election news and content updates.
In this week’s show I welcome Ben Weinberg of Citizens Union. His organization has recently authored a white paper on increasing turnout in NYC elections by moving them to even years. We also talk about how that might apply statewide. Enjoy.
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Dustin M. Czarny 