Elections Professional and Activist
In today’s Zoom with Czarny I sit down with Perry Grossman of NYCLU. We talk NY Voting Rights Act and how it might change our electoral landscape. We also chat about the first day bills passed by NY Senate yesterday, Finally we touch on the Onondaga County redistricting process. Enjoy.
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Today I talk to Dave Harding one of my part time mobile custodians at the Onondaga County Board of Elections. We talk abotu his job and what it entails as well as some of the challenges he has faced over the last few years. Check it out.
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From time to time I will do a site update letting you know my progress in building this website. I launched site officially on January 2, 2022, but I started actually working on it on December 24, 2021. The idea for this site was to catalog not only be a home for my current podcasts, writings, and media appearances, but also a repository for the past. I had no idea how much that would entail.
As of right now I have 547 different items now on this website. 3 of those posts are site update posts, including this one. The rest break down into three main categories:
Media 248 Posts: Features 25, Interviews 223
Podcasts 210 Posts: Commissioner in a Car 108, Zoom with Czarny 101
Writings 86 posts: Editorials 14, Testimony 16, Wonky Wednesdays 56
All of my Wonky Wednesday articles from my Tumblr blog & Zoom with Czarny podcasts are completely uploaded to the website.
It was in May of 2020 where I was religious about adding Facebook videos to my youtube channel but I did have a smattering of videos dating back to 2016 including my first commissioner in a cars, they are all up on the website
My progress in scrolling through my Facebook page now dates back to November 1, 2019. So Editorials, Features, Interviews, Testimony, & Commissioner in a Car episodes from before then are limited on the website. My official facebook page started in September 1, 2018. I am not sure how much stuff from before that date I will be able to capture from my personal facebook postings. When I get to that point though I will cross that bridge.
My hope is to continue to make progress on the old stuff as I add new content. I found a way to eliminate notifications from going to subscribers when I post old stuff but it involves taking the site off line, so I will try and do it a month at a time. It is interesting to revisit old moments in time.
Most recently going through all of 2020 and the fear and uncertainty of that time period was an experience to remember. As scary as the current wave of the pandemic is it pales in comparison to March 2020 and the months afterward. Thank god we have the vaccine now and a path out of this pandemic. That along with mitigation efforts like masking in public indoor spaces and therapeutic options we can learn to live with COVID as an endemic measure.
Elections changed in 2020 forever. We moved, cancelled, and rescheduled the Presidential primaries. We rescheduled and cancelled the special elections for SD 50. We mailed absentee ballot applications to every voter for the primary and developed online applications for the general election. We implemented absentee ballot cures and tracking systems. We learned how to hold in person voting with masks and sanitizing of equipment. We dealt with record participation and COVID outbreaks amongst BOE staffs. We rose to the challenge, even when we failed.
The importance of vote by mail in the pandemic allowed our Democracy function while keeping voters safe. The failure no fault absentee balloting proposition on the 2021 ballot is a blow to Vote by mail, but not the end. Already it looks as if New York may extend the pandemic excuse for 2021. Also the changes in how we canvass absentee ballots in 2022 will eliminate the ridiculous challenges we saw in 2020 that tried to prevent valid ballots from counting.
Expanded in person options with Early Voting will become a priority in 2022 mainly due to the long lines we saw in 2020. With New York being a mainly in person voting state until 2025 at least expanding Early Voting becomes a major priority. It took awhile but in 2022 Onondaga County will have 10 Early voting sites instead of 6 and sites will expand throughout New York State. Weekends will have 8 hour shifts instead of 5. We are still behind many other states but we are improving.
Thank you once again to all of those who have supported me throughout the years as well as the staff of the Onondaga County Board of Elections. I hope you find this new venture of mine informative. As always if you are new to the site you can subscribe below. I will never ask for outside money or have advertisements on this site. This is part of my voter outreach and supported 100 percent by my own efforts and money.
Czarny said to expect the trend to continue as Republicans grow older.
“They’re aging out,” he said. “The Republicans are not replacing their older electorate with younger voters and people are moving or passing on.”
I did a break down with the age groups to buttress my statement above and show the disparity in age groups.
Veterans Organize CNY invited me to make some remarks on the one year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection at the capitol. I talked not just about that day but how election misinformation for 20 years led to that day and how it is ongoing since.
Please see the entire testimony and event here:
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One of the purposes of this website was to catalog current future and past interviews as well as my testimony and writing. When I launched on Sunday I was able to transfer all of my Tumblr blog posts which had #wonkywednesday articles going back to August of 2020. I was also able to catalog all of my commissioner in a car and Zoom with Czarny posts as well as feature and interviews going back to August 2020 before launch.
I have some older commissioner in a cars from 2016 in already from my Youtube channel and occasionally I will be trying to add older media, Zoom with Czarny’s going back May of 2020 as well as all old interview and feature appearances and interviews going back to the start of my work as Elections Commissioner in January 2018 when I started my public Facebook page and I may even try and find older articles going back to my nomination of Elections Commissioner in September 2012.
It has come to my attention though when I post older posts many of my subscribers get email notifications. Recently I posted all of my media mentions from July 2020 and it caused a few emails to go out. I am working with WordPress on some workarounds to fix this however you may want to switch to Daily delivery of emails instead of immediate. Most of the time I imagine this website will only post one new blog a day however, n the future, specially around busy elections, there may be multiple interview and feature appearances causing four or five different blog posts.
To change your subscription delivery at the bottom of an email notification you should see a manage subscription button.
Click on the manage subscription button and it should take you to the Subscription Management page where you can change to “Daily” delivery instead of immediate.
By switching to daily delivery it will keep you from getting multiple emails a day when I post older posts or even in busier times when there may be multiple news articles a day.
Thanks for subscribing to dustinczarny.com. I hope that you stay involved and find this voter education project of mine resourceful in the new year.
-Dustin
EDIT: It does look like I have figured out how to add past posts without notifications going to the subscribers. I have to actually take the site to private while adding these posts, then go back and take the site public again after. I added all of June 2020 posts and now have every episode of Zoom With Czarny (which started May 22, 2020) on the website. I will continue to add to the site for past posts using this method to keep you from getting emails, though I still think it is best to switch to daily updates.
Welcome back to #wonkywednesday. Every week I take a write a column dedicated to election and registration data in Onondaga County and New York State. Election Day voting has changed dramatically over the last two years with the addition of Early Voting giving voters another option starting in 2019. Furthermore, the pandemic has increased voters’ reliance on mail-in balloting. Election Day voting is still the preferred method of most voters. This week I investigate the data behind Onondaga County’s Election Day voters.
For the 2021 General Election, Election Day vote accounted for over 83% of the overall vote, by far the most popular option. Early Voting only accounted for 10% of the vote and Absentee voting 6% of the vote. Of the 78,564 votes cast on Election Day, Democrats and Republicans nearly tied in turnout consisting of 37% of the electorate each. Democrats make up 38% of the electorate of Onondaga County so they slightly underperformed. The GOP slightly makes up over 27% of the electorate of the county so they significantly over performed on Election Day. Once again, the blank or non-enrolled underperformed as they account for 27% of the electorate but only 20% of the Election Day vote.
The reforms of 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic have significantly decreased the election day portions. It is notable that during the presidential election only 51% of the electorate voted on Election Day, however in a time before vaccines amid a pandemic and in a high turnout election it is not the best comparison. The best comparison remains to 2019 and we do see a drop off in Election Day participation. The overall raw numbers drop from 95,352 in 2019 to 78,564 in 2021 is mostly due to a lower turnout year in 2021. The percentage of voters choosing Election Day though is lower as well. A drop of over 5% means voters are getting use to the alternative voting methods in Early and increase use of absentees. This is likely to continue to drop over time.
Eight of the top ten polling places throughout Onondaga County are located outside the City of Syracuse. Suburban sites usually have more parking and can accommodate more people than city sites that must account for more pedestrian traffic. The two city sites, Bellevue Heights and American Valley Legion are results of poll site consolidations due to COVID restrictions on senior homes and the wish to get out of some public schools. When we look at evaluating polling sites and whether to add more sites it may be to lessen the burdens on these large sites. All of these sites have extra inspectors and ballot on demand printers to help accommodate the crowds.
Polls are open between 6am and 9pm on Election Day, the longest day in the United States. This graph shows the number of votes cast in the previous hour on Election Day. Though polls close at 9pm there are a small number of votes cast after 9pm since voters in line at close of polls are allowed to check-in and cast ballots. This data is new and made possible by our Knowink Poll Pads poll books which were implement in the 2019 General Election. This year we saw a steady increase of voters throughout the morning Cresting after work and then falling dramatically. Last year we saw a dramatically different pattern with long lines in the morning and falling all day long. Unfortunately, our 2019 data was never saved for the hourly performance, so we are unable to make that comparison. Still the wildly changing patterns make it difficult to determine proper staffing levels on a shift basis and that is why we rely on all day inspectors.
That is it for this week. Next week on #wonkywednesday I will look at the polarization of voting methods over the last three years. The much-discussed Red Mirage vs Blue shift that we have seen as races change after Election night and the reasons why that is.
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Today I talk about the offices up in 2022 in the Governor/Federal election. I also talk about the state redistricting process now that they have failed come to come up with consensus districts. Finally I comment on the surprising change in chairmanship of the County Legislature.
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Onondaga County Democratic Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny explains new laws that will expand the number of early voting sites in New York, allow counties to count absentee votes sooner than in the past and ensures New Yorkers can apply for and track their mail-in ballot online.
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I want to take a moment to welcome you to my website. This is my new home for my various election related projects that I have started over the last few years. As Onondaga County’s Democratic Elections Commissioner I am always looking for ways to further educate voters and navigate them through the arcane web of New York’s electoral system.
On my podcast page you can find my ongoing Commissioner in a Car series. A weekly Facebook live show dedicated to election news and deadlines. I also started a weekly interview series for candidates and Democracy advocates called Zoom with Czarny.
This will also serve as a home for my writings. On occasion I am blessed to testify in my role as Democratic Caucus Chair of the NYS Elections Commissioner Association. I have appeared in front of the NYS Legislature, Onondaga County Legislature, and Syracuse Common Council. I have collected my previous testimony here with video links when available.
I also have a weekly statistics blog called Wonky Wednesday. This column is dedicated to examining the election statistics and registration data in Onondaga County and throughout New York State. I also will from time to time author editorials and opinion articles on election related topics. You can find those writings on my editorial page.
On occasion I appear on feature podcasts and tv shows. These longer programs offer me the ability to discuss complicated election issues on my featured page. Finally I regularly appear in local and statewide media on election related matters. I am compiling all current and past appearances on my interview page.
This website and all programming is entirely paid for by my personal funds. I do not accept donations or advertising. This is all part of my voter education and outreach efforts. If you are interested you can subscribe to my website and get updates when I post content. Thank you for visiting.
Dustin M. Czarny