For years, in contrast to many jurisdictions around the country, the City Board has refused to post sample ballots on its website. Remember all those voters complaining during the primary that the type on the ballot was too small? Well, posting sample ballots can and does help with this kind of problem elsewhere -- it gives voters an opportunity to review and familiarize themselves with the ballot ahead of time.
Amazingly, the City Board has once again failed to post any sample ballots for the voters. But we're doing our part to at least make sample ballots available here. Click here for an early look at the sample ballot for the general election on November 2, 2010 for voters in the City of New York – County of New York. As we have blogged before, New York's ridiculous design requirements for paper ballots have led to very confusing ballot design for this general election. We remain very concerned of likely overvotes and doublevotes which could disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters and threatens minor parties.
We hope that our readers will find the sample ballot useful as they familiarize themselves with the ballot prior to Election Day.
2 comments:
Thank you for posting the ballot for NY County. It's pretty damn disgraceful that the City of NY has chosen to create havoc at the polls with the new system. It is apparent that Tammany Hall is alive and well on Chambers and Centre Streets.
It's also pretty sad that as usual there are no options for NYS Assembly save King Silver or on the NYC civil bench slots.
Thank you so much for posting this. I was just searching around online for one so I can make an informed decision about my choices tomorrow and find it absolutely outrageous that a sample ballot is not publicly available in advance.
Growing up in Las Vegas, each registered voter was sent a booklet that contained a sample ballot and explained in detail each of the questions on the ballot, including position papers both for and against the question. They also have early voting that is amazingly simple as you can go anywhere (such as a shopping mall) and vote before Election Day. We should institute similar policies here.
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