Various organizations in New York have voter protection operations in place for Election Day. So far, problems at the polls, especially in the New York City area, are being described as routine.
Common Cause New York is running its usual poll monitoring program. But Executive Director Susan Lerner says in response to recent nationwide Islamaphobic rhetoric, the nonpartisan group is also providing assistance to Muslim voters on the ground in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens.
“And this year we had a special effort reaching out to groups that we’re in coalition who are active in the Muslim community and seeking people who are Bengali speakers and Arabic speakers as well as speaking English to help volunteer at busy polling places, particularly in Bay Ridge and Jamaica, Queens.”
Common Cause partnered with the Muslim Community Network for this effort. As of mid-morning, Lerner had no reports of any issues in Bay Ridge or Jamaica. And Common Cause partners outside New York City with the New York Civil Liberties Union to place nonpartisan volunteers at busy polling places, to ensure that every eligible voter can cast a ballot that will be counted. Volunteer poll monitors were trained on Long Island, in Rochester, and Kingston. Shannon Wong is NYCLU chapter director for the lower Hudson Valley.
“It’s not so much that Kingston was singled out as a hot contest throughout the region, we just wanted to make sure that we had neutral poll monitors everywhere because tensions are just high throughout the country and including the Hudson Valley,” says Wong. “So to ease some of the burdens of high turnout we really wanted to just ensure that there were trained poll monitors everywhere, and we held a training in Kingston and got a lot of volunteers from the area.”
Wong says she has been fielding what she says are usual calls from voters, including from college students who did not change their registration to their college addresses. And her office is fielding calls about the following.
“We are getting some calls from people who simply didn’t register, and they want to vote today,” Wong says. “And so of them can go to their polling place and they’ll be asking for affidavit ballots.”
Then there was what Wong terms an endearing call from a Westchester man.
“A man who hasn’t voted in decades, he said to me, and he wanted to know if his voter registration expired because he was heading out to the polls,” Wong says.
Blair Horner is executive director of the nonpartisan New York Public Interest Research Group. Leading up to Election Day, Horner says NYPIRG has registered voters and provided voter education.
“We’ve deployed well over 100 volunteers to various polling places to see how well things have kicked off today, to try to identify any potential problems, and we’re also staffing a helpline for voters who have had questions about the location of their voting site or complaints or whatever so that voters can be informed if there’s a problem and they know what to do about it,” Horner says. “We’re calling it the NYPIRG Millennium Voter Project. Virtually all of the volunteers that are involved in this project are college students just as the work on registration and everything else just to show that millennials do care about elections as much as their older adult colleagues.”
He says there are been some reported problems at the polls in New York City.
“There have been late opening polling sites, some scanners that were broken down and some long lines, but it’s basically at scattered locations. It seems to be, so far, based on the reports that we’ve received, that it is more or less typical election but there have been some problems and particularly in the City of New York we’re trying to deal with the voters who’ve had these problems as best we can.”
In addition, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office has an Election Day hotline to help troubleshoot and resolve a range of issues and barriers voters may encounter at 1- 800-771-7755 or email civil.rights@ag.ny.gov any time today between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m.
Plus, voters may call two U.S. Attorneys with their election complaints. The offices of U.S. Attorneys Preet Bharara and Robert Capers, for the Southern and Western Districts of New York, respectively, have special phone numbers for election complaints.
U.S. Attorney’s election complaint number for Manhattan, Bronx, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan and Westchester counties: (646) 369-4739.
Election Protection Hotline: 1-866-OUR-VOTE (687-8683)
To record your poll experience, go to https://pollwatch.info/