Ezekiel Edwards

New York State Board of Deception

Earlier this month, the Brennan Center for Justice and Demos released a study finding that the New York State Board of Elections has systematically disenfranchised thousands of eligible voters in New York State in violation of election laws. As the Executive Summary of the study states: "A survey of 63 local election boards conducted late last year... found that more than one-third of local boards, including four in New York City, are disenfranchising former prisoners and probationers who are eligible to register and vote under state law."

Specifically, the report indicated that 38% of local boards --- including New York County, Queens County, and the New York City Board --- thought erroneously that individuals on probation were ineligible to vote (or conceded ignorance regarding their eligibility) --- no small error considering that as 2004, there were 126,138 New Yorkers on probation. Alarmingly, 32% of local boards --- including the counties of Kings, New York, and Queens --- continued the illegal practice of demanding documentation from people with criminal convictions before permitting them to register to vote. This request is made exasperatingly Kafkaesque by the fact that such documentation often does not exist, thereby stripping persons with criminal convictions of their right to vote.

The errors made by New York City offices are particularly distressing since New York City residents make up almost 33% of people sentenced to probation, 50% sentenced to prison, and 61% on parole in New York State.

It is distressing enough that the Census Bureau distorts our democracy by counting tens of thousands of New York City residents incarcerated upstate as residents of their prisons' counties for the purpose of determining voting districts; now, adding to our democracy's woes, we learn that our local election boards have further eroded one of our most cherished rights by denying it illegally to people eligible to exercise it: people who have completed parole upon release from prison, people who are on probation (hence never incarcerated upstate), and people who neither went upstate nor received probation, but simply have a criminal conviction, be it a felony or a low-level misdemeanor.

As long as the right to vote in New York remains illusory for eligible voters, and as long as certain under-populated upstate voting districts are made possible by counting prisoners from New York City as residents, our democracy will be as infused with hypocrisy as it is devoid of legitimacy.

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Posted at 7:00 AM, Mar 21, 2006 in Criminal Justice | Democracy
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