BOE takes no blame for botched election

After the yelling and mud slinging had died down, Douglas Kellner, co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections, spoke about the troubled Democratic primary held on June 26. 

The state election law is antiquated and should change and the procedures for closing the polls on election night are unnecessarily complicated, he said.

The hearing held on Aug. 8 came after an oddly timed Congressional primary for District 13 left constituents without a clear winner for nearly two weeks. Initial tallies incorrectly recorded zero votes in election districts where votes were cast. Those results were sent to the Associated Press, which prematurely declared Rep. Charles Rangel the winner. 

After the error was corrected, the results became close enough for a count of all the paper ballots and state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, Mr. Rangel's opponent, went to court to ensure his representatives could oversee the count. Mr. Espaillat also claimed voter suppression and intimidation contributed to a flawed election. He has since dropped the charges. 

The BOE claims it did nothing wrong on Election Night, though the process of tallying votes and giving them to police officers, who in turn give them to the Associated Press, went terribly wrong.

The closest the BOE came to an explanation of what took place was to say that human error is inevitable. 

Bronx Republican Commissioner at the BOE, J.C. Polanco said it's not possible for the board to provide fast and accurate election night tallies. He said the new, computerized system (which requires poll workers to hand count initial results after polls close) is slower than the process used with the old lever machines, but is more accurate.

Dawn Sandow, deputy executive director of the BOE, briefly bemoaned the state legislature for not heeding any of the board's recommendations (a 50-page report released in February). It proposed changes in the state election law. She testified that the BOE carried out its election duties well on the night in question. 

That didn't go over well with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.