“Eliminate all; Bad Upbringing, Poverty, Mental Illness, Greed, Corruption, Addiction and Hate that causes people to commit crime.”
That’s from the 128–page NYC General Election Voter Guide with matching English and Spanish halves that the Campaign Finance Board sent to New Yorkers’ mailboxes ahead of this year’s elections about (almost) nothing.
It comes from a Brooklyn City Council race pitting a Democratic incumbent against a challenger running on the Republican and Conservative lines. Neither offered any information for voters to consider while a third candidate running on a vanity party line including her own name did bother, so the guide’s Compare Candidates spread has a Crime section with two columns of “did not submit a response” followed by that rather ambitious “Eliminate All” agenda.
The cold comfort is that none of it really matters, let alone for Protecting Democracy, since almost no one will turn out and the Democrat here will handily win the most-votes-gets-the-seat general election that follows the ranked-choice primary which also had no real contest and glancingly few voters.
Turnout will be a little better in the handful of districts with competitive general elections, but not by much.
New Yorkers don’t agree on a lot but they do on the futility of participating in a mostly rigged political game, and that’s just fine by the people who are rigging it.
That’s not to mention the judicial elections where most ballots will have as many party-picked candidates as there are open seats on the bench so everyone’s a winner except for voters who have no say at all.
Or the two impenetrable ballot proposals to amend the state Constitution that the voter guide tries to explain, with one in headline case and one in sentence case, for Removal of Small City School Districts From Special Constitutional Debt Limitation and Extending sewage project debt exclusion from debt limit.
Of course, voters already amended New York’s Constitution to enshrine the nonpartisan election maps Democrats in Albany are nonetheless fighting to redraw for their own benefit in the expectation that having forced the weak governor to put in their selection to lead the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court will reverse its earlier ruling rejecting their efforts to pick their voters instead of the other way around.
You don’t need to be a Republican to understand the Democrats in control here don’t love democracy.
You shouldn’t need to a political scientist degree to understand a system that has closed ranked-choice primaries where only party members can vote followed by a traditional most-votes-wins general election open to any registered voter but after most contests have already been effectively decided is inscrutable and corrupt and meant to keep citizens at arm’s length from their representatives.
Non-partisan elections open to all registered voters would immediately increase turnout and create more competitive contests, but the office holders selected in this jerry-rigged system aren’t eager to reform themselves out of power and your silence is all the consent they need.
(Eric Adams knew this back in 2003 when he said “the system of choosing candidates is not open to all New Yorkers,” and “the best election system” would be. He’d changed his tune by 2021, as he navigated toward a win in a closed primary.)
Early voting has started and you can go to findmypollsite.vote.nyc/ to see what’s on your ballot, where you can got to vote early and on Election Day (it may not be the same place) and check out the voting guide and do a little research of your own. Then show up and cast a vote, defaulting in every non-competitive contest toward either the underdog or a write-in pick.
A closing note about the Campaign Finance Board, which also runs the city’s public matching funds program, and Adams:
As the board’s voting guide explains it, that program “helps ensure that campaigns are funded by small dollar donations from New Yorkers, not special interests” since “When you contribute $10, the candidate receives $90,”
Funny, that’s almost exactly how the people people cooperating with prosecutors now after getting caught allegedly making donations in other people’s names to Adams’ winning mayoral campaign explained it:
“Make sure it’s $1000 in your name and $1000 in another person’s name because the matching funds is eight-to-one, so $2000 is $16,000.”
The Adams campaign — which has not been implicated in the DA’s case against his straw donors and says it followed all the rules — repeatedly ignored the Campaign Finance Board’s requests for more information about the supporters who put hundreds of thousands in donations together until long after the campaign was done and it was too late for any take-backs from voters.
Siegel (harrysiegel@gmail.com) is an editor at The City and a columnist for the Daily News.
NYC is protecting democracy, but hardly has one
7
1
29.10.2023
“Eliminate all; Bad Upbringing, Poverty, Mental Illness, Greed, Corruption, Addiction and Hate that causes people to commit crime.”
That’s from the 128–page NYC General Election Voter Guide with matching English and Spanish halves that the Campaign Finance Board sent to New Yorkers’ mailboxes ahead of this year’s elections about (almost) nothing.
It comes from a Brooklyn City Council race pitting a Democratic incumbent against a challenger running on the Republican and Conservative lines. Neither offered any information for voters to consider while a third candidate running on a vanity party line including her own name did bother, so the guide’s Compare Candidates spread has a Crime section with two columns of “did not submit a response” followed by that rather ambitious “Eliminate All” agenda.
The cold comfort is that none of it really matters, let alone for Protecting Democracy, since almost no one will turn out and the Democrat here will handily win the most-votes-gets-the-seat general election that follows the ranked-choice primary which also had no real contest and glancingly few voters.
Turnout will be a little better in the handful of districts with competitive general elections, but not by........
© NY Daily News
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Nikkei Editorial
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
