Despite high profile vote-counting controversies in Ohio in 2004, provisional ballot data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission shows that the worst place to vote that year was the Northeast: the region had the second highest percentage of provisional ballots cast as a percentage of voter registration, 1.34, but reported the lowest rate of counting those ballots, 42.8 percent. The worst state was New York, with a whopping 2.21 percent of registered voters casting provisional ballots, yet only 40 percent of those ballots being counted. That means the percentage of people who were denied a vote in New York was .88 percent—or more than the .79 percent margin that decided the presidential election that year in New Mexico.
Provisional ballots, which were required for the first time in 2004 by the Help America Vote Act, aren’t the only measures of election fairness, but a large number of provisional ballots cast and then invalidated most likely means: 1) Voters are uneducated about registration rules, or 2) Elections officials are excluding people who should be eligible—neither of which is good news.
So how are things going this year in the Empire State? The Albany Times-Union reports on phone calls, some automated and some allegedly made by people who live nowhere near New York, that are raising complaints on both sides of the aisle of unfair campaign tactics: “Republicans claimed Democrats were misdirecting voters to the wrong polling places — an allegation Democrats chalked up to honest errors.”
Among New York residents to hit a snag: Chelsea Clinton
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