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For the Sake of Voter Turnout and Trust, New York Must Merge the Primaries


Voters at the polls (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


Due to the ongoing challenges to New York's redistricting maps approved by Democratic lawmakers earlier this year, New York voters may be required to vote in two separate primary elections this year, one in June and another in August.

Issues with the new Congressional and State Senate district maps have thrown our upcoming party primaries into disarray and could run the risk of reducing voter turnout statewide. To preserve voter turnout and spare confusion, the Legislature should vote to merge and hold all primaries on August 23.

A state judge set August 23 as primary day for the U.S. House and State Senate party primary elections after the New York Court of Appeals rejected the newly-drawn districts for those chambers as unconstitutional. Primaries for statewide offices like Governor and Lieutenant Governor and for State Assembly remain set for June 28. This is a potentially costly and confusing development for voters and must be addressed rapidly.

In 2018, New York State ended its two primary system, where voters used to vote in federal primaries in June and state primaries in September. New York’s divided primaries caused the state to spend many millions of dollars more while suppressing voter interest. The federal government requested the change to a single primary to provide enough time for military and overseas voters to get absentee ballots for the general election.

Holding a separate primary is costly, given the logistics of running a statewide election. According to the New York State Board of Elections, statewide primaries will cost as much as $30 million, covering ballots, election day materials, inspector pay, poll site rentals, moving costs for voting machines, staff, and mailings. Some lawmakers have called for additional funding for local elections boards to help pay for the two separate votes, which would include not only the two primary days, but the mandatory early voting periods ahead of each.

Consolidating the 2022 primary elections would minimize the impact of the Court’s ruling on voters, candidates, and election officials and provide some stability to the current election cycle. Changing the political calendar requires swift legislative action due to legal deadlines and administrative constraints.

Not voting to consolidate the primaries is wasteful, expensive, and only leads to confusion and lower voter turnout. Historically, the two separate dates caused some hesitancy in voters’ minds about when to vote. While the August date is not ideal given the likelihood of summer vacations, it has been established by the court, and cannot be moved. The June primary can be shifted, and for the sake of all voters, should be.

To reduce voter confusion and maximize turnout, the Legislature should refer to historical precedent and vote to merge the elections for this year, unifying the primaries in August. This would provide the summer to prepare absentee ballots and give some time for a lot of voter outreach and education.

The Legislature should prioritize legislation that unifies the primaries for this cycle in the next few days, providing ample opportunity for voter engagement and familiarity to ensure a sizable turnout at the polls. We must reduce confusion and rebuild trust among voters who may feel disenfranchised, confused, or upset about how redistricting has gone and the issues with the shifting primaries. Elected leaders should provide one date that guarantees New Yorkers will vote in all races on the ballot this year where there are primaries.

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Christian Amato is an organizer and Democratic candidate for State Senate in New York’s 36th District. On Twitter @amatoforny.

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We’re Assembly Members, Healthcare Experts, Women of Color, Mothers, and Fed Up: It’s Time to Pass the New York Health Act


"Healthcare is a right" (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


The fact is, New York’s profit-driven health-care system continues to fail marginalized communities like those we represent in the State Legislature. As a matter of racial and gender justice, we must finally pass single-payer health care this state legislative session.

Before we were elected to office, we each worked in or around New York’s health-care system – Assemblymember Reyes as an oncology nurse, Assemblymember Forrest as a maternal-child health nurse, and Assemblymember González-Rojas as a reproductive healthcare advocate.

Through our work and our own lived experiences as Afro-Latina, Black, and Latina women, we’ve seen firsthand how our health-care system reproduces racial and gender inequities in our beloved New York.

Our city and state are now more than two years into a pandemic that has disproportionately affected the Black, Latino, immigrant, and low-income communities we represent and brought our already broken health-care system to its knees. As representatives of districts in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, we have a mandate to fight for the health and wellbeing of the constituents who elected us, and we know that what’s good for them is also good for millions of other New Yorkers. It’s time that we and our colleagues in the Legislature pass, and the Governor signs, the New York Health Act. 

It’s been nearly 31 years since our colleague in the Assembly, Richard Gottfried, first introduced the New York Health Act. Yes, you read that correctly – 31 years. The bill has had several iterations since then, but its core tenets remain the same: the New York Health Act would “create a universal single-payer health plan – New York Health – to provide comprehensive health coverage for all New Yorkers.”

The New York Health Plan would replace existing private insurance plans for every single worker and resident and include all benefits covered by Medicare, Medicaid, Child Health Plus, and those mandated by the Affordable Care Act. With universal single-payer, New Yorkers would no longer have to rely on family members or employers, pay exorbitant monthly premiums, or forgo coverage altogether. While the plan would require the state to impose two new progressively graduated taxes, research shows that New Yorkers would still pay significantly less overall for health care under the New York Health Act than they do now. 

Decoupling health insurance coverage from employment and reducing health-care costs would have dramatic positive impacts on the Black, Latino, immigrant, women, and low-income New Yorkers we represent. We know that over the last two years, Black and Latino people have experienced higher rates of unemployment for longer periods. According to a 2021 Community Service Society of New York report, 22% percent of low-income New Yorkers who lost employment income since the first wave of COVID-19 also lost health insurance coverage. Among that 22%, over half were Latino.

We know that women and marginalized genders have disproportionately left the workforce altogether to provide childcare for their families where the state has failed to do so, losing employer coverage as a result. Undocumented New Yorkers still don’t have access to Medicaid, as Coverage for All was excluded in our recent state budget. Lack of coverage, inadequate coverage, gaps in coverage, and health-care costs are some of the greatest barriers to accessing care for communities of color. The New York Health Act would all but remove those barriers.  

In addition to reducing costs for vulnerable families and ensuring every New Yorker can access comprehensive health care no matter their circumstance or status, the New York Health Act would help improve the quality of care New Yorkers receive overall. By reducing costs and leveling the coverage playing field, our safety net hospitals would no longer be overburdened by New Yorkers who have nowhere else to go. Safety net hospitals in each one of our districts, which all serve predominantly Black and Latino members of our communities, were at the frontline of the pandemic. They’re also the most under-resourced, thanks to years of inequitable distribution of Medicaid funding.

Our profit-driven healthcare system has pushed New York’s entire hospital system and the providers who work within it, to the brink. Without adequate funding, data show that hospital quality of care declines. This has had devastating consequences, not only for the Black New Yorkers who were twice as likely to be hospitalized with the recent Omicron variant than their white counterparts, but for all the birthing people in our communities who rely on hospitals for pregnancy and postpartum care. In the last two years, at least three Black women, one from each of the boroughs we represent, have died from preventable causes during hospital childbirth or shortly thereafter.

Single-payer, universal health care would give the nurses, midwives, home-care workers, and other health-care providers power to bargain for fairer wages and safer working conditions, and allow providers to focus on patient care, not costs. It would also allow us to define what comprehensive coverage looks like and expand the scope of reproductive and LGBTQ health care, both of which are under attack across the country.

The New York Health Act has already passed the Assembly four times. We finally have majority support for the bill in both houses of the Legislature after years of advocacy and securing a Democratic majority in the State Senate. This is the year to get it done.

We’re sick and tired of having had to work with a fractured Legislature and an uncooperative Executive that stopped us from delivering reform for years while our constituents suffered. We’re sick and tired of all the talk about leading on progressive causes without real progressive action. We’re sick and tired of trying to tinker around the edges to reform a health-care system that is fundamentally unjust and perpetuates the same gender and racial inequities we were elected to address. We’re fed up. We need the New York Health Act now. 

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Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas is the first Latina Assemblymember to represent Assembly District 34, which encompasses sections of Woodside, Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst, and Corona, Queens. Before running for office, she served as Executive Director of the National Latina Institute of Reproductive Health, where she fought for policies to expand access to reproductive and sexual healthcare for Latina/x communities, including in New York. 

Assemblymember Karines Reyes, R.N., represents the 87th Assembly District in the Bronx, which includes the neighborhoods of Castle Hill, Parkchester, Van Nest, and West Farms. She serves as a per diem registered nurse in oncology at Montefiore Medical Center. In 2020, she notably returned to nursing during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest, R.N., represents the 57th Assembly District, which consists of the neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill as well as parts of Bed-Stuy, Prospect Heights and Crown Heights. Prior to her election, she worked as a maternal health nurse and organized tenants in the neighborhoods she now represents.

On Twitter @votejgr, @KarinesReyes87, and @phara4assembly.

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To Protect Older New Yorkers, Leaders Must Expand Proven Solutions to End Traffic Violence


Crossing the street safely (photo: Clay LeConey)


99-year-old Holocaust survivor Jack Mikulincer was killed crossing the street in his wheelchair by an SUV driver in Brooklyn.

88-year-old Thomas Soong was killed just one block from his home in Queens at an intersection the city knew to be dangerous.

76-year-old Lola Blair was killed by a dump truck driver in the Bronx while crossing the street.

These are not statistics, but our neighbors and family members. 

New York City’s pedestrian- and transportation-rich cityscape has long made it a welcoming home for seniors to age in place. From walking to the corner store to visiting family by bus or subway, the city invites older residents to stay engaged with their neighbors and neighborhoods. 

However, as we grow older, that invitation grows more dangerous. As New York City faces four years of increasing traffic violence, older New Yorkers have been disproportionately affected by car crashes, dying at a rate 60% higher than their share of the population.

In fact, one in three New York voters age 65 or over has been injured in a traffic crash, and two in three know someone who has been injured or killed, according to polling from Siena College.  

However, getting older does not have to mean a death sentence on our roadways or home detention for fear of crossing the street. Over the decades, New York City has developed proven tools to prevent this public health crisis and protect our most vulnerable. Initiatives like daylighting, sidewalk widening, and pedestrian safety islands led to a 17% decline in senior pedestrian fatalities. Mayor Eric Adams recently committed $904 million to the NYC Streets Plan to scale these and other proven safety measures across the five boroughs.

As our leaders in the city take bold steps to keep older New Yorkers safe, so, too, must our leaders in Albany. Right now, state lawmakers are deciding our ability to expand life-saving safety measures such as automated traffic enforcement and lower speed limits. 

We know what works. When New York City lowered its speed limit from 30 to 25 MPH, traffic fatalities fell by more than 22% and pedestrian fatalities fell by more than 25%. 

When New York City expanded its red-light camera program, t-bone crashes causing injuries fell as much as 58% at red-light camera locations.

And when New York City installed speed safety cameras in school zones, we saw a 55% drop in traffic fatalities and a 72% drop in speeding.

What’s more, automated traffic enforcement and lower speed limits are supported by an overwhelming majority of older New York voters: 81% favor adding more speed safety and 86% support the red-light cameras.

We call on our lawmakers in Albany to lift the limits on life-saving automated enforcement programs, permitting the City of New York to protect people from speeding every hour of every day in every school zone. We also need them to pass Sammy’s Law to allow lower speed limits across the five boroughs.

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Beth Finkel is State Director of AARP New York. Danny Harris is Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives. On Twitter @BethNY & @AARPNY & @DannyHarris_TA & @TransAlt.

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