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Pre-Registering 16- and 17-Year-Olds to Vote the Focus of Second Annual City ‘Civics Week’


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The city focused on student voter registration (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


As fears of the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) mounted, but before Mayor Bill de Blasio made the monumental decision to close the city’s schools for at least five weeks, New York City government held its second annual Civics Week to encourage civic participation and voter registration among students.

After a new law passed last year to allow it, the city focused this year’s Civics Week on pre-registering 16- and 17-year-olds to vote, beginning with such a voter registration drive for high school students at William Cullen Bryant High School in Long Island City, Queens, on Monday March 2.

While the city has made efforts for Student Voter Registration Day in the past and launched Civics Week to help correct some troubling trends both here and nationally, the new state law allowing voter pre-registration of those who will soon be voting age added a new element to the larger project.

Civics Week was introduced by de Blasio as a collaboration among his new DemocracyNYC initiative, the mayor’s Public Engagement Unit, and the Department of Education, according to Lindsay Acker, Field Director for DemocracyNYC and the Public Engagement Unit. The week is “dedicated to giving our students the tools they need to be active, productive participants not just in our economy, but in our democracy”, according to the DemocracyNYC website.

In a press release from May 2019, the City announced that during last Civics Week, 18,233 students were registered to vote. According to a March announcement from the mayor’s office launching this year’s Civics Week, “in just the past two years, DemocracyNYC, the Mayor’s Public Engagement Unit and the Department of Education registered nearly 30,000 students.”

This year’s Civics Week included a mass effort to register potential student-voters in high schools and colleges across the city. High schools are now a larger focus of the effort given the pre-registration law passed by the State Legislature and signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo last year. For those eligible to vote this year, their registration comes just in time to participate in the 2020 presidential election, not to mention other federal and state-level elections coming up in April and June primaries and the November general election. There’s also an election for Queens Borough President, where a special election was just cancelled, but a primary is set for June, with the general in November to select a replacement for the final year of what was now-District Attorney Melinda Katz’s term.

“Ahead of such a busy election year, we are proud to be empowering thousands of youth that will be 18 on Election Day. We are also excited to take the pre-registration law that went into effect this year and execute it on the ground,” said Acker.

“Our students are the future leaders of our City, and what we do now to empower them to vote will strengthen our democracy for years to come,” de Blasio said in a statement. “I encourage all students to register and show up at the polls on Election Day because their voice matters.”

According to the Civics Week announcement from the city, events throughout the week included “youth voter registration drives, participatory budgeting for their schools, public speaking competitions, and town halls on issues that matter to them and their communities.”

The New York City Department of Education also provided schools with curriculum resources for students grades K-12 to help them learn about civics and how to participate in a democracy.

The curriculum seeks to celebrate youth voice, encourage civic empowerment, and highlight the importance of registering to vote, according to the DOE. The DOE did not provide more detailed information on the curriculum when asked by Gotham Gazette.

“Understanding the importance of registering to vote starts so much earlier than 16, 17, 18,” said Brooke Wallace, New York program director at Generation Citizen, a nonprofit that runs “action civics” programming in schools in six states including New York. “It starts in middle school and even earlier to understand the importance and to understand all the powers of their voice and input at a young age, and how they can make a difference in their community civically.”

The curriculum seeks to put democracy into different contexts, allowing for students with different experiences to understand how they can use their voice in their own communities.

“At the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, we prioritize community empowerment because we know how critical education about your rights and exercising your voice through civic participation is to realizing a more inclusive, equitable, and just world for all of us,” said Bitta Mostofi, Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, in a statement. “Through this Civics Week initiative, we are helping to prepare young New Yorkers from diverse families to fully participate in decisions that will impact their lives and their communities.”

According to the state bill that made 16- and 17-year-old pre-registration law, the lead sponsors of which were State Senator David Carlucci and Assemblymember Charles Lavine, “The age 16 is a sensible time for the DMV and high schools to collect information for voter pre-registration, as it is the time when a significant amount of people have their first interaction with the DMV, and it is an age where school is still compulsory in New York. Pre-registration allows this information to be collected at a convenient time for the individual rather than making them return to the boards of elections or a state agency when they reach eligible voting age.”

Wallace of Generation Citizen had the opportunity to sit in on a couple of the classroom sessions where teachers were implementing the civics curriculum provided by the city and was hopeful about what she saw.

“I saw that teachers were able to really customize and tailor the curriculum for their classroom, which I thought was really powerful and impactful. I thought that it was really well done the way that the DOE and DemocracyNYC provided a lesson as a guide for teachers, but then teachers were able to say, ‘Oh, I know my students are interested in X, Y, and Z,’ or ‘I need to do more framing and really make the lesson impactful and exciting,’” Wallace said.

According to Aker, the voter registration drive for Civics Week and representatives from DemocracyNYC and the Mayor’s Public Engagement Unit were in over 1,000 classrooms across all five boroughs throughout the week.

Officials are still going through forms that were submitted during voter registration to do quality control, so final numbers on students registered are not available yet, according to Luis Feliz Leon, communications director for DemocracyNYC.

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by Katie Kirker, Gotham Gazette

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Employee in Lower Manhattan Building Home to Several City Agencies Tests Positive for Coronavirus


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Mayor de Blasio delivers a coronavirus briefing (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


An employee at 100 Church Street in Lower Manhattan, where a number of city agency offices are located, tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this week. Mayor Bill de Blasio has not disclosed the revelation publicly, even as city employees and members of the public continue to conduct business there.

The information that a building occupant tested positive for the novel coronavirus came to city agencies from both City Hall and the building's management company, SL Green Realty Corp., according to an email shared by the New York City Campaign Finance Board (CFB), which is housed in the building, after a Gotham Gazette inquiry. According to a CFB spokesperson, notice of the positive case came on Monday evening.

In an email sent Tuesday morning, the CFB notified prospective candidates coming in for a scheduled training on compliance with the city's campaign finance laws that the agency had received the reports that a person in the building had tested positive.

"The person works in a different floor and elevator bank than our offices and will not return until they are symptom free for a minimum of 24 to 48 hours," the CFB email read, in part. "While we are proceeding with today’s training, out of an abundance of caution, we wanted to let you know this information in case you wish to modify your plans or postpone your attendance," it said.

A city employee told Gotham Gazette the notice from City Hall did not contain any guidance about whether agency staff should continue coming to the building at 100 Church to work.

Ten candidates still arrived at the CFB offices for the Tuesday training, according to the CFB spokesperson. The agency is now cancelling all in-person training sessions and moving to video conferencing.

100 Church Street is also home to the city's Law Department, Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), Office of Administrative Trials, Mayor's Council Against Poverty, and the city's Business Integrity Commission, to name a few. There are also a number of private corporate tenants.

The Mayor's Office did not respond to multiple requests for information about whether there have been other confirmed cases in the building and what immediate steps it is taking at the address. Employees at several agencies Gotham Gazette spoke with are still reporting to work in person. A midday visit to the building Thursday showed business apparently proceeding as usual, albeit with fewer people than usual passing through the lobby.

Several of those agencies housed at 100 Church Street are regularly visited by members of the public. Candidates receiving CFB training, civilians filing police misconduct complaints with the CCRB, and participants in public hearings held by the Business Integrity Commission all pass through its lobby, for example. Some agencies, like the CFB and CCRB, also send staff out into the field, either to conduct local trainings, investigations, or even monthly board meetings. The CCRB, which often holds its board meetings outside the building at sites across the five boroughs, postponed its March board meeting in the Bronx on Wednesday.

At a Thursday press conference at City Hall, de Blasio announced that the city was nearing 100 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus and declared a state of emergency. He said he expected the number of cases to continue to rise and announced a number of moves to mitigate spread, including that 10% of the city’s workforce would soon be encouraged to work from home, while another 20% would be moved to staggered shifts to reduce crowding on mass transit. The mayor did not mention specific agencies or buildings.

In an email statement from SL Green, Chief Operating Officer Edward V. Piccinich said of the COVID-19 case at 100 Church Street: "SL Green continues to take aggressive and proactive action across our portfolio to protect the health of our tenants, following guidance from City, State and Federal health officials. At the property level we have taken precautionary measures by increasing frequency of cleaning and disinfecting commonly touched surfaces."

"We are in constant communication with our tenants and their employees about these measures and to monitor any potential exposure," the statement read. "When a confirmed case is identified, we immediately conduct decontamination and promptly respond with commercial grade remediation of all tenant-accessible areas of the building. These actions are communicated quickly to all employees in the building to ensure a safe environment at all properties in our portfolio."

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Queens Borough President Special Election Set To Go On Despite Coronavirus


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(photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photo Office)


As more cases of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, are confirmed in New York, including a rising number of people testing positive in New York City, neither Governor Andrew Cuomo nor Mayor Bill de Blasio seems inclined to reschedule elections that are on the horizon.

Each the governor and the mayor has declared a state of emergency for their jurisdiction and, along with other officials, put a number of restrictions in place to try to limit the spread of the virus. CUNY and SUNY are set to suspend in-person classes; New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade has been postponed for the first time ever; most gatherings of 500 or more people have been banned; and businesses are being urged to have as many employees as possible work from home.

But the imminent special election for Queens Borough President will go on as planned, it seems, with eight days of early voting set to begin on Saturday, and election day of March 24 just beyond. Even as several candidates have announced plans to suspend in-person campaigning, like door-knocking and subway stop hand-shaking, de Blasio said Thursday that he believes it is important for democracy to forge ahead.

“There's been concern about the special election scheduled for March 24th for borough president of Queens,” the mayor said at a City Hall coronavirus press briefing. “We are analyzing those concerns but I want to be very, very clear that election will continue as scheduled. We are dealing with an unprecedented challenge, but I think it is a signature of a stable democracy that elections happen when scheduled.”

He continued: “So, we very much want that election to happen on time so long as we believe it can happen effectively. However, want to urge all candidates and campaigns to alter their activity. Right now, we're reaching out to each campaign specifically – believe that door-to-door canvassing should be stopped immediately.” The mayor added that “campaigns have many, many ways to still be effective without door-to-door canvassing or rallies. Clearly, phone-banking social media, email updates, digital ads, TV ads, radio ads – there are many, many ways, including some of the most effective ways to get the message out.”

“We have a lot to sort out of course about making the voting process as safe and effective as possible,” he added. “But I do want to say, particularly with early voting, the voting process is being spread out. So, it's almost its own version of social distancing.”

“[P]reserving our democracy is crucial,” the mayor reiterated in closing.

The election is to fill a vacancy created when Melinda Katz was sworn in as the borough’s District Attorney in January. Early voting for the borough president special election -- which is open to all registered voters in Queens, regardless of party affiliation -- begins this Saturday at 18 locations across the borough, including sites such as LaGuardia Community College, the Queens Library at Jackson Heights, and the Museum of the Moving Image.

The candidates including City Council Members Donovan Richards and Costa Constantinides; former Council Member Elizabeth Crowley; Jim Quinn; Anthony Miranda; and Dao Yin (Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer will also appear on the ballot, but he dropped out of the race).

There is precedent for postponing an election in times of emergency. The September 11, 2001 terror attack happened the same day of that year’s primary election for New York City mayor and other offices, prompting Governor George Pataki to issue an executive order that suspended elections across the state. The polls had already been open for hours and all votes that had been cast were voided. The primary was eventually rescheduled for two weeks later.

The New York City Board of Elections has been silent on what, if any, preparations it has made to deal with the fear of coronavirus at early voting sites. Emails and text messages to a BOE spokesperson went unanswered.

At a media briefing on Wednesday de Blasio said, “I am really, really hesitant to change an election, ever, for anything. I think it's a very dangerous thing to do in a democracy. So, we'll look at it, but I would say, you know, we'll give it a very careful look. We'll talk to health care experts, we'll consider the dynamics. But right now, it is not my intention to change an existing election.”

Special elections tend to have low turnout and crowds may be particularly spread out with early voting. But next month, New York will hold its presidential primary on April 28, when millions are expected to go to the polls.

Governor Andrew Cuomo would have the power to postpone both elections but has indicated no plans to do so. Asked at a news conference about whether he had considered expanding absentee voting, he said on Thursday, “No, no. Not at this time.”

He was also asked if he would use his executive authority to cut the number of petition signatures that candidates need to get on the ballot. “We’ve had no discussion about that at this time,” he replied.

State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, a Bronx Democrat, introduced a bill earlier this week that would allow absentee voting in the case of a public health risk – currently, state law only allows absentee ballots for people who may not be in the district on election day, cannot vote because of an illness or disability, are either a resident or patient in a veterans health administration hospital, or are detained in jail.

“There are many older New Yorkers and those with underlying health conditions in my district who are at a heightened risk from the virus – they should not have to choose between safeguarding their own health and fulfilling their civic duty,” Biaggi said in a statement. “Nor should New Yorkers who are in quarantine be denied their right to participate on Election Day. While I hope that the current public health crisis will have calmed by the April and June primary elections, we must prepare for all scenarios, and act now to ensure that every New Yorker can safely vote in our upcoming primary elections.”

At least in one county, voters may be able to cite coronavirus as a reason to ask for an absentee ballot. The Erie County Board of Elections announced on Wednesday that it had added a public health emergency as an excuse for absentee voting for the April 28 primary, which is what Biaggi’s bill would accomplish across the state.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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