Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Zellnor Myrie

Zellnor Myrie

  • State Senate Again Starts Legislative Session with Voting and Election Reforms

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


    Democrats in the New York State Senate announced plans to pass a package of voting and election reforms on Monday, marking the fifth year in a row since taking the majority that they have highlighted the issue at the top of the legislation session.

    Since 2019 Democrats have ushered in a new electoral landscape, including early voting, automatic voter registration, and the New York State Voting Rights Act, among many other shifts. The latest package in the Senate sets the tone on election issues ahead of Governor Kathy Hochul's

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  • Passed by Senate, NYC Board of Elections Reform Shelved by Assembly

    Board of Elections reform on the table (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    A package of reforms to the way elections are run in New York State all but died last week when the Assembly adjourned without bringing the legislation to a floor vote after they passed the Senate. That includes a sweeping bill to restructure the membership and executive leadership of the New York City Board of Elections, which has been plagued by political patronage, nepotism, and mismanagement year after year.

    While legislators

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  • New York Voting Rights Act Begins Moving in Senate But Remains Stalled in Assembly

     

    Voters at the poll-site (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    A sweeping voter protectionbill, theJohn R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York (NYVRA), moved

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  • New Yorkers Deserve a Breath of Fresh Air

    Kids at rest (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)


    While New Yorkers have been battling the COVID-19 pandemic, another public health epidemic is on the horizon that similarly affects their capacity to breathe freely: asthma. In 2019,over 1.4 million New Yorkers were living with asthma, and this number has likely grown since then. Over...

  • Amid Federal Inaction, New York Democrats Look to Advance State Voting Rights Act

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    State Senator Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn (photo: NY Senate)


    With the failure of federal voting rights legislation this month in the U.S. Senate, advocates in New York are redoubling a push to pass a sweeping state bill that would shore up voting protections for historically disenfranchised groups.

    Legislators introduced the John R. Lewis New York State Voting Rights Act in 2020 to fill at the state level some of the holes left in the federal Voting Rights Act after successive defangings by the U.S. Supreme Court in the past decade. The bill would enshrine a

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  • Failure of Ballot Questions Halts New York's Three-Year Expansion of Voting

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    An Albany rally for voting reform (photo: Senator Michael Gianaris)


    When New Yorkers voted down two state constitutional amendments this fall that would make it easier to vote they put a stunning stop to a three-year deluge of major statewide election reform.

    Voting rights advocates and Democratic state lawmakers are licking their wounds and looking ahead to the next legislative session, beginning in January, with a list of changes to election rules and operations, including some of the measures that just failed.

    Had

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  • State Senate Examines Board of Elections at Oversight Hearing

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    State Senate elections hearing (photo: @CitizensUnionNY)


    The State Senate analyzed the execution of the June primary elections in a major hearing Tuesday that included testimony from election administrators for New York City and State, as well as counties, and election reform experts. The lawmakers not only examined how elections were run, but the systems and structures that undergirded their performance -- and, as many said, enabled their failures. 

    Tuesday's event was unusual in that it served as the culmination of a series of public hearings held

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  • After Voter Input, State Senate Set to Hear from Election Administrators and Reform Groups

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    Senator Zellnor Myrie (photo: NY Senate)


    After a novel round of public hearings throughout the state, the New York State Senate elections committee is gearing up to hold its traditional post-election oversight hearing, where the New York City and State boards of elections will have to answer questions about what went right and what went wrong in the primaries earlier this year.

    On September 21, lawmakers will have their perennial conversation with representatives from the boards, as well as good government groups and other election experts, where

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  • New York Redistricting Process Heads Into Map-Drawing Phase

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    (l-r) Top: Ivelisse Cuevas-Molina, Ross Brady & Jack Martins; Middle: John Flateau & David Imamura; Bottom: John Conway


    New York's legislative redistricting commission is moving into its next phase following a series of public hearings intended to get a sense of the contours of "communities of interest," a new criteria being incorporated into the line-drawing process for the first time this cycle, in addition to constitutional and statutory requirements.

    The commission, itself a nascent entity, held nine

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  • State Senate Launches 2021 Election Oversight with Series of Voter-Centered Hearings, Board Reform on Menu

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    State Senator Myrie (photo: NY Senate Media Services)


    The New York State Senate election committee may be breaking the mold of cyclical and predictable debate about voting administration and its discontents with a series of public hearings meant to broadly chronicle the experiences and ideas of voters across the state.

    The committee is holding four hearings "in every corner of the state" to give a platform to voters ahead of the traditional post-election oversight hearing where lawmakers interrogate election

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  • It's Time to Stop Tolerating Wrongful Convictions and How They Undermine Our Legal System

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    State Senator Myrie, a co-author, with other electeds and advocates


    2020 was a year of tragedy and despair, hope and resilience. In 2021 we must take long overdue steps to address the myriad injustices laid bare by the pandemic, and others plainly evident well before COVID-19.

    We must shore up our medical system and our schools. We must rebuild our social safety net. And we must once and for all, decidedly and without hesitation, address the long-standing harms perpetrated by the criminal legal system against

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  • After Large Participation and Long Lines in 2020, What Changes Could Improve Early Voting in the Future?

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    A long early voting line (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    New York City's first early voting period in a presidential general election saw 1.1 million in-person votes cast, hours of waiting across the city, and the threat of a court challenge to expand voting options. Experts and administrators didn't know exactly what to expect because of the unprecedented confluence of the coronavirus pandemic, universal absentee voting, and Trump-era political zeal.

    The results point to a number of potential changes that could improve the option in the

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  • State Inaction Means New York City Won't Launch Online Voter Registration Before 2020 Deadline

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    Voter registration (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    A bill that would have made it possible for many thousands of New York City residents to register to vote online, which passed the State Senate but stalled in the Assembly earlier this year, is unlikely to pass before the general election registration deadline and would be too late to be implemented even if it did, officials say.

    The legislation, first introduced in the summer of 2019, would allow the New York City Campaign Finance Board to open the online voter registration portal it created

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  • As General Election Approaches, Mixed Results for Efforts to Ensure More Votes Get Counted

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    State Senators & election officials (photo: Senator Gianaris' office)


    After the June primaries, when tens of thousands of absentee ballots were rejected on technical grounds or never cast because they were mailed to voters late or not at all, state lawmakers passed a series of measures aimed at correcting some of those mishaps. But several other bills introduced by legislators and pushed by voting rights advocates that could prevent thousands of ballots from being thrown out are still on the table as the clock ticks toward the

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  • ‘The Electorate Has a Bias for Youth and Energy’: Younger Candidates Take New York Politics by Storm

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    Queens Assembly candidate Khaleel Anderson (photo: @KhaleelAnderson)


    A younger generation of Democratic political candidates — which has grown up amid the Great Recession, growing inequality, rising costs of higher education and massive student loan debt, the ticking time-bomb that is climate change, and other crises including, now, the coronavirus pandemic and its fallout — has been offering ambitious policy goals and great urgency around achieving them, resonating with voters and finding success in their runs for office.

    In recent election cycles, New York

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  • Renewed Scrutiny of Police Misconduct Includes Reexamination of Qualified Immunity for Officers

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    New NYPD officers are sworn in (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    In the wake of the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement, the Qualified Immunity Doctrine has come under increased scrutiny from activists and elected officials. Simply put, when applied to police officers, qualified immunity means that officers can rarely be subject to civil lawsuits in their individual capacities over allegations of excessive force, brutality, or other misconduct while on the job. In other words, they

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  • New York Elections Administrators Lay Out Immense Challenges, Uncertainty Ahead of Fast-Approaching General Election

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    State Senator Myrie in the Senate chamber (photo: State Senate)


    After June saw drastic shifts in how voting in New York is conducted, elections administrators, state legislators, and watchdogs have a long list of changes they want to see enacted before the general election this fall. But above all they want clarity from Governor Andrew Cuomo.

    Many of the key players in New York City and State elections testified Tuesday at an oversight hearing held by both houses of the Democrat-controlled Legislature examining the June primary, its successes and

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  • Cuomo Re-Launches State Census Efforts

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    Governor Cuomo at a Census conference early this year (photo: governor's office)


    After months of relative silence about the ongoing 2020 Census count and with New York at risk of a large and costly undercount, Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday re-launched a state effort to urge New Yorkers to fill out the once-a-decade federal questionnaire.

    The COVID-19 pandemic turned the 2020 Census on its head, forcing officials at the city, state, and federal levels to reconsider outreach plans and pivot awareness campaigns. The self-response deadline was extended from

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  • New York’s Next Step Toward More Justice and Better Democracy

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    Questioning which New Yorkers can go to the polls (photo: Gotham Gazette)


    Practicing social distancing is by no means easy, but the guidelines are simple: maintain six feet of distance from others, avoid crowded environments, public bathrooms, and shared dining facilities, and to blow off steam, go outside. Stick to the guidelines, health officials assure us, and we can all help protect each other, especially the vulnerable. 

    But many of the most vulnerable people during the COVID-19 crisis are those whom most of us will never see and for whom social

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  • Democratic State Senators Call for Raising Taxes on Wealthy, Passing Coronavirus Relief Measures

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    Senators Ramos and Gounardes (photo: NY Senate)


    A group of Democratic state senators, mostly from New York City, gathered in a digital forum Wednesday night to discuss the government’s COVID-19 response. The virtual event, held in partnership with the Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI), a nonprofit liberal think tank, covered topics including the state budget, impending cuts and proposals to raise revenue, and legislation to address ramifications of the virus.

    Eight senators, or a fifth of the Democratic majority in the 63-seat chamber, participated in

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  • ‘Not a Budget Anybody Should Be Celebrating’: Democratic Legislators Displeased with Albany Compromise

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    A nearly-empty State Senate Chamber as business is conducted amid coronavirus outbreak (photo: NY Senate)


    If New Yorkers take Governor Andrew Cuomo’s word for it, the new $177 billion budget approved last week will “deliver results” for the people of the state and was a far cry from a “bare minimum” spending plan at a time when the state’s finances are racked by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. But within his own Democratic Party, which controls both houses of the Legislature where the plan was passed, the budget is a highly unpopular document that to

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  • Push for Online Voter Registration Bill as Coronavirus Prevents Registration Drives

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    Coronavirus complicates voter registration efforts & voting itself (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    A bill before the state Legislature expanding online voter registration in New York City has taken on particular urgency amid the coronavirus pandemic, its sponsors say, as in-person voter registration drives become impossible and New Yorkers are told to avoid leaving their homes but for essentials and emergencies.

    The New York City Board of Elections currently only allows an individual to register to vote online through the Department of

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  • Central Brooklyn Officials Organize ‘Day of Action’ to Raise 2020 Census Awareness in Hard-to-Count Neighborhoods

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    Senator Myrie, Assemblymember Richardson, and volunteers (photo: Vashon Hill Jr.)


    Predominantly black communities often have among the lowest response rates to the U.S. Census, the once-a-decade count of the country’s population mandated by the Constitution. In New York City, those and other hard-to-count groups contributed to an especially low response rate in 2010, which can hurt New York’s ability to bring in federal funding, among other important negative consequences,

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  • Bill Allowing Online Voter Registration in New York City Moves in State Senate, Stalls in Assembly

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    State Senator Myrie, middle, is pushing his online voter registration bill (photo: @SenatorMyrie)


    Last year, the New York City Board of Elections hobbled a City Council effort to create an online voter registration portal for city residents, claiming it conflicted with state law. But the state Legislature may take steps to correct that situation this year by clarifying the law and allowing an online portal that would act as a test case for a statewide system slated to launch next year.

    The New York City Council passed ...

  • As Election Proceeds, Affidavit Ballot Bill at Center of Queens Controversy Continues to Languish

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    (photo: the governor's office)


    Few New York elections go by without controversy, and this year’s relatively quiet slate has been no exception. As voters head to the polls during the inaugural early voting period and heading into Election Day, one major question that came up during the June primary continues to hang over the general election.

    A bill that could change the way provisional affidavit ballots are counted as soon as this year is languishing in Albany, having passed both houses of the state Legislature in June. The bill would make it harder to disqualify

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