NYT Rails On Board Of Elections And Bloomberg, Where Were They Two Weeks Ago?

Yesterday's opinion section had a great rant on the Board of Elections and Bloomberg's hypocritical nature when it comes to helping to reform the system. It was great to see an article that address the fact that we have voting problems of our own right here in New York City and that there are issues that need to be addressed in order to fix the antiquated system.

From The NY Times:

Elections in New York City are managed by an arcane and secretive body — the New York City Board of Elections — that, in turn, is controlled by party leaders in the city’s five boroughs. Over the years, they have turned it into a nest of good old-fashioned patronage that Boss Tweed and the boys down at Tammany Hall would have admired.

Because of late mailings to voters, thousands of absentee ballots might not be received in time to be postmarked by the deadline of Nov. 3. A purge of more than 30,000 voters has raised questions about how many people were mistakenly dropped from the city’s official lists.

And when the elections offices were deluged with new registrations — 200,000 in the last two weeks before the registration deadline — they apparently had difficulty coping.

As a result, many new voters might not find their names on the rolls. Some may be on supplementary lists, but others could be required to vote on provisional ballots, never an ideal way to cast a ballot.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who often rails about the secretive nature of city’s elections board, also made things worse in the short term. He cut city funds to the board and failed to spring for extra temporary employees to help with the expected crowds. Mr. Bloomberg is right that the city needs a better elections operation, but the mayor should have passed along enough emergency funds to help voters on Election Day.

The Times wants to hold the Elections Board accountable and rightly so. However, I have to wonder if this is just a way for them to get back some credibility after pushing for Bloomberg's end run around democracy with the whole term limits debacle. Yes, I am aware that the Times has always been against term limits, but the way the Mayor and Council went about changing the law was anything but ethical and the paper's approval of it was just flat out wrong.

The Times editorial from yesterday just adds to the fact that Mayor Bloomberg does not care about the voters of this city. Whether it be by making it easier to vote in this election with thousands upon thousands of new voters or by following the process with a referendum on term limits, New Yorkers deserve that and more yet we have a Mayor that wants anything but.