Attorney General Schneiderman (photo: @AGSchneiderman)
Last week, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman stood before a crowd of New Yorkers gathered at Federal Hall and announced the introduction of a comprehensive reform bill aimed at expanding voting rights in New York. I applaud his leadership on this issue but he misses a critical point.
New York has some of the worst elections laws in the country. Among other backwards anti-voting provisions, New York has no early voting (unlike 37 states), a partisan board of elections, excuse-only absentee balloting, antiquated voting systems and holds multiple primary elections on different dates. Voters had to change their party registrations more than a full six months before the April 2016 presidential primary, before all the candidates were even identified.
The massive impediment to voting in New York is not administrative and it is by no means passive; it’s the intentional denial of the voting rights of 3.2 million independent and third-party New Yorkers because of our system of closed primaries, in which only registered voters from the two main political parties can cast a ballot for their party’s candidate. To put that in perspective, that is half a million more voters than are registered with the Republican Party in New York. It's also more than the total number of registered voters in the entire states of Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, and Montana combined. Why does New York State believe that it has the right to dictate its citizens’ conscience?
Like those 3.2 million other independently minded New Yorkers, I am denied my basic rights as a citizen in our democracy. I was shut out of the 2016 primary elections, one of the most consequential elections in my lifetime. Why? Because I chose not to join a political party in order to exercise my right to vote. That’s not right and the 2016 primary elections perfectly illustrate why. On October 9, 2015 (the date by which New Yorkers had to change their registrations in order to vote in the primaries), few had heard of Bernie Sanders and even fewer believed that Donald Trump would become the Republican party nominee. By April, both had gained popular support among their party's voters and energized the electorate, many of whom could not cast their ballots for them. These facts demonstrate that the ability to vote in a primary is far more significant than the ability to vote in a general election.
New York’s primary elections are not simply private party nominating contests, a deceit that is often used to justify voter disenfranchisement, and which intentionally obfuscates the fact that primaries are publicly run and paid for with millions of dollars of taxpayer money. New York’s primary elections are administered in public buildings and run by publicly paid for employees on publicly owned machines. They differ from the general election in one key respect only, that they exclude 3.2 million voters and prevent millions more major party voters from exercising real choice in voting.
It’s no wonder New York has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country. Only 19.7 percent of registered New Yorkers cast a ballot in last April’s presidential primary, the second-lowest voter turnout among primary states after Louisiana. I fully support the attorney general’s work to improve our system of voting in New York, but how can we have a serious conversation about voting rights in New York when we ignore the fact that currently in New York, 33 percent of millennial voters, 33 percent of Asian voters, 20 percent of Latino voters and 15 percent of African-American voters who don’t belong to one of the two major political parties are shut out of voting in primary elections.
Accordingly, I brought a lawsuit challenging New York’s failing system of primary elections. While my lawsuit does not directly challenge New York’s closed primary system (because I believe that discrete question is one for the legislature), it does specifically challenge the constitutionality of that provision of the election law requiring a change of party affiliation more than six months in advance of a primary election – likely at a point in time when a voter will not have had any meaningful opportunity to make up her mind. If the right to vote is to mean anything, that right must be meaningful. While the attorney general is my opponent in these proceedings, he fully supports jettisoning the provision of the election law that I challenged, and essentially recognizes its unconstitutionality. Ironically, AG Schneiderman’s first public announcement of his voting reforms took place on December 6, 2016 at the very same moment – literally – that his office was opposing my efforts to open the system up.
Nonetheless, in his remarks last week, the Attorney General said that more people voting is good for our political parties and that anything that expands voting rights is a good thing. I agree, and encourage him to embrace open primaries and further open our democracy in New York State.
It is not debatable that every eligible New Yorker should have the right to vote for who they want in every election.
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Mark Moody is a New York City-based attorney in private practice.
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Urban Pathways members rally outside City Hall (photo via Urban Pathways)
In May 2015, my fellow Urban Pathways Board Member Gary Belsky rightfully recognized Mayor Bill de Blasio’s fiscal year 2016 budget investment in the human services nonprofit workforce. The investment -- a 2.5 percent cost of living adjustment and an $11.50-per-hour wage floor, coupled with a subsequent City-funded $15 minimum wage -- rewarded a long neglected workforce instrumental to moving vulnerable New Yorkers and the City forward.
However, as we approach the fiscal year 2018 budget, the mayor has more to do. It is now time for him to follow these laudable staff investments with a 12 percent increase in the city’s human services contracts themselves. Contract increases will act in concert with the enacted workforce investments. They will ensure we have human services organizations to employ the workers now deservedly earning a higher wage. (In 2013, nearly one in five city human services providers operated in the red, an indicator of potential closure.)
Human services nonprofits serve the most vulnerable in our city, about 2.5 million New Yorkers each year. They provide early childhood education and after-school programs, run food pantries, provide mental health services, house persons experiencing homelessness, and care for the elderly, among many other community services. Urban Pathways, for example, assists homeless adults in the New York City metropolitan area through a continuum of services and supportive housing.
Increases will enable us to provide ample training and affordable benefits to our staff. Years of flat funding from the city amid the rising costs of health care have complicated our ability to remain fiscally sound. This year, Urban Pathways endured another double-digit increase in our health care costs for our over 300 employees. Flat funding forces us to split these double-digit increases with our employees, resulting in increased co-pays and obligating us to modify our health insurance carrier.
City contract increases will also reverse the tide of consistently underfunded contracts. In the past decade, the city has granted only one increase to its human services contracts. This has yielded barebones human services programs that should do more than merely subsist. Those whom we serve deserve that.
A consistent challenge Urban Pathways faces in operating our facilities for alternatives to shelter for homeless adults -- the Olivieri Drop-In Center, Hegeman Safe Haven and Travelers Safe Haven -- is inadequate city investment in the form of an underfunded Other Than Personal Services (OTPS) line. OTPS constitutes a significant line in the budgets of our Drop-In Center and Safe Havens. We draw on it to feed the 500 clients we annually serve at these programs so they have access to healthy food amid their paltry incomes. We use it to ensure our staff receives benefits and development to counter high turnover in our sector. We also rely on it to upgrade technology and make capital repairs so infrastructure remains sound. Our Safe Havens, like any other buildings, break and require maintenance.
As a board member, I with countless others, invest time, money and personal equity in human services organizations across the city. We proudly do so because we recognize the value of these organizations. They are vital to the individuals receiving the services, our communities and the city overall. We also take our fiduciary duty seriously, and recognize that the challenges are growing and threaten the sustainability of these organizations.
The time is now for the mayor to complete his work and enact a budget that includes a 12 percent increase in the city’s human services contracts. Let’s ensure human services organizations and their workforce can develop and run programs to their fullest capabilities.
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Kelley Gott has been an Executive Board Member of Urban Pathways since 2015.
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Governor Andrew Cuomo (photo: Kevin Coughlin/The Governor's office)
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has joined the chorus of criticism against President Trump’s ban on refugees and other immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim nations. “I never thought I’d see the day when refugees who have fled war-torn countries in search of a better life would be turned away at our doorstep," the governor said in a statement following the president’s executive order. "We are a nation of bridges, not walls, and a great many of us still believe in the words 'give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...' This is not who we are, and not who we should be.”
Mario Cuomo strikes a resounding chord
Andrew Cuomo's support for immigration and diversity echoes the sentiments of his father, former Governor Mario Cuomo, who served from 1983 to 1995. The elder Cuomo was the first Italian American elected as governor of New York State. He had no tolerance for prejudice and worked tirelessly for human equality and dignity. A champion of recognizing merit regardless of sex or race, he appointed the first Black, the first Latino, and the first two women judges to the state's Court of Appeals.
In talking about immigration issues, Mario Cuomo often recalled the story of his parents, Andrea and Immaculata Cuomo. Penniless and unable to speak English, they had come to the United States from the Italian province of Salerno, south of Naples -- Andrea in 1926 and his wife a year later in 1927. After spending three years in Jersey City, they moved to the Queens neighborhood of South Jamaica, where they opened a grocery store and raised their family.
By that time, there were thousands of Italian Americans in New York. But across the nation, there was lots of prejudice against Italians for their religion (mostly Catholic), speech (most learned English, but often it was not perfect) and culture (they retained some old country ways but assimilated into their new land and were proud to be Americans). Congress enacted laws in 1921 and 1924 to cap total annual immigration and impose numerical quotas based on immigrant nationality that favored northern and western European countries. The laws were directed against Italians and others from southern Europe. “The old belief in America as a promised land for all who yearn for freedom had lost its operative significance," with the passage of these laws, wrote historian John Higham in his book “Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925.” It had been replaced by a "new equation between national loyalty and a large measure of political and social conformity." By the time Mario Cuomo's parents arrived, a few years after the restrictive legislation, the flow of southern and eastern European immigrants had been greatly reduced.
National immigration policy continued to change and became more open in later years. But Mario Cuomo, born in 1932, remembered the sort of prejudice his parents faced and fought it his entire career. For him, it was a personal matter as well as a matter of public policy.
In a 1992 speech at New York University, Cuomo decried "nativist sloganeering and parochial fear-mongering that's been aimed at every group of new immigrants throughout our history." He recalled his parents' lives. "I thank God the country didn't say to them 'we can't afford you right now; you might take someone else's jobs, or cost us too much,'”, he said. “I'm glad they didn't ask my father if he could speak English, because he couldn't. I'm glad they didn't ask my mother if she could count, because she couldn't...I'm glad they didn't ask my father what special skills he brought to this great and dynamic nation because there was no special expertise to the way he handled a shovel when he dug trenches for a sewer pipe. I'm glad they let him in anyway."
Cuomo worked to rally the Democratic party for the cause of immigrants. "We speak for the minorities who have not yet entered the mainstream," he said in his address to the 1984 Democratic convention. "We speak for ethnics who want to add their culture to the magnificent mosaic that is America."
Andrew Cuomo continues a New York tradition
Speaking at the 2016 Democratic National Convention last July, Andrew Cuomo sounded a similar note. "The Trump campaign is marketing a great distraction, using people’s fear and anxiety to drive his ratings," he told the delegates. "Their message comes down to this: be afraid of people who are different — be afraid of different religions and different colors and different languages. Stop immigration and they believe the nation will automatically rise. It’s not right, it’s divisive, it’s delusional, and we must expose the truth to the people of this nation. Unless Republicans are all Native Americans, then they are immigrants too."
In a speech this past November, Andrew Cuomo asserted that he and New York will fight against the spread of anti-immigrant fear. Like his father, he put it in personal terms. "If there is a move to deport immigrants then I say start with me,” he said. “I am a son of immigrants. Son of Mario Cuomo, who is the son of Andrea Cuomo, a poor, Italian immigrant who came to this country without a job, without money, or resources and he was here only for the promise of America."
Cuomo intends to make good on his promise to protect immigrant rights. He has ordered his counsel's office to explore legal options to help anyone detained at New York airports to ensure their rights are protected. Promising more action, on January 29 he said, “As New Yorkers who live in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, we welcome new immigrants as a source of energy and celebrate them as a source of revitalization for our state. We will ensure New York remains a beacon of hope and opportunity and will work to protect the rights of those seeking refuge in our state."
New York -- Land of promise
The fight over refugees and immigrants is likely to be a spirited one. The Trump administration promises to strengthen restrictions and ramp up stringent vetting of foreigners who want to enter the country. New York State seems likely to insist on continuing its historical tradition of welcoming newcomers. New York has led before and will again this time. It is a natural role for our state, particularly since New York City is where more immigrants have entered the nation over the years than at any other place.
Immigration policies varied over the years, but many of the immigrants have had one thing in common - aspirations for a better life. "More than anything else, the immigrants come with dreams -- dreams that hunger might become a thing of the past, dreams that restrictions and discrimination might be replaced by rights, and dreams that poverty might be traded for security and opportunity, if not for oneself, then at least for one's children or grandchildren," writes Andrew Anbinder in his new book “City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York.” He continues, "These dreams characterized the New York immigrant story from the arrival of the first Dutch settlers through the heyday of Five Points, the Lower East Side, and Little Italy. Those same dreams dominate the lives of New York's newest immigrants, whether they are Chinese or Guyanese, Jamaican or Dominican, Mexican or Ghanaian. The story of immigrant New York is truly a story of dreams."
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Dr. Bruce W. Dearstyne's latest book is The Spirit of New York: Defining Events in the Empire State's History, published in 2015 by SUNY Press.
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