Election happenings (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

The Republican conference of the New York City Council quietly confirmed all five GOP commissioners to the New York City Board of Elections on November 17 in a hearing with little public notice or scrutiny.

In a six-minute hearing just six weeks before the end of this Council term, the body's three-member minority conference voted to officially install the slate of Republican commissioners for the remainder of a four-year term ending in 2024.

The ten-commissioner New

Voters at the polls (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

Voter data reporting laws must provide for voter privacy. Our elections are some of the most secure in all of the world, and at a time when voter confidence faces threats from false claims of fraud, it’s all the more important that voter data be held in a secure way. As cities and states seek to enhance confidence in their organizational competency and the validity of elections, statutes demanding access to auditable public election records are increasingly commonplace.

Election data is a public good

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

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

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

New York City voters voting (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

Nearly 1 million New York City voters cast ballots in the mayoral primaries last month, according to unofficial results released by the New York City Board of Elections, marking the city's most participated-in local election in decades. While still low by historical standards, the turnout dwarfed the 2013 primaries -- the last mayoral race to have both Democratic and Republican primaries and no incumbent running -- by roughly 245,000 votes.

Combined Democratic and

Voters voting (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

The latest local election debacle -- another botched effort by the New York City Board of Elections (BOE) -- is simply inexcusable. A structural overhaul to the BOE is necessary to create an accountable and transparent 21st century agency and restore voters’ faith in the city’s election system.

Nearly every election for decades has been plagued with problems: untrained poll workers, delays in poll site openings, coordinators who don’t know how to close down the poll at night,

Six months after up to 100,000 Brooklyn voters received misprinted and disqualifying absentee ballots for the 2020 presidential election, the New York City Board of Elections (BOE) admitted it did not send its own staff to do quality inspections at absentee ballot vendor sites to ensure they would be able to meet the requirements of their contracts for the general election last year. It is unclear if the lack of oversight enabled the mistake but, according to the BOE, the vendor bore the costs of redistributing corrected ballots.

The revelation comes as the embattled

Seantor Liz Krueger, center (photo: New York State Senate)

June 30, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: Senator Liz Krueger on Reforming the Board of Elections

State Senator Liz Krueger has a bill to professionalize the New York City Board of Elections and joined the show in the wake of another BOE debacle to discuss its provisions and its chances of passage.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below

Voters voting (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

The New York City Board of Elections began tabulating preliminary, unofficial ranked-choice votes cast in this year’s primary elections on Tuesday, offering what was thought to be a glimpse of the possible result of races across the city even though more than 120,000 absentee ballots have yet to be counted at all. But not long after the BOE published its first preliminary ranked-choice runoff in the Democratic primaries for mayor and comptroller, it became evident that errors had been made and the

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

The combination of early voting, vote-by-mail, and the desire to vote out Donald Trump made 2020 a huge year for voting in New York City. Despite long lines, when voters are given the right resources and awareness, we can raise the level of participation.  

As we turn towards 2021, the next chapter for voting in New York City will be the implementation of ranked-choice voting (RCV) for special and party primary elections for city government positions. If properly implemented, it will

Poll workers (photo: NYC Board of Elections)

Expecting high overall voter turnout and in preparation for the first early voting period in New York for a presidential election -- which itself just saw over 1.1 million voters cast ballots -- the New York City Board of Elections scrambled to train thousands of poll workers. The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated everything this year, including election administration and voting, with absentee b...

Mayor de Blasio after voting (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

In April 2016, just after party primary elections featuring a major error by the New York City Board of Elections, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he would push for legislation in Albany to professionalize the day-to-day operations of the Board, among other bills that could improve the city's perennially bungled election administration and create more access to the ballot box for New Yorkers. Over four years and several poorly-run elections later, de Blasio made a similar announcement