Absentee ballots the focus of lawsuit filed against Cuomo and N.Y. Board of Elections

ALBANY — A pair of candidates and more than a dozen voters filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to block thousands of absentee ballots from being tossed over potential postmark issues.

The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, alleges that hundreds of thousands of legitimate votes cast in New York’s June 23 primary could be disregarded because of a U.S. Postal Service screw up.

“Depending on where the voter lived and what their local USPS office was doing or told, two voters could cast identical ballots, at exactly the same time, on the same day, and yet one ballot would be counted and one would not,” the complaint argues.

Due to the coronavirus crisis, New York Gov. Cuomo expanded the use of absentee ballots and sent applications to all eligible primary voters.

To be counted, primary ballots had to be postmarked by June 23rd and received by June 30th.

However, even if ballots, which had pre-paid postage that typically doesn’t need a postmark, were dropped in the mail ahead of the deadline have illegible or missing postmarks, they will be invalidated.

Prior to the pandemic, voters had to apply a stamp to envelopes containing mail-in ballots themselves. Postmarks ensure stamps can’t be reused.

The suit accuses Cuomo and the state Board of Elections of creating an “election snafu” that could disenfranchise thousands of voters and calls for all ballots received by June 30 to be counted.

On an unrelated afternoon conference call with reporters, the governor maintained that the deadline is the deadline.

“The date for the ballots to be eligible is in the law,” he said. “So that is going to have to be resolved either by a court or by the Legislature passing a new law.”

Plaintiffs in the suit, including Suraj Patel, running against Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), and Emily Gallagher, who is hoping to unseat Assemblyman Joe Lentol (D-Williamsburg), argue that in Brooklyn up to 4% of absentee ballots cast, roughly 16,000 votes, will be disqualified over postmark problems.

Patel, a progressive locked in a razor-thin race with Maloney following in-person election day tallies, said on average nearly one-in-five mail-in ballots in the contest have been thrown out because of the postmark rule and other technicalities.

“It’s embarrassing,” he told the Daily News. “This isn’t a partisan issue. We don’t even know who the votes are for. It’s just a colossal waste of human effort to have that many votes invalidated.”

Patel said the invalidation rate sends the wrong message to voters ahead of November’s general election.

“If this is not rectified and voters know that there’s a one-in-five chance that their vote won’t be counted, do you think that anyone would trust vote by mail?” he said.