New York cancels its June 23 presidential primary
Associated Press
In an unprecedented move, New York has canceled its Democratic presidential primary originally scheduled for June 23 amid the coronavirus epidemic.
The Democratic members of the State's Board of Elections voted Monday to nix the primary.
New York will still hold its congressional and state-level primary elections on June 23.
New York Democratic Party chair Jay Jacobs has said that the cancellation of the state's presidential primary would mean a lower expected turnout and a reduced need for polling places.
In an unprecedented move, New York has canceled its Democratic presidential primary originally scheduled for June 23 amid the coronavirus epidemic.
The Democratic members of the State's Board of Elections voted Monday to nix the primary. New York will still hold its congressional and state-level primaries on June 23.
New York Democratic Party chair Jay Jacobs has said that the cancellation of the state's presidential primary would mean a lower expected turnout and a reduced need for polling places.
"It just makes so much sense given the extraordinary nature of the challenge," Jacobs said last week.
Local election officials and voting groups have called on the state to use federal funds to purchase cleaning supplies and protective gear, and boost staff ahead of 2020 elections.
Both the state's Democratic Party and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have said they didn't ask election commissioners to make the change, which can happen because of a little-known provision in the recently passed state budget that allows the New York board of elections to remove names of any candidates who have suspended or terminated their campaign from the ballot.
The decision to cancel a state-level Democratic primary is left up to Democratic state election commissioners. New York accounts for 274 pledged delegates in the Democratic nomination process.
Before the state Board of Elections canceled the presidential primary, Cuomo also issued an executive order canceling a number of June state legislative special elections and the special election for the borough president of Queens, according to City & State New York.
Former Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders announced earlier this month that he had suspended his campaign. In a Sunday letter, a lawyer for the Sanders campaign asked the commissioners not to cancel the primary.
"Senator Sanders has collaborated with state parties, the national party and the Biden campaign, to strengthen the Democrats by aligning the party's progressive and moderate wings. His removal from the ballot would hamper those efforts, to the detriment of the party in the general election," the lawyer, Malcolm Seymour, wrote in a letter obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
While Sanders suspended his campaign on April 8, he is still staying on the ballot in the upcoming Democratic primaries and collecting delegates to be able to influence the Democratic party platform at the Democratic National Convention scheduled for this summer.
In addition to formally selecting a presidential nominee, a number of important committees meet at the convention to vote on the Democratic party's official platform and policy priorities.
In order for Sanders and his representatives to have a spot on any of those powerful committees, he needs to earn 25% of all pledged delegates allocated throughout the Democratic nomination process. And not being to compete for any of New York's 274 delegates could be a big blow to his efforts to secure those spots.
Already, Sanders could lose up to a third of his delegates due to DNC rules that require statewide delegates earned by candidates who dropped out to be re-allocated to candidates still in the race, according to political scientist Josh Putnam, an expert on the Democratic nomination process.
Currently, Biden has earned 1,280 pledged delegates in the Democratic primary compared to 947 for Sanders, according to estimates from Decision Desk HQ and the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
New York will be one of the many states expanding the availability of absentee voting in the coming months due to the pandemic.
While current New York law requires voters to have a documented excuse in order to vote absentee, Cuomo essentially waived the requirement by issuing an executive order that adds the risk of acquiring COVID-19 as a valid reason to vote absentee.
Cuomo also recently announced the state is sending absentee ballot applications with prepaid postage to registered voters to make it easy as possible for New Yorkers to vote from home.
Jacobs has said it's a significant change, but that the party's ready.
"It's a big process for us. We don't have many weeks to get it into place before the primary," Jacobs said. "It's going to be difficult to execute but we're going to do it."
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