Buffalo, NY (WBEN) While COVID19 concerns prompted mail-in ballots for this year's primaries and NY27 special election, the chairman of New York's Republican party has concerns about the process moving forward.
"Our board of elections did an incredible job turning this around, but they are not equipped to do this comfortably," says Nick Langworthy. "The stresses on the system are extreme. I'm told the Erie County Board of Elections had to go to Wisconsin to secure enough envelopes to mail these ballots."
Langworthy says Governor Cuomo had inactive voters be compelled to be mailed a registration form for an absentee ballot. "An inactive voter is classified because they've mailed two things to the voter but they've bounced back. The governor insisted on spending mone on people who won't get the ballot," contends Langworthy
Langworthy says with no voter ID requirement, mail in balloting could open the door to voter fraud. He cites a case in California of what he calls ballot harvesting. "In a congressional race in 2018. Tom Reed told me he was on a congressional trip to Asia with one of the members from California who believed on Election Night he won. That person was called back because he was suddenly trailing by 7,000 votes because of ballots that mysteriously showed up," explains Langworthy. "These are the things that could happen with this all mail voting. You have election month, not election day, and I don't think this experiment has been healthy for anybody."
He says a reason for one day voting exists because of what happened a few days before the vote. "The cheap political stunt that one of the candidates rolled out could have affected the absentees before the exoneration came the next day. When you have different standards, the fraud creeps in," says Langworthy, referring to the allegation of voter fraud against Chris Jacobs that was quickly shut down by the Erie County DA's Office. "There are more Democratic paper ballots than Republicans and that's why Democrats in Congress are pushing for mail voting because they can pull more people out with that, and we have more motivated people to show up on Election Day," adds Langworthy
Erie County Board of Elections commissioners Ralph M. Mohr and Jeremy J. Zellner announced that the board has mailed 208,612 absentee ballots for the primary and special elections, with 131,152 returned as of the close of business Tuesday.
UB's Jacob Neiheisel says mail in balloting is a double edged sword. "On the positive side, it's convenient for many voters. They have an extended period of time to cast their ballots and it's less hectic for them. On the negative side, there's a fair amount of academic research that suggests it does decrease turnout because these are people who are active, and they're being taken out of the fight prior to the actual day of the election, and that can decrease turnout," says Neiheisel. He says all mail voting has gone well in other states including Oregon.