Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - As Election Day arrives, not only are you voting for the next President of the United States, but local officials and judgeships. There is also State Proposition 1, a highly controversial initiative on the ballot that's angered some opponents.
Sash Silvera is with the Coalition to Protect Kids in New York, which is a group pushing back against Prop 1 on the ballot. She says it was never about abortion.
"Abortion does not appear in any of the proposed legislation or language that our legislature approved," said Silvera in an interview with WBEN.
She also says there's an issue with the vagueness of the proposition.
"It introduces new parameters by which the courts and only the courts will be empowered to give definition to, so key concerns are the endangerment of minor children, exposure to minor children with no guard rails when we are not discriminating against age, as we do with tattoos, alcohol, cigarettes, we discriminate, but we call them safeguard. There's no clarity around that, combined with some of the other classes that are proposed in the amendment, like gender identity or gender orientation, which are not defined either," Silvera said.
Silvera says the ones that are accountable to her group would be state legislators, who the people elect as representatives to first uphold the existing constitutions and serve the will of the people.
"They're behind this. It was their effort that them passing these bills that were first introduced in two different consecutive legislative sessions in 2022 and 2023 that allowed this to be on the ballot for the statewide popular vote, for the people to give the final approval or rejection of this addition to our state constitution. So for us, they're behind this? Who's pulling their strings? That's a great question, because this doesn't serve the people of New York Well, or the children," Silvera added.
Silvera claims many people do not even know that this exists.
"So the effort of the coalition is primarily to raise that awareness and so that people can do their research due diligence and make informed decisions. For many, if we don't tell them, they will first meet the proposal on the back of their ballot when they vote, providing they turn the ballot over right from the candidate side," Slivera explained.
Election Day is Tuesday, with polls across Erie County open from 6 a.m.-to-9 p.m. EST.