Democracy on hold
Voters wait in line outside the Brunswick town offices for early voting on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020, in Brunswick, N.Y. (Paul Buckowski/Times Union). Paul Buckowski, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER / Albany Times Union
For a moment, it looked as if the judicial system was not going to let the Rensselaer County Board of Elections get away with a blatant act of voter suppression. Until, astoundingly, it did.
by Times Union Editorial Board
Oh, the Appellate Division will consider the case. It will just get around to it too late to make a difference to the voters disenfranchised by a political machine determined to make it as hard as possible for certain residents to vote.
That’s justice? Sounds more like aiding and abetting, however unwittingly it may be.
From the moment the state Legislature in 2019 authorized early voting, Rensselaer County, a solid Republican bastion, set about finding ways to make it inconvenient for voters in Troy, especially Democrat-leaning lower-income residents, to exercise their franchise.
The ostensibly bipartisan board put polling places in the outlying towns of Brunswick and Schodack, forcing voters from Troy without cars to get there by bus or, at no small expense, taxi.
Anyone with a clue could see through this, but there’s no indication that Republican Election Commissioner Jason Schofield cared a whit about public opinion, or, curiously, that Democratic Commissioner Edward McDonough was motivated to speak out about it.
Last year, with Rensselaer County in mind, the state Legislature attempted to fix the law by requiring that an early polling place be designated in the largest municipality in each county. The Rensselaer County Board of Elections complied — putting one in South Troy, far from the city’s poorest neighborhoods on the north end and well off a bus line.
And the board was poised to do this again this year, until state Attorney General Letitia James sued — and won. On June 7, state Supreme Court Judge Adam Silverman rejected the locations as too remote and said they did not provide equitable access for people of color. He ordered the board to find a new location in Troy in keeping with the spirit of the law by last Wednesday.
But rather than just do the right thing — really, who would expect it to at this point? — the board appealed and, in a head-scratching decision, Appellate Division Associate Justice John P. Colangelo set the case down for June 23 — three days after early voting in the primary ends. And he denied the attorney general’s request to lift a stay on the original decision, meaning that, barring a new order by the court, many voters in Troy are stuck with county’s out-of-the-way location.
The decision gives no rationale for this, and we are hard pressed to find one. It essentially allows the board to get away with this clear attempt at voter suppression for another election — albeit a primary, but an election nonetheless.
This was a chance for the justice system to stop a blatant violation of the very spirit of the early voting law, by public officials no less. The Appellate Division may well uphold Judge Silverman’s ruling in the end, but by then it will be too late. The damage will have been done.
From the state Capitol, one can almost hear the snickering across the river and see the gesture of contempt for the Legislature, the law, and democracy.