My Testimony for the New York State Senate Committee on Elections
Beginning on July 28, 2021, the New York State Senate Election Committee began a series of hearings—led by Senator Zellnor Myrie, the committee chair—for New York voters and democracy advocates to address the need for New York to reform our election administration. Here is the testimony I submitted.
New York State Senate Committee on Elections:
Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony on the subject of election administration in New York State. As a lifelong New Yorker, voter protection professional, and democracy advocate, I am deeply invested in the expansion of ballot access and the professionalization of election administration for all New Yorkers.
In 2020, I served as the Voter Protection Director for the Democratic party in Maine, working to ensure that all eligible Maine people could successfully register, vote, and have their vote counted. This work was performed alongside a score of other voter protection teams in battleground states nationwide amidst the unprecedented challenges of Covid-19, threats to the USPS, and large-scale efforts by the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee to intimidate voters. Three clear lessons apply to New York’s work to buttress ballot access.
First, achieving accessible and inclusive elections is challenging even in places with broadly voter-friendly legal regimes. For example, Maine offers same-day registration, no excuse absentee voting, and other best practices for enfranchisement. Still, in 2020, remaining gaps in rules around voting access posed tremendous obstacles for Mainers seeking to take advantage of their fundamental right to vote. Lack of true early voting meant in-person voting before Election Day was available only at the discretion of municipal election administrators; absence of a formal ballot cure program meant that a late-announced protocol from the Secretary of State allowing voters to fix minor mistakes on their ballot envelopes was unevenly and incompletely rolled out; and the unavailability of online voter registration made accessing the voter rolls inordinately challenging for new voters who could not visit town offices and city halls safely during a pandemic. New York must heed this lesson by deploying all best-practice protocols around voting: online registration and ballot request; automatic, same-day, and pre-registration for 16– and 17-year-olds; broad access to early voting; ample opportunities for ballot return, in-person voting, and ballot cure; support for non-English-speaking and disabled voters; and more.
Second, even with voter-friendly ballot access laws on the books, elections are only as accessible and inclusive as their professional administration. In protecting Maine voters, our team’s biggest challenge was that municipal election officials — the 500 town and city clerks who run elections statewide, and their teams and trained volunteers — often failed to comply with the rules on the books. For example, many required new registrants to show a government-issued photo ID to register when the statute is far more inclusive about the documentation a voter may use to prove their identity and residency. Thankfully, these clerks were accountable as professional civil servants — most often hired by municipal leaders who were themselves elected by voters. When clerks were noncompliant, voters and advocates could address their oversights with the elected officials employing them. New York’s elections are administered by far less professionalized officials than our New England counterparts, with the patronage-addled board of election system robbing New Yorkers of visibility into how administrators are chosen and limiting mechanisms to hold them accountable for poor performance. It is not enough to pass good ballot access laws: the failure of election administrators to be efficient and compliant is suppressive in itself.
Finally, Maine voters have affirmed their preference for ranked choice voting by ballot referendum multiple times, and they are able to rank candidates in their elections without difficulty. As the Voter Protection Director charged with ensuring that adaptability of administrators to Covid-19 and empowerment of voters on how to vote safely from home, my work in 2020 required a major educational lift. Informing voters about how to successfully rank candidates was easy in comparison to the broader challenge of helping them navigate the bureaucracy of election administration — especially during a pandemic. As we saw in New York City this summer, ranked choice voting has its intended effects: it galvanizes voters to turn out, reduces negative attacks, and generates more diverse and representative winners. Unfortunately, the ill-advised interim release of tabulations by the NYC BOE undermined confidence in the system. However, we must acknowledge that any reputational blow to ranked choice voting was a result of improper administration — not a function of the instant-runoff voting system itself. Indeed, New York should expand ranked choice voting to state elections as well, while also taking on the proactive responsibility to continually educate voters about its usage.
Thank you again for your work to ensure New York’s democracy is strong — and for your recognition that it is only as strong as it is efficient, accessible, and inclusive.
Sincerely,
Ryder Kessler
Voter Protection Director, Maine Democratic Party (January–November 2020)
Community Board 2, Manhattan
- Member (January 2019–January 2020)
- Assistant Secretary (November 2019–January 2020)
