#New York’s messy primary shows November could be national vote-count nightmare

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In some places, voters waited in hours-long lines outside polling sites on Tuesday.
Paul Martinka

New York’s primary Tuesday was plagued with more errors than usual — and it presages a national mess in November.

Some 1.7 million voters requested absentee ballots — including 750,000 in the city. But many voters say they never got that ballot — or not in time to actually vote by mail. And how many mailed-in ballots didn’t arrive in time to count?

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s order allowing “absentee on request” was a reasonable concession to the pandemic — but the state plainly doesn’t know how to make this work.

Meanwhile, poll workers (undertrained because of the lockdown) made more mistakes than ever. It’s not clear how many voters didn’t get both pages of the Democratic primary ballot, for example.

And hundreds more people somehow voted in the Serve America Movement primary in the city than SAM has members.

Plus, many polling sites opened late due to shortages of election workers, while others saw long lines because those towns didn’t open enough locations.

It’s OK that several tight races won’t be decided for weeks, while absentee ballots are counted — and then likely challenged by competing campaigns.

But be ready for a national delay in November: Mail-in chaos in a few swing states could make Florida 2000 seem like nothing.