#NYC poll snafus caused hundreds of Democrats to vote in tiny 3rd party primary

The city Board of Elections reported that 845 Queens residents voted in the primary of the tiny Serve America Movement party Tuesday.

There’s one glaring problem: Just 106 New York residents in all of New York City are enrolled in the obscure party, according election records.

Only 21 SAM members are enrolled in Queens.

That has one SAM member alleging that inexcusable irregularities caused by poll workers’ unpreparedness and incompetence corrupted democracy by improperly allowing hundreds of bewildered Democrats to mistakenly vote in the SAM primary.

“It’s crazy. There’s no way 800 SAM members voted in Queens,” SAM party activist Frank Morano said Wednesday.

On its website reporting unofficial results, elections agency reported that 845 people voted in SAM’s Queens State Committee primary for the 11th Congressional District.

The results show that candidate Dan Peterson received 563 votes, followed by John Scandalios with 272 votes.

Ten voters even wrote in the names of candidates not on the ballot.

“I’m absolutely dismayed at the irregularities in yesterday’s election. In Queens and Manhattan, there appears to have been more votes cast than there were eligible voters,” Morano told The Post.

“It appears likely that Democratic voters in those two boroughs were given SAM Party ballots by accident. Not only, does this make it impossible to know the true winners of the SAM contests, but it deprives the Democratic voters of a meaningful voice in the contests they were meant to vote in.”

On Tuesday, at Junior High School 190 Russell Sage in Forest Hills, Democrat Steven Goffner, 63, showed The Post a photo of a ballot for members of the Serve America Movement party that he was given to use — even though he’s not a member of that minor party — in addition to two Democratic ballots.

Goffner said he actually cast a vote using the Serve America Movement ballot by randomly choosing one of two local candidates for the party committee before realizing the error.

Morano said the elections board was asked to perform an “almost herculean task” by holding an election during the coronavirus pandemic.

“But I think this underscores the need to have poll workers, who are better trained, particularly when it comes to minor party primaries.,” he said.

With the elections results riddled with irregularities, Morano said new elections should be held for the SAM primaries.

“In the long run though, I think this is one more reason that we need non-partisan rather than bi-partisan administration of our elections. Clearly, the current system hasn’t served New Yorkers well and is in dire need of reform,” he said.

A Board of Elections spokeswoman said she was looking into the irregularities regarding Democrats voting in the SAM primaries.

There were numerous complaints Tuesday that the elections agency shortchanged democracy when when poll workers failed to properly distribute the two ballots — preventing some voters from taking part in both the Democratic presidential primary and local races.

The problem so worried the Board of Elections that it tweeted out a warning shortly before noon that said, “In the Democratic primary, voters may have a 2 page ballot!”