By:KEITH GRANT
Long Beach's infamous ballot bungling should become a thing of the past. Last week, Governor Pataki signed into law a bill designed to protect the votes of senior citizens who reside in nursing homes and adult care facilities.
The law became effective immediately and should offer new protections for seniors in both the upcoming primary and general elections, according to State Sen. Dean G. Skelos (R-C, Rockville Centre) who co-sponsored the bill with Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg (D, Long Beach).
This bi-partisan initiative will ensure that seniors across New York State have the opportunity to participate in the electoral process and guarantees that their votes will count,Skelos said.
The law imposes new statewide protections for senior citizens voting by absentee ballot. Specifically, the legislation requires bipartisan Board of Elections (BOE) oversight at all nursing homes, adult care facilities and Veterans' Administration (VA) hospitals with 25 or more absentee ballot requests; allows BOE monitoring for any nursing home, adult care facility or VA hospital regardless of the total number of absentee ballots requested; and applies these BOE oversight standards to all school district elections.
Previously, the integrity of school board elections was the sole responsibility of the concerned district.
The bill was the product of an April 16 Senate Elections Committee public hearing held at the Long Beach Public Library. Residents, District Attorney Denis Dillon and the League of Women Voters provided state officials with more than two hours of testimony detailing alleged improprieties in recent Long Beach school district elections.
Last January, a special Nassau County grand jury concluded that several challenges existed for senior citizens voting by absentee ballot in adult care centers in the May 2000 school board election. The investigation found that absentee ballots were not distributed to residents upon their receipt at the facilities; outside persons were permitted to interact with facility residents as they cast their absentee ballot; and these same individuals were left in possession of the completed ballots without proper Board of Elections' supervision. In some instances, the patients were instructed to merely sign their name and the ballot was then completed by an outside individual.
The grand jury did not issue any indictments as many of the seniors interviewed could not identify anyone who may have improperly handled the ballots. The grand jury's findings merely identified those allegedly involved as members of a political party.
Long Beach has long been known for questionable voting practices, having been found in the past to have counted votes by dead people. Attention was again brought to the handling of absentee ballots when they determined the May 2000 school board election. Trustee Norman Alpren was reelected in that election after receiving 90 percent of the nursing home absentee ballot vote, leap-frogging his two challengers.
The law was welcome news to community activist Mindy Warshaw, who unsuccessfully petitioned to State Education Commissioner Richard Mills to overturn that 2000 election on the grounds of the alleged mishandling of the absentee ballots.
It's a win,she said. It brings back the voter integrity of absentee ballots, and it reaffirms the facts that were in my petition.
Local League of Women's Voters president Sarah Nicholas said, We're thrilled. It's really going to address a long-standing problem we've had in Long Beach.
It will restore some integrity to the process and confidence in it,she added. For too long, people took it for granted. They'd say, Oh, that's just how it is in Long Beach.
Following the bill's earlier passage by the assembly, Weisenberg commented, This is not a problem that existed only in Long Beach, it was statewide. However, the fact that it did occur in my area, I felt that I had responsibility to make sure this legislation was successful.
