OP-ED: How NY Can Save $25 Million

There are plenty of reasons for the Legislature to get its act together to avoid holding two separate primaries this summer — 25 million of them, to be exact.

Taxpayers will save $25 million — the cost of printing ballots and paying poll workers — if the Senate and Assembly agree on a combined date to hold both the federal and state primaries.

Unless they agree on a new date, New York will be holding a federal primary June 28 and a state primary Sept. 13.

Of course, it would be only logical to hold one primary. But this is Albany, folks, and once again, dysfunction and partisan gridlock trump reason.

For years, the state dragged its feet in moving the date of its September federal primary election earlier to comply with the Military and Overseas Voting Empowerment Act, a federal law designed to ensure our overseas service members had time to cast absentee ballots.

Albany never bothered to comply with the law, so the feds had to intervene. A federal court set the federal primary for the fourth Tuesday in June to accommodate the military. But the court had no authority to move the state primary, which four years later still remains in September. As result, we've already wasted a whopping $50 million over the past two primary election cycles.

The state Assembly acted prudently this year when it passed a bipartisan bill to consolidate the primaries in June.

June makes sense for several reasons. For starters, it's already the status quo. The federal primary has been held in June each of the past two election cycles, so voters are accustomed to it. It's also a date that would give our veterans plenty of time to have their votes counted before the general election in November. This explains why more than three-fifths of the states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, hold their primary elections before the end of June.

Last week, Republicans in the state Senate passed a bill that would move both the primaries to August, flying in the face of evidence and common sense. Holding an election in the dog days of summer doesn't make much sense, unless your goal is to discourage voter turnout.

August, along with July, is the most popular time of year for Americans to travel, according to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Other statistics show that 52 percent of Northeasterners plan their vacations in August, compared to only 19 percent in June.

Plus, moving the primary elections to the doldrums of August will only further discourage voting. New York's voting turnout is already a civic embarrassment — just 29 percent of eligible voters made it to the polls in 2014, the fourth-worst showing in the country. We should be focused on initiatives to increase turnout, not trying to make it harder for New Yorkers to exercise the most important right granted to them by the Constitution.

Petitions to collect signatures for congressional candidates are being circulated. If the state Legislature doesn't act in the next few weeks, we'll have flushed $25 million down the drain. That's $25 million less for public schoolteachers, crumbling subways and roads and overcrowded homeless shelters. With these and so many other pressing needs, New York simply can't afford this level of dysfunction any longer.

Brad Hoylman, a Democrat, represents the 27th District in Manhattan.

Link to the Artcle: http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-opinion/article/Hold-both-primaries-on-one-day-6889312.php