Voter Outrage In Suffolk County

 

 

 

This morning I was denied the right to vote .

   Let me explain . When I showed up at my polling place at 6am this morning and walked over to my election district table to pick up my ballot imagine my surprise when the election official informed me that not only was my name not in the rolls but the book with the voter registration names in it that we have to sign into , without any ID mind you , was missing pages 1 through 10 and 12 through 60 . 

    I live in a smallish town in Suffolk county but even so those nearly sixty missing pages account for approximately 600 voters who have been disenfranchised . To be fair I was offered two alternatives: casting an “affidavit ballot” , which I initially chose , or returning to the polls some hours from now when a “new book” could be delivered from the county seat an hour and a half’s drive away .

    Unbeknownst to me when I accepted the “affidavit ballot” , I was given a special envelope that required me to fill out all manner of personal information including “party affiliation” . My conditional ballot would then be sealed into this envelope and allegedly transported to the county seat and be counted at the end of the day with all of those who were allowed to vote in the usual way . 

   After starting to cast my ballot and being given the envelope  , I refused to fill out said envelope which would have denied me my anonymity as the election officials opening my envelope would have been able to associate my votes with a name thus denying me the confidentiality afforded to all of the voters who’s names were in the registration book . 

   I for one am lucky enough that I can return later in the day to try again .  After driving away it came to me that since they have already recorded my name in the book as having cast an “affidavit ballot” are they going to be competent enough to record the fact that I refused to turn in my ballot and erase the botched transaction ? 

   This is an outrage that only lends credence to the notion that our government is too incompetent to be trusted with anything of importance and one has to wonder how many of these +/- 600 voters will even be able to make a second trip to the polls . This is Andrew Cuomo’s New York folks .

 

 

   Good luck . To be continued … We’ll see if I am allowed to cast a real ballot when I return this afternoon after refusing to complete my “affidavit ballot”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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