As a newly-elected Democratic District Leader in Brooklyn, the 2020 General Election is my first experience fulfilling the role’s expected responsibility of assisting in election administration. At the top of the long list of things I’ve learned about the state of our local democracy is this: I should not have the power I have exercised in the past month to ensure voting access in my district. The New York Board of Elections (BOE) must be completely restructured as a non-partisan agency in order for New York to get the functional, operational election infrastructure it deserves.

I am an elected Democratic District Leader (also known as State Committee Member) of Brooklyn’s 52nd Assembly District, representing Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Downtown Brooklyn, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Gowanus, Prospect Heights and Park Slope.

In this role, I am an unpaid executive member of the local Brooklyn Democratic Party. One of my key responsibilities is to work with the New York City Board of Elections to recruit poll workers and staff poll sites for Early Voting and Election Day. District Leaders do not have a lot of power or influence as a rule, but there is a lot of influence when it comes to the Board of Elections.

What I’ve witnessed and experienced is my own overriding influence in the BOE as a Democratic party operative. The BOE is an organization that is partisan by design and gives substantial deference to me as a Democratic District Leader. The culture of patronage and anticipated influence on operations by party officials (like me) creates a failed and unaccountable system. New York will not have well-run elections until we have a non-partisan, professionalized Board of Elections.

The casual openness and regular reference to how poll worker positions are patronage gifts intended to be given by me to poll workers are part of normal day-to-day operations at the BOE. For example, it’s very common for BOE staff to assume that people who belong to “your” political club will receive the choice assignments as poll workers In just the last six weeks:

• I picked up special forms at the Brooklyn BOE, which prioritize new poll workers to be assigned within the district, and was told “you only want to give these to people in your club”
• A BOE staff member called me to ask which club I belong to in order to recommend it to a poll worker
• A longstanding Spanish interpreter poll worker called me because she wanted to work Early Voting. She was given my contact info as her District Leader when she went to the Board of Elections to ask about Early Voting opportunities but was also asked if she belonged to my club. She was given the impression that unless she belonged to my political club, she was unlikely to get the work assignment.

With my District Leader influence at the Board of Elections, it is expected that in order to get things done at the BOE, you go through me. I’ve received hundreds of calls, emails and texts from poll workers hoping to get into a training class, get a work assignment, change their work assignment, or interpret their work assignment. I don’t have access to the Board of Elections system (because I don’t work there) but it is regular practice for the Board of Elections to recommend to people that they reach out to their District Leaders if they want to work Early Voting or change their work assignment. Which means when I receive these communications, I then reach back out by email or phone to my contacts at the BOE and hope things get resolved.

This creates a classic misdirection of who is responsible and who is accountable, not to mention a completely inefficient process for people. The Board of Elections can blame the District Leader for decisions made or lack of communication and vice versa. There are only two District Leaders in every Assembly District and the 52nd Assembly District has almost seventy-five thousand active Democrats. It does not make sense to send so many district poll workers for work assignments over to two people.

And who ultimately loses in this setup? The voter, every time. An organization with this many outside influences and holes in their core processes will never operate in an effective manner. The key customer for the Board of Elections should be the voter, not party operatives.

Every election in recent memory comes with a documented screw up by the state Board of Elections. Every time this happens, our electeds in power come out raising hell about the Board of Elections and how people need to be held accountable. So far, nothing has fundamentally changed about the bipartisan setup and the influence of party officials in the operation of our elections. I hope this time is different. The dysfunction and lack of accountability is a feature, not a bug, of how the Board of Elections is structured today. We need a non-partisan, professionalized Board of Elections in order to move forward to a modern, secure and functional election infrastructure. These changes will require a lot of dedicated organizing to hold ourselves and our elected officials accountable to build the Board of Elections our voting public deserves.

As a Brooklyn District Leader, I am ready and willing to leave behind my power and influence at the Board of Elections and do the organizing work we need to better our voting future.