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New online voter registration program, deemed great success by Cuomo, causing St. Lawrence County elections official headaches

Posted 3/22/16

By CRAIG FREILICH Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced an unprecedented surge in last-minute online voter registration activity less than one month before the New York State presidential primary. …

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New online voter registration program, deemed great success by Cuomo, causing St. Lawrence County elections official headaches

Posted

By CRAIG FREILICH

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced an unprecedented surge in last-minute online voter registration activity less than one month before the New York State presidential primary.

But one local elections official says the system is causing his office more problems than it might be worth.

“It has dramatically increased the amount of work and errors in the system,” said Tom Nichols, St. Lawrence County’s Republican Elections Commissioner.

Between March 10 and March 20, MyDMV, the state's only online voter registration system, processed more than 40,883 voter registration applications, including 20,889 from first-time voters. MyDMV also set an all-time record on Friday, March 18 with 13,961 voter registration applications received, including 7,128 from first-time voters, according to the governor’s press release.

“But it’s a mixed bag,” Commissioner Nichols said. The performance of the system is sporadic, he said, in terms of the information that has been transmitted to his office.

“There are a number of individuals requesting services from us who say they have registered online but we’ve not received information from the system,” he said.

“Our goal is to give people every opportunity to vote and avail themselves of the process. But there are still problems with the DMV online system,” Nichols said.

New Yorkers must be registered by March 25 in order to cast ballots in the upcoming presidential primaries.

It remains to be seen if the system can be squared away before the April 19 presidential primary in New York State. Nichols fears there will be people who have signed up online through the DMV system whose records will not be on file with St. Lawrence County when they show up to vote on primary day, and they will be turned away.

“Our online voter registration portal is key in this administration's efforts to knock down barriers to democracy and encourage more participation in the electoral process,” Cuomo said in his press release. “I encourage anyone who needs to register, or update their information, to join the growing number of New Yorkers using this simple and convenient tool to ensure their eligibility to vote in the upcoming presidential primaries.”

“We want to encourage people to access” their rights to vote, Nichols said, but for the online DMV system to work for voters, “improvements need to be made.”

Nichols says first-time registrants have to be registered by March 25 to vote April 19.

This registration period is not for those who are already registered. It is designed to prevent what Nichols called “party jumping,” where a voter might attempt to change party registration before a primary just to vote in the primary and then change it back after the primary.

Nichols said for that reason all party registrations are frozen from the first of the year through the general election in November.