Saturday, September 13, 2014

City Council BOE Takeover




90% Percent Voters Participation in Scotland and 10% in NY What Are They Doing Better?
This is the best that Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito can do? Give us a break.Manhattan delegation of City Council warned against leaks(NYDN) The emailed ultimatum came from delegation leaders Margaret Chin and Corey Johnson. Hours after the Daily News reported that the Manhattan delegation of the City Council met behind closed doors to select a replacement for a departing Board of Elections commissioner, Manhattan lawmakers were warned that leakers might be barred from future meetings.The emailed ultimatum came from delegation leaders Margaret Chin and Corey Johnson. Citizens Union head Dick Dadey called the veiled threat “an unnecessary pressure tactic” that’s clearly “over the top.”* After the Daily News reported that a New York City Council delegation met behind closed doors to nominate a replacement for a Board of Elections commissioner who quit, lawmakers were warned that leakers could be barred from future meetings, the Daily News reports:  NYC Council vows 'fair, transparent, and public' pick of new Board of Elections commissioner(NYDN) * Show and tell(NYDN Ed)  Public must scrutinize Council’s Board of Elections picksDuly embarrassed by the Daily News exposing her secret process to find a new Manhattan commissioner for the Board of Elections, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito is going public. The three job candidates should be forced to answer, on the record, whether they would keep the patronage system that’s created the miserable state of affairs at the board — or move toward hiring based on merit.* Now In Control, City Council Opens Up BOE AppointmentProcess (Gotham Gazette)


Council Continutes Secret Take Over of BOE 

Thursday
Three city Board of Elections commissioner nominees swore Wednesday during a City Council grilling that they would work to rid the agency of nepotism and incompetence if appointed, the Daily News writes:

Quiet on the Bronx (and Brooklyn)front: Council mainly mum on elex board picks(NYDN)


Will the Council Members Knock Off Their Challengers At the BOE in 2017?  Da
Council Takes Over the BOE in Secret  


In choosing a new executive director, the Board of Elections cannot gets its act together. The City Council’s Manhattan delegation met in secret to select a new Democratic commissioner for the Board of Elections. Then the Daily News reported on their deliberations. Then the members distributed a memo stating that the leaker would be expelled from the delegation if identified.Here’s why they are afraid of sunshine: They picked a man who has a total of four months’ elections experience and made a botch of even that.As the Manhattan Democratic clerk (salary $107,735), Alan Schulkin oversaw June’s congressional contest between Charlie Rangel and Adriano Espaillat. He managed to lose 215 votes.Schulkin admits that he now believes he is not cut out for such an administrative function. He thinks he will be better suited to setting policy for the whole incompetent place.

A City Council BOE Takeover? 

Four people vying to become the newest Board of Elections commissioner—Lenore Kramer, Louise Dankberg, Leonard Kohen and Alan Schulkin—will line up to be grilled by the City Council in a series of private interviews tomorrow, the Daily News reports: http://goo.gl/geqDih
Campaign Consutants Lobbyists Who Run the Council Take Over the BOE - Ballot Knock Offs of Candidates Who Don't Hire Them? 

Back Continuing The Tammany Hall Future 

Board of Elections President Greg Soumas quits ahead of possible ouster in City Council power play(NYDN) Ahead of his possible ouster by the City Council, Board of Elections President Gregory Soumas quit in a terse Friday note."By this letter, I resign my position as commissioner of the Board of Elections of the city of New York effective immediately," the Manhattan Democrat wrote to Board Secretary Michael Michel.Soumas, an attorney and former district leader, was first appointed to the 10-member bipartisan Board in 2005. As first reported in the Daily News Monday, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito was poised to potentially ignore Manhattan Democratic Chairman Keith Wright's hopes of keeping Soumas on. But because Wright missed a legal deadline to tell the Council he wanted to reappoint Soumas, the Council seized control of the appointment process. By replacing Soumas with a candidate of her own, Mark-Viverito could intensify her influence over the Board and its host of patronage jobs.


But Soumas's resignation could potentially throw the speaker's plan off track. As news of his bow-out spread Friday, there were conflicting arguments about whether the appointment power still rested with Mark-Viverito and the Council, or whether it would reset the clock for Wright to make another pick.Frederic Umane, the Manhattan Republican commissioner, said the Council would pick a replacement for Soumas -- but said the timing of his departure, right during petition season, was tough and that it would be hard to find a new commissioner "as talented and knowlegeabe as Commissioner Soumas.* Councilwoman funds expansion of museum she founded  via @capitalnewyork

True News Reported Two Years Ago About New York's 100+ Year Old Voters
850 people ‘officially’ over 164 years old: NYC Board ofElections(NYP) A single Bronx voter listed in official records as being 164 years old led Board of Elections officials to review their files — where they turned up another 849 New Yorkers who were supposedly alive when Abe Lincoln was president. The stunning discovery came after The Post reported last week that the birth date of Luz Pabellon, a spry 73-year-old who has been living and voting in The Bronx since the 1970s, was recorded as Jan. 1, 1850. This week, a search of the records in all five boroughs found 849 more voters with the same wacky birth date.

168 Year Old Women Does the BOE Have A 2000 Year Old Man?
Board of Elections records say voter is 168 years old(NYP) If city Board of Elections rec­ords are to believed, voter Luz Pabellon has defied the tides of time and is a walking miracle, living quietly in The Bronx at the astonishing age of 164. Pabellon’s official voter registration card puts her date of birth at Jan. 1, 1850. “AGE: 164,” the record proclaims, a number that has only been achieved in biblical stories. That preposterous age would make Pabellon a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln.A simple phone call by The Post quickly determined that Pab­ellon has never in fact met Honest Abe. The Bronx resident, born in Puerto Rico, is a slender, spry 73-year-old who said she is insulted that election officials placed her in the 19th century. For the record, Pabellon was born on Feb. 14, 1941. Board of Elections officials confirmed its records do indeed list Pabellon as 164.  And they have an explanation, wacky as it may be: Pabellon registered to vote in 1978 and wrote “18 +” under the date of birth category on the manual voting card. When the board converted its voter files over to an electronic database, it board plugged in “01/01/1850” as the default date for those whose birth dates were unknown or unclear. The practice raises the specter that hundreds or thousands of voters are listed as being 164.

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