The 2020 Presidential election resulted in an unusually high number of absentee ballots, primarily due to the easing of restrictions by New York State, due to COVID. This new way of voting for many of us resulted in thousands of more absentee ballots to be entered, counted and tabulated by the Westcchester County Board of elections.
Some voters in Westchester have asked “was my vote counted?,” and “did the Board of Elections get my vote?” For more than 800 voters in five Election Districts in the City of New Rochelle, the answer to that question may be no.
County Legislator Damon Maher, in reviewing the election data from Nov. 3, 2020, noticed that in his home city of New Rochelle, an unusually high number of ballots were registered ‘blank’ or ‘void’ in their vote for President. In fact 30% of the absentee ballots collected in those five ED’s in New Rochelle, more than 800 votes, were voided for one reason or another, and as a result, their votes for President did not count.
Legislator Maher explained that out of 941 Election Districts in Westchester County, less than 1% of the ballots came back as void or blank for President. “That could be for many reasons, such as error by the voter in filling out their ballot, like voting for Biden for President on both the democratic and working families party line. Other reasons could be that the signature did not match or the voter made another error on their ballot that made it void. Or in the rare case, a voter cast their ballot without voting for President,” said Maher
“A 1% rate is understandable, but in five New Rochelle election districts the number of void ballots was 30%, which is a puzzling phenomenon,” said Maher, who has written three letters-emails to the Westchester County Board of Elections asking for an explanation.
“In looking through the canvass for the recent general election five (5) New Rochelle Election Districts in sequential order (ED 36 through ED 40) all have huge numbers of “Blank-Void” ballots (respectively: 122; 158; 244; 130; 141) in the Presidential vote, cumulatively equal to 30% of the ballots cast in those 5 EDs, as contrasted with a rate a small fraction above 1% in all the other NR EDs.
“Scrolling quickly through the total for all the municipalities, I don’t see any EDs with “Blank-void” ballots anywhere approaching three figured; there appear to be a handful in the 20 to 25 range. The chance that any one ED would be off by so much would be odd, but the chance that there would be five consecutively numbered districts as outliers by so much would seem infinitesimal.
“What is the explanation here? Will the scanners for those districts, including the software and programming for same, and be examined? Will the paper ballots therein be audited?” writes Legislator Maher.
In his second email, Maher writes, “Commissioners: To amplify and supplement the email that I sent you early last week, here is a more complete analysis. Of the 941 Election Districts in the County with recorded votes in the Canvass book, these 11 stood out since they have either more than 50 “Blank-Void” ballots or have “Blank-Void” ballots that constitute more than 15% all ballots cast:
New Rochelle ED 36: 122 “Blank-Void” of 411 Cast (29.68%)
New Rochelle ED 37: 158 “Blank-Void” of 607 Cast (26.03%)
New Rochelle ED 38: 244 “Blank-Void” of 729 Cast (33.47%)
New Rochelle ED 39: 130 “Blank-Void” of 439 Cast (29.61%)New Rochelle ED 40: 141 “Blank-Void” of 473 Cast (29.81%)
Maher also notes that in five other Westchester election districts, the number of void ballots were abnormally high. They are:
Yonkers Ward 12 ED 10: 49 “Blank-Void” of 285 Cast (17.19%)
Greenburgh ED 28: 59 “Blank-Void” of 398 Cast (14.82%)
Harrison ED 5: 98 “Blank-Void” of 352 (27.84%)
Harrison ED 9: 111 “Blank-Void” of 714 (15.55%)
Mount Pleasant ED 43: 58 “Blank-Void” of 478 (12.13%)
Yorktown ED 26: 57 “Blank-Void” of 380 (15.00%)
“I still do not have any response to by two prior emails below, not even an acknowledgement of receipt or timeline for your responses to my questions regarding this very serious matter of your apparent under-counting and over-spending in the recent elections. I am now calling on you to produce the uncounted ballots for inspection. If they are mail-in ballots, I would also need to know whether the voters were contacted to be given the opportunity to cure any defect on their mail-in envelopes. In any event, please also provide me with the name and title of each BOE employee or contractor that handled the ballots for New Rochelle EDs 36 through 40, as well as the name and title of each of their supervisors,” writes Maher.
Nobody, including Legislator Maher, is alleging any type of conspriacy to deny certain voters their Presidential ballots. “My theory was it had something to do with mail in ballots. And just by looking at the democratic vote in previous Presidential elections, the democrats did better this year with Biden in Westchester than with Hillary in 2016, but the vote totals were not as good in these districts. There is no fraud here and these votes are not going to overturn any election, but every voter wants their vote to count. We may treat this as the least important thinig but actually its the most important thing, that every vote is counted. We deserve an answer, was it unexplained incompetence or did somebody screw this up?”
Right now, any Westschester voter can go to the Board of Elections website and take a look at their election district to see how many votes were Blank-Void. But you cannot determine if your vote was a blank-void vote or if your vote was counted.
“Perhaps whoever was feeding the ballots into the counting machine in the 5 districts in New Rochelle was doing something wrong,(human error) or there was a problem with the machine. It’s not about these ballots, its about the bigger picture and the election in the future where a few votes determine the outcome. I think people want their votes counted,” said Maher.
The other reason of concern for us and for Legislator Maher is that absentee ballots may become the normal way of holding elections. This reporter and his family voted absentee, and we each had to request a ballot and then mail in our completed ballot. In New York State, this process makes it difficult to impossible for election fraud to occur. But if we are going to vote by absentee then what happened with these Blank-Void votes must be explained and rectified.
