The Town is taking the Suffolk County Board of Elections (BOE) to court over the lack of local early voting for Islanders in the general election.
[Editor’s note: This post has been UPDATED to reflect the filing of an Article 78 by the Town on Wednesday, September 29]
Supervisor Gerry Siller filed an Article 78 proceeding in the state Supreme Court for Suffolk County on Wednesday. The suit asks the court to review the decision by BOE commissioners that leaves Islanders with no local option for early voting and facing costs to participate that don’t apply to voters in other Suffolk towns.
Nicholas LaLota and Anita Katz are the Suffolk County BOE commissioners, representing the Republican and Democratic Parties respectively. The matter is filed under index number 614302/2020 is entitled: “GERRY SILLER, individually and in his capacity as Supervisor of the Town of Shelter Island, against NICHOLAS LALOTA and ANITA KATZ, Commissioners, constituting the SUFFOLK COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS, respondents.
Article 78 proceedings are used to review a decision or action (or lack thereof) of a state official. They can be filed by individuals or by other governmental entities.
Early Voting in 2019, none in 2020
Early voting was rolled out to great fanfare last November, with polling places in each of the 10 towns open over nine days. For this year’s general election, BOE officials expanded the number of sites to 12, but provided no local early voting option for Shelter Island, the only Suffolk County town entirely surrounded by water.
Siller said early voting was popular here; nearly 40 percent of voters who cast ballots in person last year on Shelter Island did so during early voting.
At a Town Board work session on September 15, Siller said that he was informed in a letter from Commissioner LaLota that the Island’s request to be reconsidered for early voting was rejected.
Town Attorney Bob DeStefano Jr. corrected him. That letter was directed to Assemblyman Fred W. Theile, whose district includes Shelter Island, DeStefano noted. The Town wasn’t officially notified until a letter arrived from Commissioner Katz on Friday, September 11.
LaLota wrote to Thiele on August 24 after the state lawmaker complained publicly about the community being left out of the early voting plan. The commissioner upbraided Theile for not calling him before making critical public statements.
“It would have been more productive for the public discourse and more informative to your constituents if you telephoned me,” LaLota wrote.
The bi-partisan decision to exclude Shelter Island, LaLota wrote, was “motivated by a scarcity of resources, a desire to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of voters.” It was not, he said, an effort to “suppress the vote.”
“If I was motivated by suppressing the vote rather than my duty to provide fair and accurate elections with the constraints of my budget, I would not have agreed to placing new Early Voting locations in Brentwood and Huntington Station — areas known to be quite unfavorable to my own political party,” LaLota wrote.
Lack of local early voting a poll tax?
As was the case last year, voters registered anywhere in Suffolk County can cast their ballots at any early voting location.
But in his Article 78 application, Siller notes that the commissioners identified “logistical issues” as getting the in the way of enabling early voting on the Island this year. Specifically, the BOE workers who supervise the operation faced expenses associated with traveling by ferry to do so.
Siller argues the BOE’s failure to designate a local early voting location here amounts to “a poll tax on the residents of Shelter Island.” The decision shifts what was an expense for a few workers to all the Island residents who want to participate. Each will now have to pay a roundtrip ferry fare or provide “their owns means of water transport” to take part in early voting.
Cost as a factor?
In his letter Commissioner LaLota said the BOE spent 10 percent of its early voting resources on Shelter Island, but that early voting here “only counted for 3 percent of early vote turnout.”
He also noted that Shelter Island’s 2,566 registered voters represent just 0.26 percent of Suffolk County’s 987,927 registered voters. That one-quarter of one percent of Suffolk County voters turned in three percent of the early vote, seems to suggest early voting was disproportionately popular and effective here.
Strong local turnout
Advocates for additional sites complained last year about the distribution of voting sites. Unhelpfully, Newsday used incorrect information about the Island’s population when reporting last fall that “the plan provides the same number of locations for the 1,300 residents of Shelter Island and the 486,000 residents of the Town of Brookhaven, which has a large minority population.”
While it is true that the population of Brookhaven is significantly larger than ours, the most recent figures for Shelter Island showed a population estimate of 2,744 in 2018.
More to the point, Shelter Island had an overall strong voter turnout. According to BOE final results, 58.82 percent of registered voters took part in the vote for Town Supervisor here. Turnout for supervisor in Brookhaven was 27.78 percent. While many factors drive voter turnout, nearly 60 percent of our voters took part in electing the Town’s leader, while more than 70 percent of registered voters in Brookhaven did not.
Early voting mattered here
The BOE reporting on election night also indicated that Shelter Island voters participated strongly in early voting. Of the 1,214 votes that were cast in person last November, 39.95 percent were cast during early voting.
The election night tally for in-person voting for Siller was 700 votes, including 304 cast during early voting; and for Gary Gerth it was 514 votes, including 179 from early voting. A few weeks later, the final outcome, which included absentee and affidavit ballots, was Siller 863 to Gerth 606.
