New York cancels its June 23 presidential primary
- In an unpredented move, New York has canceled its Democratic presidential primary originally scheduled for June 23 amid the coronavirus epidemic.
- The Democratic members of the State's Board of Elections voted Monday to nix the primary.
- New York will still hold its congressional and state-level primaries on June 23.
New York Democratic Party chair Jay Jacobs has said that the cancellation of the state's presidential primary would mean a lower expected turnout and a reduced need for polling places.
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In an unprecedented move, New York has canceled its Democratic presidential primary originally scheduled for June 23 amid the coronavirus epidemic.
The Democratic members of the State's Board of Elections voted Monday to nix the primary. New York will still hold its congressional and state-level primaries on June 23.
New York Democratic Party chair Jay Jacobs has said that the cancellation of the state's presidential primary would mean a lower expected turnout and a reduced need for polling places.
"It just makes so much sense given the extraordinary nature of the challenge," Jacobs said last week.
Local election officials and voting groups have called on the state to use federal funds to purchase cleaning supplies and protective gear, and boost staff ahead of 2020 elections.
Both the state's Democratic Party and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have said they didn't ask election commissioners to make the change, which can happen because of a little-known provision in the recently passed state budget that allows the New York board of elections to remove names of any candidates who have suspended or terminated their campaign from the ballot.
The decision to cancel a Democratic primary is left up to Democratic state election commissioners.
Former Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders announced earlier this month that he had suspended his campaign. In a Sunday letter, a lawyer for the Sanders campaign asked the commissioners not to cancel the primary.
"Senator Sanders has collaborated with state parties, the national party and the Biden campaign, to strengthen the Democrats by aligning the party's progressive and moderate wings. His removal from the ballot would hamper those efforts, to the detriment of the party in the general election," the lawyer, Malcolm Seymour, wrote in a letter obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
While Sanders suspended his campaign April 8, he is still staying in the race and collecting delegates to be able to influence the Democratic party platform at the Democratic National Convention scheduled for this summer.
Currently, Biden has 1,280 pledged delegates in the Democratic primary compared to 947 for Sanders, according to estimates from Decision Desk HQ and the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
New York voters can now choose to vote with an absentee ballot in the June primaries under a Cuomo executive order that adds the risk of acquiring COVID-19 as a reason to vote absentee. Cuomo also recently announced the state is sending mail-in ballots to voters.
Jacobs has said it's a significant change but that the party's ready.
"It's a big process for us. We don't have many weeks to get it into place before the primary," Jacobs said. "It's going to be difficult to execute but we're going to do it."
Before canceling the presidential primary, Gov. Andrew Cuomo canceled a number of state legislative special elections and the special election for the borough president of Queens, according to City & State New York.