December 20, 2007 - Cara Mathews - The Journal News!

U.S. District Court Judge Gary Sharpe berated state elections officials this morning for failing to comply with a federal election-modernization law called the Help America Vote Act. Sixteen months have elapsed since the judge signed a court order requiring New York to implement the legislation. All states were supposed to have updated election systems in place by Jan. 1, 2006. The court order gave the state an extension until this fall, but elections officials missed that deadline too.

Sharpe said the situation makes him “embarrassed” to be a New Yorker. Every other state has put HAVA into effect, yet New York continues to come up with excuses, he said.

“Why is it that New York thinks that it can thumb its nose at the federal government?” he asked.

The judge gave state elections one more chance to submit a specific plan, but he warned any misstep this time would result in serious consequences, such as putting someone else in charge of the process. That could be Gov. Eliot Spitzer, he said. The Board of Elections has until Jan. 4 to submit its timeline. (Republican and Democratic commissioners have been unable to agree on a plan, but this will force them to.)

In a speech tinged with hyperbole, Sharpe asked if he needed to do what the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower did in 1957—call out the National Guard to force compliance with a federal court order. In that case, the military was sent to Little Rock, Ark., to enforce school desegregation. Black students were being blocked from entering a high school there.

“We didn’t let Little Rock, Ark., thumb its nose at the country, and we’re not going to let New York thumb its nose at the country,” he said.