With the election season just around the corner, New York state still has not established a political calendar for 2007.
The calendar sets the dates and deadlines that candidates for office must follow. Usually it is proposed by the state Board of Elections and approved by the Legislature and governor. This year however, when the BOE chose Sept. 11 for the state’s primary election, the Legislature balked because voting would have fallen on the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
The state Senate and Assembly eventually agreed to a bill, moving the primary to Sept. 18, and this has been sent to Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Marc Violette, Spitzer’s spokesman, said, ``The governor’s considering signing that piece of legislation, but he has not signed it yet.’’
According to Lee Daghlian, a spokesman for the state BOE, the bill would schedule the primary election one week later than originally planned. Because the calendar is oriented to the primary, most other election dates also would be one week later than planned.
Usually in the first week of June, candidates may begin to pass nominating petitions, gathering the signatures they need to have their names placed on the ballot.
In the proposed calendar, the first day to pass petitions would have been Tuesday, June 5. If Spitzer signs the bill before him, the first day to pass petitions will be Tuesday, June 12.
The delay and uncertainty is causing consternation among candidates and their campaign staffs around the state, Daghlian said.
``Most of my calls have been about this for last couple of weeks,’’ he said.
Sheila Ross, Otsego County’s deputy Republican elections commissioner, said local candidates also want to have the calendar finalized.
``It certainly is getting late,’’ she said.
Another tardy election matter in the Empire State is the replacement of voting machines, now years behind schedule.
New York state has been prodded by the federal government to act more swiftly, although problems with new equipment in other states has made lawmakers and elections officials here appear prescient. The federal government had threatened to withdraw federal funds set aside to help the state buy the expensive new equipment, but New York benefited from an appropriations bill signed by President Bush last week, according to Hank Nicols, Otsego County’s Democratic elections commissioner.
A provision in this law, strongly supported by New York’s Congressional delegation and Spitzer’s office, allows the state to wait until September 2008 to make the expensive upgrade and retain its $47 million federal assistance, he stated in an e-mail to The Daily Star.
Still to be determined is which kind of machines the counties will buy _ optical scanners or direct recording electronic machines.