Suffolk election officials confident in ability to handle general election, despite COVID and expected record volume of paper ballots

Registered voters in New York will soon receive an informational mailing providing details about the upcoming general election, including the location of their polling places and explaining the available voting options, including early voting and absentee ballots.

All 338 polling places in Suffolk County will be open and operating on Election Day, Nov. 3, according to Suffolk County commissioners of election Anita Katz and Nick LaLota, who appeared before the Suffolk County Legislature’s Ways and Means Committee on Thursday. Polling places will not be consolidated for the general election, as they were for the primary election, Katz said, when, due to the pandemic, only 20% to 25% of the agency’s poll inspectors were willing to come to work.

“Now, 90% to 95% of our inspectors are willing to come to work, so every polling place will be open,” Katz said. Nevertheless the BOE continues to staff up on inspectors, just in case something develops that sows reluctance among the agency’s existing inspector staff. The BOE has picked up more than 600 new people willing to be inspectors, Katz said.

Any voter reluctant to go to the polls on Nov. 3 because of COVID-19 can either take advantage of early voting in-person from Oct. 24 through Nov. 1 or vote by absentee ballot, Katz said. Early voting polling places are listed here. In Riverhead the early voting polling place is at the Riverhead Senior Center, 60 Shade Tree Lane, Aquebogue. During early voting, Suffolk voters may cast their ballots at any of the 12 early-voting polling places in the county.

Legislator Al Krupski (D-Cutchogue) objected that the early-voting location in the Town of Shelter Island was removed, while the Board of Elections is providing two early voting polling places in the towns of Islip and Brookhaven.

LaLota told Krupski the decisions were driven by budgetary and practical considerations, taking population density into account.

Legislator Kara Hahn (D-Setauket) questioned the commissioners about the location of Brookhaven’s second early-voting polling place on the south shore and complained that there were no early-voting polling places on the north shore in Brookhaven town. (The other early-voting location in Brookhaven is at Town Hall.)

Again, LaLota defended the decisions, which he said were made to reach the most voters most efficiently.

The commissioners both said they anticipate a greater than usual number of absentee ballots in the upcoming election — in the range of 200,000 to 250,000. That will undoubtedly delay the county’s certification of final results and neither commissioner would hazard a guess as to the date by which the tally will be complete. LaLota said the county board has acquired some optical scanners that are certified by the State Board of Elections that will streamline and expedite the process of counting ballots. In the past, he noted, tallying paper ballots was all done manually.

Technology is being used to streamline and expedite the process of obtaining an absentee ballot as well, the commissioners told legislators.

The law requires a voter to apply for an absentee ballot and that requirement remains in place for the upcoming election. Absentee ballots will not automatically be sent out, Katz said.

Katz said voters who are voting by absentee ballot should select “temporary illness” on the absentee ballot application form where it asks the reason for requesting an absentee ballot.

But for the first time, a voter can apply for an absentee ballot electronically, Katz told the legislators.

The State Board of Elections has launched an online portal for requesting an absentee ballot, which Katz said will “revolutionize” absentee-ballot voting. Voters complete an online form that is submitted through the portal to the State BOE, which electronically transmits the application information to the local board of elections three times a day. Katz said in the first few days since the portal went live, the Suffolk BOE received about 9,300 absentee ballot applications through the portal.

Voters can still request an absentee ballot by mailing, faxing or emailing an absentee ballot application to the County Board of Elections or by requesting the ballot in person at the Board of Elections office in Yaphank (700 Yaphank Avenue).

An absentee ballot application can be downloaded (English – Spanish) from the County Board of Elections website and either mailed to Suffolk BOE, Box 700, Yaphank, NY 11980 or faxed to 631-852-4590. Voters can email the absentee ballot application to  absentee.voters@suffolkcountyny.gov  or request an absentee ballot by phone, by calling the County Board of Elections at 631-852-4515.

Absentee ballot applications must be submitted (postmarked, if mailed) by Oct. 27, but voters can apply in person up to the day before the election (Nov. 2).

The Board of Elections will begin mailing absentee ballots to voters who have applied for them on Sept. 18.

If returned by mail, an absentee ballot must be postmarked by Election Day and must reach the Board of Elections no more than seven days after the election to be counted. To avoid delays in mailing, you should mail your ballot early.

People who have concerns about using U.S. Mail for sending in their ballots can hand-deliver them, or have them hand-delivered, to the County Board of Elections office at 700 Yaphank Avenue in Yaphank, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Alternatively, absentee voters can have someone hand-deliver their absentee ballot to any polling place, either during early voting or on Nov. 3.

Regardless of delivery method, all absentee ballots must be submitted in the envelopes provided with the ballots, and the oath on the inner envelope must be signed.

New York Election Law does not allow the use of drop boxes for submission of ballots, Katz said.

The absentee ballot forms and envelopes have been redesigned by the state to make them simpler and more user-friendly, Katz said. The new envelope in particular has been simplified so that it’s clearer where a voter must sign it. A voter’s failure to sign the oath on the absentee ballot envelope — or members of the same household signing the wrong envelope — led to a lot of ballots being set aside in the primary election.

Also for the first time in New York, absentee voters will have an opportunity to cure an error — for instance, if they fail to sign the absentee ballot envelope. The county will send the voter a “cure letter” to give the voter a chance to fix the error. This change was the result of a lawsuit brought against the state by the League of Women Voters, Katz said. In the past, the board of elections had to send the voter a new ballot and they had to start over.