NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATION submitted in accordance with Assembly Rule III, Sec 1(f)
BILL NUMBER: A149
SPONSOR: Kavanagh (MS) TITLE OF BILL: An act to amend the election law, in relation to
authorizing electronic voter registration
PURPOSE: Provides that the Board of Elections shall accept voter
registrations electronically through its website in order to improve
poll book accuracy and remove the voter registration backlogs that
appeared prior to the 2008 General Election.
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS: Section 1 of the bill adds a new section 5-209
to the Election Law and requires the State Board of Elections to imple-
ment online voter registration using similar provision to the voter
registration card. Registrants who provide a DMV client identification
number would have their signature transferred from the DMV. Registrants
providing only a social security number would need to show identifica-
tion when voting for the first since they would be unable to meet New
York State's signature requirements.
JUSTIFICATION: In the first two weeks of October in 2008 the New York
City Board of Elections was crushed under nearly 204,000 voter registra-
tion forms which it had significantly difficulty processing. This
brought the 2008 total for voter registrations received by the New York
City Board of Election to nearly 715,000, as compared with 253,000 in
all of 2007. Local Boards of Elections throughout the State reported
similar unprecedented volume.
Local Boards of Elections struggled to get thousands of voter registra-
tion records entered in time for the General Election. However, many
voters still reported that their names were not in poll books. Many of
these voters fell victim to data entry errors, where a simple misspell-
ing in an often ethnic name, made it nearly impossible to locate their
name in the poll book and vote on a machine.
This legislation would use online voter registration to improve poll
book accuracy and cure recent backlogs at local Boards of Election
across the State.
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
2012: A08632 (Kavanagh) - Election Law
2011: A01229 (Bing) - Election Law
2010: A04799 (Bing) - Election Law
2009: A04799 (Bing) - Election Law
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS: Projected cost savings in data entry costs for
local Boards of Elections.
EFFECTIVE DATE: This act shall take effect on the one hundred eight-
ieth day after it shall have become a law. Effective immediately, the
amendment, addition, and/or repeal of any rule or regulation necessary
for the timely implementation of this act on its effective date is here-
by authorized to be made on or before such effective date.
