Requires every board of elections to employ a minimum of four full time employees in addition to the appointed commissioners within four years and shall employ two of those full time employees within two years; and two additional employees for every twenty thousand active registered voters beyond forty thousand active registered voters.
NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATION submitted in accordance with Assembly Rule III, Sec 1(f)
BILL NUMBER: A1258A
SPONSOR: Hunter TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the election law, in relation to establishing minimum
staffing levels for local board of elections
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:
This legislation would ensure that each local board of elections is
properly staffed with an appropriate number of employees proportional to
the number of registered voters.
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section 1. Amends section 3-300 of the Election Law. Requires boards of
elections to employ a minimum of 4 full time staffers and employ an
additional 2 employees for every 20,000 active registered voters.
Section 2. Effective Date
JUSTIFICATION:
Voting is a part of an individual's civic duty. Participation in poli-
tical discourse and elections has increased over the past two years.
This is largely in part to the fact that New York State has taken affir-
mative action to increase voter participation and increase access to
voting.
Recent chapters allow for early voting, ballot drop boxes, and mail in
voting. The State is also poised to adopt automatic voter registration,
same day registration, a permanent no-fault absentee ballot program.
Many boards of elections currently rely on a mix of full time employees
and temporary employees during election seasons. These new programs
require a full time staff who is qualified, trained, and up to date with
current election law.
The State has assisted local boards with funding early voting initi-
atives, including most recently, $2 million in additional funding for
Local Boards of Elections in the Adopted Budget FY 2021- 2022. A majori-
ty of local boards' current staffing structure already comply with this
legislation. This would ensure uniformity so that boards of elections
are equipped to handle the volume of voters in a given area. Nothing in
this law would prohibit a board of elections from hiring more staff than
as required by this legislation.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PREVIOUS AND AMENDED VERSION OF BILL:
The original bill would have required county Board's of Election to hire
four additional full time staff members. The amended version would stag-
ger that hiring and require that county Board's of Election hire four
staff members within four years, which would provide counties with more
time to take on additional staff.
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
2021-22: A7780A
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS:
TBD.
EFFECTIVE DATE:
Immediately.
STATE OF NEW YORK
________________________________________________________________________
1258--A
2023-2024 Regular Sessions
IN ASSEMBLY
January 13, 2023
___________
Introduced by M. of A. HUNTER, RAMOS, WOERNER, ZINERMAN, PAULIN,
GALLAGHER, LUNSFORD, REYES, ARDILA, DE LOS SANTOS, SHRESTHA, McMAHON,
KELLES -- read once and referred to the Committee on Election Law --
recommitted to the Committee on Election Law in accordance with Assem-
bly Rule 3, sec. 2 -- committee discharged, bill amended, ordered
reprinted as amended and recommitted to said committee
AN ACT to amend the election law, in relation to establishing minimum
staffing levels for local board of elections
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assem-bly, do enact as follows:
1 Section 1. Section 3-300 of the election law is amended to read as
2 follows:
3 § 3-300. Board employees; appointment. 1. Every board of elections
4 shall appoint, and at its pleasure remove, clerks, voting machine tech-
5 nicians, custodians and other employees, fix their number, prescribe
6 their duties, fix their titles and rank and establish their salaries
7 within the amounts appropriated therefor by the local legislative body
8 and shall secure in the appointment of employees of the board of
9 elections equal representation of the major political parties.
10 2. Every board of elections shall employ, at a minimum, four full
11 time employees in addition to the appointed commissioners, within four
12 years of the effective date of this subdivision; provided, however, that
13 every board of elections shall employ at least two full time employees
14 within two years of the effective date of this subdivision. Every board
15 of elections shall employ two additional employees for every full allot-
16 ment of twenty thousand active registered voters beyond forty thousand
17 active registered voters.
18 3. Every commissioner in each board of elections except for commis-
19 sioners of the board of elections of the city of New York, may approve
20 and at pleasure remove a deputy, establish his title and prescribe his
21 duties. In the city of New York, the board of elections shall appoint an
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[] is old law to be omitted.
LBD03379-03-3
A. 1258--A 2
1 executive director and a deputy executive director whose duties it shall
2 be to supervise the operations of the board of elections under the
3 supervision of such board.
4 § 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
