In New York state, voters have put up with plenty of mishaps in recent elections: hourslong waits at early voting sites; polling locations unreachable by public transportation; and a contested congressional race that dragged on for more than three months before being settled by a judge.

In New York City, things have been even worse. First, thousands of voters received misprinted absentee ballots during the primaries season. Then, in June, a major vote tabulation error threw the first citywide election using ranked-choice voting into chaos.

"Voters have every reason to be angry and they deserve better," a report by the state Senate's election committee published in November said.

New York has work to do to regain the trust of voters, many of whom have lost confidence in the elections, legal experts say.

At a Nov. 16 panel hosted by the New York City Bar Association,election law attorneys, public officials and voting rights advocates named as priorities increasing oversight of local boards of election, creating a unified election system for the entire state and improving technology to make voting easier and safer from cyberthreats.

Susan Lerner, the executive director at government watchdog group Common Cause New York, said a reliance on outdated technology has impeded the modernization of the voting process. The state should either produce its own election technology or hold outside vendors to a higher standard, she said.

Just as crucial is reforming the New York City Board of Elections, which she called a "wonderfully attractive piñata" for being the target of frequent criticism.

"There's a lot to criticize. We have sued the New York City Board [of Elections] and have seen firsthand some of the inefficiencies," Lerner said. "BOE reform is very high up on our list, and I think that it needs to be a very serious discussion."

One proposal to improve the BOE includes changing the composition and structure of its leadership. Currently, the board has 10 commissioners — one Democrat and one Republican from each of the city's five boroughs — each wielding equal power. The system diffuses power and accountability and creates inequities between more and less populated boroughs, critics say.

In a report published in the fall, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law recommended bringing the number of commissioners down to four and giving local officials the power to remove, with court oversights, commissioners who prove to be incompetent.

Meanwhile, bills proposed by state Sen. Liz Krueger and Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, S.B. 6226-A and A.B. 5691-B, would define the BOE commissioners' responsibilities, create a system to remove the board's executive directors if they fail to perform their duties and mandate continuous training for commissioners, directors and staff.

Since Democrats took control of New York's Legislature after the 2018 elections, more than 80 bills addressing election procedures have been passed, including legislation that established early voting, changed the election calendar and adopted public campaign finance.

Douglas A. Kellner, the co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections, said the reforms added a burden to the already difficult task of running elections through the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We've still got many issues that need to be addressed. And we're not finished with the reform process," he said at the panel.

The state board is working on completing a system for online voter registration and ballot tracking, as well as a public campaign finance program that will go live in November of next year, Kellner said. Another priority is increasing state BOE oversight over local election operations, he said.

"It's more of a wish than a reality, given the fact that the current budget only has three staff people assigned to deal with the 57 county boards and the [New York] City Board of Elections," Kellner said.

The panelists also said new legislation is needed to overhaul voter registration and absentee voting. In November, voters rejected two constitutional amendments: one that would have eliminated a rule requiring voters to register at least 10 days before an election, and one that would have allowed voters to request absentee ballots without having to give a reason.

"No-fault absentee is extremely important. And unless there are changes in the law, starting Jan. 1, 2022, voters are going to be very surprised about how hard it is, once again, to get an absentee ballot," Lerner said

Another area that needs improvement is the strict statute of limitations — 14 days for a general election and 10 days for a primary — for challenging election results, said Martin E. Connor, an election attorney who once served as minority leader in the state Senate.

The statute of limitations has caused issues in the past but appeared to be more problematic in June, which saw about 50% of votes cast through absentee ballots. The ballots took about 20 days to be counted, far exceeding the statute of limitations.

New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams preemptively sued the city's BOE on June 30 after it became clear that final results in the mayoral primary race would not come for weeks. Adams sued to preserve the right to have the court supervise a vote recount and possibly an inspection of voting machines once the election results were made official.

Connor said the statute of limitations hasn't received the attention it deserves from legislators, particularly at a time when absentee voting has become more widely used and elections tend to last longer.

"Why is there a 10-day statute? Nobody thinks about this," Connor said. "The world changed, but nobody's looked at that."

Meanwhile, state lawmakers are looking ahead to 2022 as an opportunity to pass laws that would ensure state oversight in crucial election-related practices.

Under a bill introduced by state Sen. Zellnor Y. Myrie and Assemblymember Latrice Walker, who chair election committees in each chamber, activities such as redistricting, decisions over voting methods and operation dates for polling sites will require pre-clearance from the state attorney general's office. The bill would also establish rights of action for denying voting to members of protected classes, create a statewide database of voting and election data and provide assistance to language-minority groups during elections.

Named the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York, the bill has yet to reach the full floor for a vote, but has garnered 29 co-sponsors in the state Senate since January and 14 co-sponsors in the Assembly, where it was introduced months later.

Myrie said such legislation is necessary to restore the public's trust in elections, which in addition to existing weak spots in the electoral process is being threatened by claims of fraud, conspiracy theories and misinformation.

"I think we can all agree that the status quo is not serving the most important entity of this entire equation, and that is the voter," Myrie said. "We have too many voters who are having bad experiences. And if they're not having bad experiences, they're reading about it and headlines."

State legislators are also looking for ways to increase election security in the era of cybercrime, Walker said. The budget for the current fiscal year includes $25 million to modernize and secure voting infrastructure.

Other proposed legislation would extend ranked-choice voting — which has only been used in New York City so far — to the entire state. Currently, only Maine and Alaska use ranked-choice voting in statewide elections.

Experts have been studying legal tools to prepare New York for emergencies impacting voting.

Michael T. Morley, a professor at Florida State University College of Law who studies emergency statutes concerning elections, said states that have legal frameworks to deal with crises were able to accommodate voting more easily during the pandemic than states that do not, where courts often had to get involved.

New York's case is somewhat unique, Morley said. The state has a law authorizing jurisdictions affected by a natural disaster or other emergency, such as a terrorist attack, to have an additional day of voting. That law relies on the power of the governor to declare a state of emergency.

Other states such as Virginia and Florida have crafted more specific emergency laws that allow state officials more flexibility in dealing with emergency situations. In the case of a pandemic or extreme weather event, for instance, legislators can use those laws to tweak eligibility to cast absentee ballots.

Morley said more states are considering emergency-specific statutes.

"I think we will see a trend toward more election emergency statutes, rather than just a complete unlimited gubernatorial discretion," he said.

--Editing by Alanna Weissman.

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