School votes may be put off, and results could trickle in
By Barbara O'Brien
Published 6:00 a.m. June 6, 2020
It has been an unanswered question around school districts for weeks: How will we handle voting on school budgets and school board elections, all with mail-in ballots, during this pandemic-affected year?
The answer has never been clear. It just got a little murkier.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Friday said he will decide this weekend whether to change the date of school elections.
The elections in public school districts are scheduled Tuesday by mail-only ballots because of the Covid-19 pandemic. They are due by 5 p.m. that day.
But some districts around the state, including six in Niagara County, have had trouble getting the ballots out. The vendor they hired notified them last week that the ballots had not gone out yet because the vendor was having difficulty obtaining envelopes.
Some have suggested moving the election back a week, or accepting ballots that are postmarked by Tuesday to be counted.
"I understand the issue and we're looking at it and we'll have a decision by Sunday," Cuomo said Friday in reply to a question at his daily coronavirus briefing.
The school elections could have record turnout in most districts.
Just don't expect to find out who won in every district on election night, whenever that is.
Some districts, including all those in Niagara County, will be counting votes by hand. All but three smaller districts in Erie County have been told they can bring the ballots to the Board of Elections to use its high-speed scanner.
But before districts count by hand or by scan, they have to open the envelopes, which are arriving by the thousands in some districts. And they can't start opening the envelopes until 5 p.m. Tuesday.
About 2,400 residents voted last year in the Williamsville Central School District. The district had received about 7,000 ballots in the mail at the end of the week.
Orchard Park has seen from 1,200 to 1,400 vote in recent elections. The district had gotten 5,000 ballots by Thursday.
There were 386 people voting in the Depew school election last year. About 2,000 have sent in ballots so far.
Why the big turnout? It could be because many people are still not back to work.
But it also has to do with the ease of voting. No one had to request an absentee ballot, district clerks were required to send a ballot to every eligible voter. Many got lists from the Board of Elections, but you don't have to be a registered voter to vote in a school board election, so the pool of voters is larger.
"An absentee ballot for school district is tough. A lot of people we don’t have ability to connect directly with," West Seneca Superintendent Matthew Bystrak said.
There have been some problems. The vendor for six districts in Niagara County did not get ballots mailed to residents until last week. Districts offered to hand deliver ballots to those who did not receive them, and many put out drop boxes for those who did not want to mail the ballot.
In West Seneca, a number of voters did not receive ballots. They have been calling the district office, which puts a ballot package together and has school buses delivering them.
"We'll keep doing that right through budget day," Bystrak said. "It's a tough situation for everyone."
The Erie County Board of Elections, which is preparing for the primary and 27th Congressional District election June 23, was planning to lend scanners to school districts. But those scanners can process 200 to 300 ballots in an hour, according to Elections Commissioner Ralph Mohr. The high-speed tabulator can count 18,000 votes in an hour.
He notified district clerks Thursday that the only practical solution is to bring the ballots to the Board of Elections. Three smaller districts, Sloan, Cleveland Hill and North Collins, would be able to handle votes on-site.
He said the Board of Elections will remain open "well into the night" for school districts to bring ballots to be counted, or they could bring them Wednesday, he said.
The county also will provide transport cases and tamper-proof seals for the ballots to ensure secure elections, he said.
District clerks said one election inspector will open the envelopes, another will remove the ballot. Someone else will unfold the ballots. They expect the process to take hours in some districts.
"These are the circumstances in which we find ourselves, and our job is to make it work," Hamburg Superintendent Michael Cornell said. "We've used the term uncharted territory so often it’s just become a trite phrase."