To Vote Or Not To Vote—There Really Isn’t Any Question by Tracy Marisa

Suggesting to SCOPE members that they turn out to vote in the general election is preaching to the choir.  That’s true; at least I hope it is.

But a famous writer said several decades ago that “in a sort of ghastly simplicity” we humans tend to “…remove the organ and demand the function...We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” In other words, and in our American instance, given how little emphasis there has been on civic engagement in those same decades, it would not be surprising if our voting muscles have atrophied. 

Whether you need some encouragement yourself to get out and vote or whether you would never miss an opportunity to vote but you know people who would have to be dragged to a polling place kicking and screaming, it may be worth spending a few minutes looking at some of the reasons why folks don’t turn out to vote in November and what the rest of us can do about it.

One reason for not voting is that voting requires some planning ahead.

You can’t vote if you are not registered.

This year the deadline for registering to vote is October 26th.

Keep in mind that if you’ve changed your address, you need to re-register to vote. You can register online at https://www.elections.ny.gov/VotingRegister.html. 

For those who have access to a printer, it would be a kindness to your unregistered friends and neighbors, who might not have internet access, if you printed a few of the forms that are available on that same webpage and had them handy for them to fill out.  (See the menu at the top of the page to find the link to the printable registration form.)

A SCOPE e-mail that went out on September 9th that was written by Stephen Dallas (thank you!) had a lot of helpful info which might have seemed very early at the time but now looks increasingly urgent. So, I’m reiterating much of it at the end of this email as well as listing these important deadlines and dates*.

Another excuse reason I’ve personally heard gun owners give for not registering to vote is that they don’t want to be called to be on a jury.

First…folks, we need people to sit on juries who know that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights have not been tossed out the window! There are more than enough of the other sort of potential jurors out there, and we don’t need to cede more territory to the other side, in court, by simply not being there.

Secondly, these are the ways NYS puts together its list of potential jurors (from the state website): “Potential jurors are randomly selected from lists of registered voters, holders of drivers’ licenses or ID’s issued by the Division of Motor Vehicles, New York State income tax filers, recipients of unemployment insurance or family assistance, and from volunteers.”

Not registering to vote is NOT going to “save” someone from their civic duty of sitting on a jury. People should register to vote and then perform another one of the relatively few civic duties we actually have—turn out and vote.

A third reason is the feeling that their vote doesn’t count

As we know, 2024 is a presidential election year and while that generates a lot of interest, in NYS it may also lead people to the feeling that their vote doesn’t count. If you know about the Electoral College and how that system works (and why it exists), that feeling is not without merit. But that only applies to the presidential election. All other lines on the ballot are totally up for grabs and the winner will be the candidate who can get the greatest number of people to turn out and vote for him or her. (In the interests of encouraging turnout, the county board of elections where I used to live put together a list of local elections that had been won by very few votes, usually a half-dozen or fewer and in some cases only one vote. It happens more often than you think.)

Which leads us to a list of reasons why your vote will count

For those elections that are literally closest to where you live—town, village, city, county—people’s individual votes absolutely do matter. Some of those people running for local office are on the same page that we’re on (re: the Second Amendment) and some are definitely not. You want to know which are which.

This year, offices that are up for grabs in addition to POTUS/VP are:

 U.S. Senator (Gillibrand is up this year, but not Schumer, and her opponent, as you know, is Mike Sapraicone – who just spoke at the SCOPE Banquet);

U.S. Member of Congress, State Senator, State Assemblymember, with those three varying with your specific location in NYS;

There may be other, more local offices, on the front of the ballot;

The reverse will have Proposal 1 statewide (known by many as the Parent Replacement Act) and there may be other propositions on the reverse as well, specific to the voter’s election district.

This seems like a lot to keep track of.  But there really is no reason, anymore, why people shouldn’t already know whose name will appear on various lines—town council, village mayor, district attorney, judge, sheriff, county legislator, whatever—before they ever cross the threshold of their polling place.  By the time early voting starts, county boards of elections often publish sample ballots online that represent exactly the ballots that voters will be handed at their individual polling places. Any counties that don’t put up a PDF of election district ballots will still have a list of all the offices and proposals that are due to appear on county ballots.

While voting might have seemed like a mysterious black box in the past and we could use that very inscrutability as an excuse for not voting (or voting ignorantly), that is no longer the case. And this is yet another way that people with internet access can help those without.

And vote next Spring, too

This last thing is not directly related to the November election, but it does have to do with civic responsibility generally as well as voting, in particular.

I often hear people who bemoan the political thinking of younger Americans.  They ascribe the young people’s disregard for the Constitution and Bill of Rights to their having been to college. While many colleges and universities certainly share in the blame for this, they’re not the sole source of the problem (and there are plenty of people who haven’t been to college and are quite left-leaning, so the college theory doesn’t explain everything).

Find out what’s going on in your local K-12 schools when it comes to teaching about the U.S.A. and our history.  And then make sure you vote in your local school elections in the spring, generally in May. Those elections aren’t just about tax rates and tax levies, although those are important, but they are also about how exactly the money is being spent and, perhaps most important of all, who sits on the school board. You can have a direct impact on what’s going on in your local schools, and thus in young people’s attitudes, but one thing you have to do is vote.

Back to November 5th

Please vote, and encourage your friends, neighbors, and family members to vote. Pick them up and buy them a coffee or a soda if that helps grease the wheels a little. We can change things but we have to use the weapon at our disposal and not leave it holstered — voting.

75% of life is just showing up.

*Courtesy of Mr. Dallas:
(Location of poll site is determined by resident address.) Once you’re registered to vote, you can find your polling place for General Election Day, November 5th, by going to https://voterlookup.elections.ny.gov/ or on your county BOE website. You can only vote at your polling place—you can’t just wander in anywhere, even if you think that’s the way it should be. There are wandering wannabe voters who assume they can vote in any location labeled “polling place”—

Early Voting by Mail / Absentee Voting for General Election:

October 26 - Last day for board of elections to receive applications by mail or by online portal for an absentee ballot for the General Election .

November 4 - Last day to apply in person for absentee ballot for the General Election.

November 5 - Last day to postmark an absentee ballot for the General Election. (It must be received at the Board of Elections no later than November 14th, Military Ballots by November 20th.)

November 5 - Last day to deliver in person an absentee ballot for the General Election to the County Board or Poll Site, by the close of polls.

General Election Dates:

October 26 through November 3- Early voting days for General Election.

November 5 - General Election - 6 am to 9 pm.

(ask me how I know).

What about these other ways of voting (besides at your designated polling place on November 5th)?

“Mail-in and absentee ballots: A New York law allowing all registered voters to cast their ballots by mail was upheld in August by the state’s highest court. The decision means that the millions of New Yorkers eligible to vote in the November 5 election will be able to cast ballots by mail if they wish — something that only a handful of people could do before.

This means any registered New York voter may apply for a mail-in ballot.

They can apply either online (https://elections.ny.gov/request-ballot), or in person at their local election office, or by designating another person to deliver their application to the local election office for them.

Mail-in ballot applications are due 10 days before the election. Mail-in ballots must be postmarked by Election Day or submitted in person by 9pm on Election Day to the County Board of Elections Office or polling site.

Certain New Yorkers are eligible to apply for an absentee ballot. The form to apply is different than, but the places to apply are the same as, for mail-in ballots, and the ballot can be returned using the same methods as early mail voters.

Early voting: You can also vote in-person via early voting. Early voting is just like voting on Election Day. Early voters privately mark and scan their ballot at a polling place. Early voting results are counted, tabulated and included in election night totals. There is no requirement to apply for early voting. The process is completely walk-in.

Early voting for the general election is Saturday, October 26 through Sunday, November 3. Voters may visit any of their assigned Early Voting Centers in their county, except in New York City, where voters are assigned to one early voting site. To find each county’s early voting locations, click here: https://voterlookup.elections.ny.gov.

Early voting may be an especially attractive process in upstate New York, where even early November weather can be unpredictable, and voters may have difficulty making it to the polls on Election Day. Early voting can also be a guard against other unexpected events that might arise on Election Day, from family obligations to workplace emergencies.

Again, people with internet access and a printer can help out people who don’t have those things.