Caban Lead Evaporates As Ballots Invalidated

Details

Published: 10 July 2019

The Queens County District Attorney’s race was the most exciting DA race in the city for progressives in many years because for the first time the issues of ending the discriminatory cash bail system, and a restorative justice approach was highlighted by a progressive Latina who seeks to redefine what a DA should do in a sharp contrast from being all about racking up convictions and imprisoning people.

The Progressive queer public defender Stephanie Caban lead main stream Democrat Melinda Katz by a 1000 vote margin when the polls closed in June, but since then the Queens County Board of elections has been busy at work tossing out affidavit ballots. Now Queens Borough President Melinda Katz leads by a meer 16 votes.

What’s happened is that 2300 ballots have been discarded without opening by the electoral commission controlled by machine democrats. The ballots in question were affidavit ballots used by people who recently moved or registered.

Election officials said in many cases they were cast by people who weren’t Queens democrats and therefore not eligible to vote. However at least 114 ballots were invalidated because the voters didn’t write the word Democrat on their ballot. Other ballots were invalidated for equally dubious reasons according to the NY Times. Additionally Jerry Goldfeder, the lawyer for the Caban campaign said that “"The machines failed to pick up approximately 400 votes that were cast, so that manual recount might change the result one way or another,””

The Manual recount, is slated to start today, could change based on all the disputed ballots including the 400 ballots.

Also in the background is the question of the fate of electoral reform laws passed last month in Albany, including ones addressing the issues at the center of the current election which Governor Cuomo has yet to sign into law.

The Working Families party called on people to Call Speaker Carl Hestie and Governor Cuomo the explain that

“ Legislation has already passed the state legislature this year that would modernize New York’s voting laws to remove certain barriers to the eligibility of affidavit ballots. We believe the bill could be implemented immediately simply with Governor Cuomo’s signature — but first, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (Hasty) must send the bill to his desk. Call Speaker Heastie at 718-654-6539 and Gov. Cuomo at 518-474-8390 to urge them to enact Assembly Bill A1320A immediately.”

Caban activists have called for several types of volunteers to step forward to observe the vote at every step of the recount process:

Non-legal volunteer sign up: https://twitter.com/ReneeParadis/status/1147740453531529216?s=20

Status:

https://twitter.com/emma_a_whitford/status/1148586337882300416?s=20

Call your Assembly representative:

call to action to call Speaker Heastie: https://twitter.com/LydiaGreenBK/status/1148274742027329539?s=20

Will (electoral) Lightning Strike Queens Twice?/ Jay Toole Oral History

Details

Published: 15 June 2019

Tune into Out-FM on Tuesday, June 11, at 9:00pm on WBAI/NY and wbai.org

Click on green arrow to download, or select and stream the track. If no green arrow or tracks appear, activate your Flash. On firefox do the following. Look here for details or questions.

Out-FM Full Show

The District Attorney is in charge of enforcing NY State laws and has tremendous sway over the amount of bond, if any, that the state demands of defendants. That determines who goes to jail immediately after arrest and who stays there until trial. They determine plea agreement terms and have tremendous sway over how justice is delivered, or not delivered.  In NY each of the 5 bouroughs have elected DAs some of whom are up for election this fall.

The most watched District Attorney race in NYC is in Queens. John Ryan is the current holder of the office of Acting District Attorney  for the County of Queens following the death of Richard A. Brown, who was appointed by Mario Cuomo in 1991.

The election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sent shockwaves through the political establishment as they grappled not just with the loss of a mainstream Democratic representative, but because he was highly placed in the party hierarchy.

Now with the upcoming primary election on June 25^th, the forces that successfully elected Ocasio-Cortez are now trying their hand at a powerful local office, that of the Queens District attorney. Their candidate, , is a former public defender with a left progressive bent. Her supporters include the Democratic Socialists of America, the Working Families Party and many local groups. 

Joining Out-FM Producer John Riley to discuss the crowded primary field, is Akela Lacy, who’s the author of a recent article published in The Intercept called, “Revenge of the Machine: NY Party Bosses Rally to Melinda Katz in Pivotal Prosecutor Race.”

Out-FM Producer Naomi Brussel brings us part 1 of an oral history of Jay Toole, co-founder of Queers for Economic Justice. Toole was in Washington Square Park when the first night of the Stonewall Riots started and upon hearing of the uprising rushed to the site. Toole, age 71, describes her gender non-conforming life from being kicked out of her parent's home as a teen, to her life on the streets.

Please follow us on Twitter @outfm

and/or

Facebook page (please like us and share the post): https://www.facebook.com/OutFMRadio/

and/or

Facebook group (please join, comment and repost) https://www.facebook.com/groups/370