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History
- Referred to elections
- Referred to elections
Companion bill
The same bill in the other chamber. A bill becomes law when one version passes both houses and the governor signs it, so either number can carry it.
Provides that the board of elections shall accept voter registrations electronically through its website
In Assembly Committee · Election Law · Sponsor Brian Kavanagh
Full text
The text isn't available here yet. Check nysenate.gov.
Sponsor's memo
BILL NUMBER:S859
Title of bill
An act to amend the election law, in relation to authorizing electronic voter registration
Purpose
Provides that the Board of Elections shall accept voter registrations electronically through its website in order to improve poll book accuracy and remove the voter registration backlogs that tend to appear before each election.
Summary of provisions
Section 1. Adds a new section 5-209 to the election law to require the State Board of Elections to implement online voter registration using similar provisions to the voter registration card. Registrants who provide a DMV client identification number would have their signature transferred from DMV records. Registrants providing only a social security number would need to show identification when voting for the first time in order to ensure compliance with signature requirements and election integrity.
Section 2. Effective date.
Justification
In the first two weeks of October in 2008, the New York City Board of Elections was crushed under nearly 204,000 voter registration forms which it had significant difficulty processing. This brought the 2008 total for voter registrations in New York City to nearly 715,000, as compared with 253,000 in all of 2007.
Local Boards of Elections throughout the State reported similar unprecedented volume and struggled to get thousands of voter registration records entered in time for the General Election. However, many voters still reported that their names were not in poll books on Election Day. Many of these voters fell victim to data entry errors, where a simple misspelling in an often ethnic name, made it nearly impossible to locate their name in the poll book and vote on a machine. This legislation would use online voter registration to improve poll book accuracy and cure recent backlogs at local Boards of Election across the State.
Legislative history
2013-14: S1991/A149 - Elections/Election Law 2011-12: S5237/A8632 - Elections/Election Law
Fiscal implications
To be determined.
Effective date
This act shall take effect on the one hundred eightieth day after it shall have become a law.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.