Elections-

Voter advocacy groups promote website

Site created as resource to report problems at polls on election day

Posted

Representatives of two public advocacy organizations visited the office of Elmont attorney Phil Solages on Thursday to publicize a mobile website voters can access on their smartphones to report irregularities at polling sites on Nov. 4.

"The purpose of this is to democratize the process of poll watching," said Lauren George, associate director for New York Common Cause, the local chapter of a national non-profit organization that works for government accountability. "Historically, poll monitoring has been done by party affiliates or candidate affiliates or party committees, or non-profit organizations like ours or the Civil Liberties Union. But this really allows any voter or any person experiencing a problem to report it in real time, which allows us to report that to the Board of Elections and resolve it immediately."

Solages called the website, PollWatch.us, a "new method to combat an old problem." He stood in the spot where, three years earlier, a campaigner for Nassau County Legislature candidate John Ciotti was videotaped making racist comments after posting signs supporting Ciotti outside opponent Carrie Solages's campaign headquarters. The man referred to people there as animals and said, "We'll put 'em on the back of the bus where they belong." Carrie won that election.

Phil Solages, brother to Carrie and Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, said voter intimidation can take many forms, recalling one instance where campaigners showed up at a polling station with a list of Hispanic- and Creole-sounding names of people they said were not allowed to vote. He said other documented tactics include people affiliated with political parties and candidates telling voters that they're at the wrong station or that they need government identification to vote. He noted that the only requirement to vote is to be registered.

George said the website also covers bureaucratic irregularities including confused poll workers, long lines, unaccepted provisional ballots, signage missing any of the five languages required by law or inaccessability to disabled voters. She

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