New York City Council Committee Hearing on the NYC BOE

At 1 p.m. today, the New York City Council’s Committee on Governmental Operations holds a public hearing “Assessing the Board of Elections’ Performance in the 2012 Congressional Primary Election and Preparedness for the Upcoming 2012 New York State Primary Election.” (Link to the agenda. It does not appear that the hearing is being webcast, but you can read the committee’s briefing paper.)

Witnesses will include the NYC BOE, the Bloomberg Administration, the state BOE, the New York City Voter Assistance Advisory Committee, elected officials, good government groups and civic organizations, and members of the public.

The New York City Board of Elections (NYC BOE) was criticized for the process it used to report election-night vote totals stemming from the June 26^th primary.  (Read more criticism here.)

Under the system in place for the June primary, poll workers hand tallied the votes recorded from each ballot scanner onto “return-of-canvass sheets,” provided copies to police officers, who took them back to their precincts, where the totals were entered into the NYPD’s computer system. The NYPD then transmitted the results to The Associated Press, which shared them with other news media outlets.

In the wake of that criticism, the NYC BOE altered that process in which police officers will instead retrieve the memory sticks from each ballot scanner, take them to them back to their precincts and deliver them to Board of Elections staff members, who will download the results to be transmitted to the NYPD and then the Associate Press.