New Yorkers Aren’t More Pro-Democracy than Texans
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The reality is that whites, or at least those that show up in midterm elections, don’t much care about voting rights.
New York voters overwhelmingly rejected constitutional amendments that would have allowed for same-day registration and universal absentee voting in future elections.
With all but a handful of local election districts reporting, Proposals 3 and 4 were both defeated by double-digit margins. Proposal 1, which would have enacted a laundry list of changes to the state redistricting process, was also soundly rejected by voters.
In the weeks leading up to the election, the New York Republican Party mounted an aggressive, statewide campaign aimed at convincing voters to “Vote no on 1, 3, and 4.”
Despite launching just two weeks before the election, that effort appears to have been hugely successful in an off-year election with low turnout. The ballot proposals were rejected in counties across the North Country and Upstate New York more broadly, in some cases by margins as high as four-to-one.
Susan Lerner of Common Cause New York, which had supported the proposed amendments, called result a “black eye for democracy” in a written statement. A reaction from the GOP chairman Nick Langworthy was not immediately available.