Elections administration in New York is in each county in the hands of a two-person board – one appointed by the Democratic county chairman, one by the Republican. The state board of elections has four commissioners, two appointed by the Democratic state chairman, two by the Republican. The patronage positions therein are split down the middle.

The issue isn’t the effectiveness of the NY electoral administration. It’s the fundamental honesty of any democrat controlled administration that is in question.

Figures don’t lie but liars figure.

Since the ideology that democrats embrace declares that, even when simply advantageous, lying and cheating are fully justified and a ‘moral good’, no administration of any kind in which they are in charge can be trusted.

It’s the equivalent of putting criminals in charge of banking.

Nice little article over at AT this morning detailing the 60 seconds of coverage of this subject within the over 6 hours of programming by the MSM shows lae night yesterday and this morning.

Not now, by golly.

Again, the law needs to declare that postal ballots which do not arrive by the day before the election (in order to be subject to signature checks Tuesday morning) are not validly cast and thus must be locked up and then returned to sender after tabulations are finished and winners certified. And you need to limit their use to the segments of the electorate who actually need them. People who need a postal ballot should be getting one in the mail by 20 September at the latest if they live in the continental United States and 10 October at the latest if they live abroad.

Conventional patronage jobs in New York and everywhere else are a tiny fraction of the public sector workforce. (Edward Banfield discusses in one of his volumes the economy of political patronage and some reasons the practice was no longer sustainable). In New York, you’ll find discretionary appointments in the top echelon and in loci like the city clerk’s office and the board of elections. There are problems with public employment in New York in the mode of recruitment and employee discipline. You have overstaffing and mediocre performance. The notion that public employees in New York are a bunch of incipient vagrants who joined ward clubs has no reality outside your imagination.

The institutional features have existed for generations, and were in place in an era when the Republican Party was quite competitive statewide and dominant Upstate. There’s a great deal of sclerosis in matters of political architecture in New York. Mostly that’s disagreeable, but in the case of elections administration it’s been agreeable, as the state’s declined to be an early-adopter of troublesome technology. Mechanical lever machines were in use until 2009.