The Wall Street Journal reports:
Justice Department lawyers are asking a federal judge to move up the date of New York state’s primary election because, they argue, local election officials have abjectly failed to mail ballots in time to military personnel and other Americans overseas.
In court papers, federal lawyers charge that more than half the counties in the state—far more than previously thought—failed to meet the deadline for 2010 general-election ballots to go out. As a result, more than 1,000 ballots from New Yorkers overseas were not received in time to be counted.
The state’s election calendar “remains fundamentally incompatible” with the federal law to ensure military ballots are counted, Justice Department lawyer Richard Dellheim wrote in papers filed late Monday. A spokesman said the state Board of Elections was still reviewing the papers.
The submission to Judge Gary Sharpe in Albany is the clearest sign yet that New York is unlikely to obtain a waiver from the federal government that would grant it extra time to send out military ballots. The court filing also puts more pressure on the state Legislature to pass its own law to move up the primary.
… Since a court-ordered decree in 2010, the Justice Department has determined that 33 of New York’s 62 counties failed to send out the ballots by an Oct. 1, 2010, deadline. At least 13 of those counties sent out the ballots after the extended deadline of Oct. 10.