[LocalLeagueVoterService] Voter Service: Interesting NYTimes Article

Wed Dec 23 04:48:23 CST 2009

When Party Lines Divide Newcomer and Native

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Published: December 22, 2009 New York Times

TAGHKANIC, N.Y. - For years, Republican officials here have watched with
growing alarm as newcomers from New York City arrived in late-model cars,
built second homes and started to vote in increasing numbers, usually for
Democrats.

Now Republicans, armed with private investigators, are pursuing a new
strategy to preserve their power: take away part-time residents' right to
vote here.

Last month, after Democrats cast enough votes to threaten the Republican
Party's generations-old dominance of the town, Republican candidates filed a
suit to review dozens of the Democrats' absentee ballots, claiming they were
cast by occasional residents who had no business voting here.

Republican leaders have dispatched lawyers who have asked a state judge for
permission to subpoena personal information including income tax returns,
E-ZPass records, bank statements, even newspaper subscriptions.

The Democrats claim harassment. Republicans say they are exercising their
legal rights.

"I think this is a long time coming," said Elizabeth L. Young, a Republican
who has served as Taghkanic's town supervisor for 20 years, and believes
that anyone voting here unlawfully should be worried.

But the ramifications go far beyond the borders of tiny Taghkanic, a town of
about 1,100 people in Columbia County about two and a half hours north of
New York City, and the fallout from the legal battle could influence
Congressional and legislative races across New York next year.

State courts have generally held that people can vote wherever they have a
home, even if it is not where they spend most of their time. Democratic
organizers have exploited those rulings, encouraging part-timers to switch
their registrations from downstate, where Democrats enjoy a huge numerical
advantage, to battleground districts upstate or on Long Island, where their
votes can tip the balance. ("Vote where your heart is," urges one Web site,
CountryVote.org, run by the New York Democratic Lawyers Council.)

But Republicans have been challenging those votes in court, arguing that
those who claim a primary residence downstate for purposes like receiving
tax benefits or occupying a rent-regulated apartment must cast their votes
there, too. In Taghkanic they say that part-time residents were not entitled
to get absentee ballots because they did not meet the law's residency
criteria.

Should Republicans prevail, Democrats fear they would have a powerful legal
weapon to deploy in close elections next year, when the Republican Party is
hoping to build on gains made this November to retake Congressional and
state legislative seats, and perhaps even reclaim control of the State
Senate.

"My big concern is the potential to have more and more big recounts around
the state, subpoenaing thousands of voters," said Kathleen O'Keefe, an
election lawyer for Democrats in the State Assembly who is also representing
the Columbia County Democratic Committee in the Taghkanic case. "That would
be a major shift in public policy. They want a tool to challenge targeted
voters in close elections. We could see this all over the state."

In Taghkanic, some residents say, the feud between Republicans and Democrats
started as a dispute over motorcycles.

Two years ago, a wealthy newcomer, Alan Wilzig, asked the town zoning board
for permission to build a mile-long paved motorcycle racetrack on his
250-acre property. Concerned about noise, some of Mr. Wilzig's neighbors,
most of them fellow part-time residents, protested. They started a civic
organization, the Granger Group, and started showing up at town board
meetings. When the board sided with Mr. Wilzig, his opponents filed a suit
in state court.

"The people who are the ex-New York City people, no one even knew each other
until we started to get politically active," said Stephen Kling, a graphic
designer who estimates he spends about a third of his time in Taghkanic.
"You have a whole lot of Upper West Siders who are very comfortable
protesting and writing letters and calling officials. The locals would never
do anything like that. They consider it bad manners."

At the same time, a political shift has been occurring in the Hudson Valley.
Last year, registered Democratic voters for the first time outnumbered
Republicans in Columbia County and neighboring Dutchess County. A Democrat,
John Hall, who helped form the 1970s rock band Orleans, won an upset victory
in the 19th Congressional District, a former Republican stronghold
stretching from Dutchess to Westchester.

Another Democrat, Scott Murphy, triumphed this year in the fiercely
contested special election for the House seat that had been held by Senator
Kirsten E. Gillibrand.

In a preview of the battle in Taghkanic, Republican lawyers challenged -
with mixed success - hundreds of Democratic ballots in that race, including
those of weekend residents as well as students enrolled at local
universities, including Bard College and Vassar. In towns throughout
Columbia County, Democrats began campaigning more aggressively for local
offices.

"In enrollment, we're just about 50-50 now," said Gregory C. Fingar, the
Republican chairman in Columbia County. "The races are much, much closer
now."

In Taghkanic this summer, the part-time residents helped take over the
town's moribund Democratic Party, which had not run candidates against many
Republican incumbents. They backed a full slate of challengers for local
office, including Town Board seats, town justice and highway superintendent.

On Election Day, several of the races were close enough that absentee
ballots - a large proportion of them cast by Democrats - could swing the
count to one candidate or the other.

Within days, Republicans filed challenges to ballots in Taghkanic and five
other towns in Columbia County, but later narrowed the challenges solely to
Taghkanic.

In the lawsuit, the Republicans named Democratic candidates and the Democrat
on the county board of elections, instead of individual voters, as is
usually the case with voting challenges. Most of those who had cast
challenged ballots did not learn about the suit, which was filed in State
Supreme Court in Columbia County, until they read about it in the local news
media.

"I felt this kind of visceral outrage that someone was trying to take away
my right to vote," said Nancy Miller, a book editor, who is married to Mr.
Kling. "I felt that my vote was much more important up there. We planned to
retire up there some day, we had a real stake there, and I wanted to make a
difference."

Local Republicans say they have nothing against their seasonal neighbors and
even welcome their arrival in Taghkanic, which has poured millions of
dollars into the local tax base. What they do not welcome, the Republicans
say, are the part-timers' votes.

"They pay more taxes than some of us here," said Erik Tyree, 42, who moved
to the town a few years ago to manage Mr. Wilzig's property and in November
ran for Town Board on the Republican ticket. "They should have some rights.
I'm not sure that voting should be one of them."

Part-time residents said they were bewildered at having their votes
challenged and blamed Republicans for trying to divide this quiet town along
partisan lines. Many of them said they had been coming to Taghkanic for
years and resented being cast as interlopers.

"They can have my vote back," said Stephen Fass, a food importer who bought
a house here in the 1980s. "But then I want my school taxes back."

_______________________ 
Maggie Moehringer, LWVNYS VP Voter Service
(518) 475-0969 
mmoehrin at nycap.rr.com 
12 Coventry Rd. 
Glenmont, NY 12077 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lwvny.org/pipermail/localleaguevoterservice_lwvny.org/attachments/20091223/eca04b40/attachment.html>