Box of absentee ballots waiting to be counted at the Albany County Board of Elections last month. Photo: Hans Pennink/AP

The League of Women Voters sued the New York State Board of Elections Wednesday, arguing that the state's absentee ballot procedures are woefully flawed and must be repaired.

While absentee ballots have been used by a relatively small portion of New York voters in the past, absentee ballot requests skyrocketed amid the coronavirus pandemic and are expected to represent a substantial number of ballots in November, attorneys from Selendy & Gay and the Campaign Legal Center argued in Wednesday's filing.

"If New York's standardless process for reviewing absentee ballots and the lack of notice or opportunity to cure are permitted to continue in the 2020 November election, many more absentee voters will suffer erroneous deprivation of their right to vote," Selendy & Gay partner Joshua Margolin wrote in the complaint, which was filed in the Southern District of New York.

In 2018, election inspectors rejected nearly 14% of the absentee ballots cast in New York, according to the complaint. Many were rejected because of a mismatch between the voter's ballot envelope signature and their voter registration.

Margolin described New York's signature verification process as "an inherently error-prone process in which laypersons moonlight as handwriting experts to determine whether the signature on a ballot envelope matches the signature on a voter's registration."

In addition to the problem of layperson handwriting analysis, the reliance on signatures disadvantages people with certain medical conditions, including named plaintiff Carmelina Palmer of New York City, Margolin wrote.

Palmer has a condition that leads to hand tremors and illegible handwriting, according to the complaint, and while she would like to vote absentee in November, her ballot is at risk of being rejected due to signature mismatch.

To prevent "tens of thousands of votes from being discarded on account of benign errors or handwriting technicalities that can be easily and timely explained or corrected," Margolin wrote, the state should notify voters whose ballots may be rejected so that they can fix the problem, resubmit the ballot or vote in person. Other states with similar verification procedures allow voters to do so, he argued.

The attorneys asked for a permanent injunction enjoining the Board of Elections from rejecting absentee ballots without giving voters notice and an opportunity to be heard, along with an order requiring the board to promote uniform standards for absentee ballot verification across the state.

They also asked the judge, who had yet to be assigned as of late Wednesday, to issue a declaratory judgment that New York's absentee ballot procedures violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Board of Elections did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

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