New York State will allow most voters to cast their ballots by mail in the November general election, joining a growing list of states that have expanded mail-in voting to address the potential spread of the coronavirus at polling places.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, signed a bill on Thursday allowing voters to request an absentee ballot if they cannot show up at a polling location because of the risk of contracting or spreading an illness, effectively permitting the state’s more than 12 million registered voters to vote by mail.
But with only 10 weeks until Election Day, the challenges of administering an election predominantly by mail will be especially pronounced in New York, following the state’s uneven handling of its primary just two months ago.
Nearly 40 percent of voters cast mail-in ballots in the state’s June 23 primary — when an executive order authorized wider use of voting by mail — compared with as few as 4 percent in previous elections. The surge overwhelmed election officials and resulted in a weekslong delay for results in many races.
The problems in New York were repeatedly cited by President Trump, who has sought to undermine mail-in voting, which he has falsely disparaged as rife with fraud — even as legitimate concerns mount over the Postal Service’s ability to handle large numbers of ballots.
Election officials are anticipating more than five million absentee ballots in the Nov. 3 presidential election, or four times the total number of mail-in ballots received in the June primary, raising the specter that final tallies will not be known for weeks.
“I don’t think it’s realistic to think you’ll have a quick count this November,” Peter S. Kosinski, co-chairman of the New York State Board of Elections, warned during a state legislative hearing last week.
State officials are weighing several changes to election laws and procedures: Mr. Cuomo signed another bill on Thursday that will allow voters to apply earlier for a mail-in ballot. Officials are also developing an online mechanism to apply for mail-in ballots, and changes are being envisioned to reduce the number of rejected ballots, a troubling issue in the June primary.
The deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot by mail is Oct. 27, although officials are urging voters not to wait until the last minute. Ballots need to be postmarked by Election Day. To lessen the expected influx of mail-in ballots, officials are encouraging voters to cast their ballots in person at early polling sites, which open statewide on Oct. 24 and don’t require any advance application.
Election officials will nonetheless face an uphill battle to regain the confidence of voters who encountered obstacles in their attempt to vote by mail during the primaries.
In June, election boards received a record-setting number of requests for absentee ballots, which led to huge backlogs that resulted in many thousands of voters not receiving their ballots in time to vote. Many reported not receiving a ballot at all.
Voters in New York City returned more than 400,000 mail ballots, more than 10 times the number of absentee ballots received in recent elections. But the sheer number of ballots to be counted led to interminable waits, including in closely contested congressional primary contests that were called six weeks after voters cast their ballots.
The counting process itself was plagued with troubles: More than 80,000 absentee ballots in the city were deemed invalid because of technical flaws, meaning that nearly one-fifth of voters who voted by mail were effectively disenfranchised. Many were disqualified because voters failed to sign the ballot envelope, for example, while others were rejected because of a missing postmark or because they were improperly sealed.
The large number of disqualified ballots in the Democratic primary between Representative Carolyn B. Maloney and challenger Suraj Patel prompted Mr. Patel and others to file a lawsuit, leading a federal judge to order that some disputed ballots be counted.
One of the most perplexing conundrums during the June primary involved more than 4,800 ballots in Brooklyn that were disqualified because the Postal Service failed to postmark them — a requisite for a ballot to be counted if it’s received after Election Day.
The Postal Service has vowed to correct the issues that led to the lack of postmarks, but it has provided little explanation as to what exactly went wrong.
In recent federal court testimony, Michael Calabrese, a manager at the Postal Service’s massive Morgan processing plant in Manhattan, conceded that postmarking was “not a 100 percent process” and that some ballots could have gotten through unmarked.
A spokesman for the agency did not respond to multiple requests for additional details of the mishap.
To partially address the issue, Mr. Cuomo signed a bill on Thursday that allows an absentee ballot without a postmark to be counted if it is received one day after Election Day.
“These actions will further break down barriers to democracy and will make it easier for all New Yorkers to exercise their right to vote this November,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement.
Until a wave of changes approved in 2019, New York had been behind other states in adopting measures like early voting, which was underutilized during the June primary. More than 30 states allow voters to mail in their ballots for any reason.
Absentee ballots will not be mailed automatically to voters in New York, as will be the case in at least nine other states, including New Jersey and California. Instead, voters in New York will have to request a mail-in ballot online, over the phone, in person or by mail.
There are other outstanding issues elections boards will have to grapple with as November nears, including working more cohesively with the Postal Service, which state election officials tend to note is not subject to their oversight.
Postal Service officials have insisted they have the capacity to deliver ballots to voters in a timely manner so long as election boards don’t mail ballots to voters too close to the general election. The agency typically processes and delivers first-class mail, such as ballots, within two to five days after it is received, even though it has recommended voters mail their completed ballots at least one week before the state’s due date.
But in the June primary, the New York City Board of Elections, overburdened by an influx of ballots, mailed out tens of thousands of ballots to voters as late as the day before Election Day, increasing the likelihood that those voters would not receive a ballot in time to vote.
“We met our legal mandate, but some of them got out right under the wire,” Michael Ryan, the executive director of the New York City Board of Elections, acknowledged last week.
Election officials in New York are encouraging voters to apply for a ballot online, as New York City and Erie County did in June, rather than by mail, to expedite the process of mailing ballots to voters. The state’s Board of Elections is expected to unveil an online portal by the end of the month.
To diminish the reliance on the Postal Service, some state lawmakers have proposed scattering secure drop boxes across the state where voters can drop their ballots and have election officials directly collect them — an idea that is borrowed from other states, but that Mr. Trump’s campaign has forcefully opposed.
Some New York State election officials have argued that drop boxes could be superfluous since voters already have the option of dropping off their mail-in ballots at early voting sites and at polling places on Election Day.
Following complaints that voters failed to sign the ballot envelope because of confusing instructions on the envelope, the state Board of Elections is currently redesigning the envelope to be clearer, according to Douglas A. Kellner, co-chairman of the board.
State lawmakers recently passed legislation that would require election boards to notify voters if their absentee ballot has a missing signature and provide them with an opportunity to fix the error so their vote can be counted. But Mr. Cuomo had not signed that bill as of Thursday.
Election officials have raised the alarm about a statewide shortage of poll workers, most of whom are typically older and susceptible to the virus. Mr. Ryan has implored the state and the city to make its work force available, and has even floated the idea of recruiting public university students.
State officials have also warned of the dire need for additional funding after depleting almost all of the $24 million allocated in federal and state funds to administer elections this year.
Jesse McKinley contributed reporting.
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