SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- One of Central New York's top elections officials is rallying support for an effort to give people more time to vote each November.
Onondaga County Democratic Election Commissioner Dustin Czarny asked the Syracuse Common Council Wednesday to support a state initiative to implement 12 days of early voting.
Limiting voting to just one day forces some people to choose between their daily obligations and getting to a polling place, Czarny said.
"We work longer hours, we have multiple-income households, we have to balance childcare, we have to balance school activities," Czarny said. "People get sick and all kinds of others things happen when elections happen on just one day. We need early voting to ease that burden."
Democratic Onondaga County Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny
Czarny, who is also chair of the New York State Election Commissioners Association's Democratic Caucus, is part of a group of Democratic elections commissioners and legislators backing an early voting bill.
In his proposed budget, Gov. Andrew Cuomo allocated $7 million to counties in order to alleviate the financial burden of early voting. Czarny said that funding eliminated one of the biggest concerns about early voting -- the cost.
Onondaga County's Republican elections commissioner, Michele Sardo, said that money doesn't change the fact that taxpayers would be footing the bill for poll inspectors and other election costs.
"It's still county taxpayer money," she said.
Sardo doesn't support early voting. She said it will significantly increase the cost of elections without improving turnout. She said turnout can be improved by "get out the vote" efforts.
The proposal Czarny is backing would allow for 12 of voting prior to Election Day, which is the first Tuesday in November. That number may change, since there are several versions of a reform bill floating around the legislature in Albany.
Nationwide, 37 states offer some version of early voting.
New York has some of the lowest voter participation rates in the United States. In the 2016 presidential election, 57 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. That was the eighth-worst turnout in the country.
Turnout tends to be even lower for state, local and midterm elections. In a hotly contested Syracuse mayor's race last fall, for example, 35 percent of registered voters went to the polls. That means fewer than 25,000 of the city's 144,000 residents cast a ballot.
Early voting needs to be approved by the state legislature during the budget process this month. Czarny's pitch to the Common Council was to ask for a resolution supporting the effort. Councilor Latoya Allen sponsored the resolution.
The council consists of eight Democrats and one Republican, as well as a Democratic president who does not get a vote. The council will vote on the measure Monday.
If passed this year, early voting would be implemented in 2019. Czarny said it's ideal to first offer early voting in a local year in order to perfect it before the 2020 election.
"I'd much rather implement early voting in a local year for the first time to get ready to perfect it for the big 2020 presidential election that could be one of the biggest elections of our lifetime," he said.