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Fire them both.
Onondaga County elections commissioners Dustin Czarny and Michele Sardo have failed in the most fundamental aspects of their jobs and have, according to a warning issued by the state, threatened the integrity of the looming election.
In a year when Americans of every political persuasion worry about democracy and the integrity of the ballot box, two political hacks in Syracuse, New York, have decided to leave some 20,000 voter registrations unprocessed. Included in the stack of sometimes literally unopened mail are voter registrations for members of the Armed Forces serving overseas.
That’s a violation of federal law.
And there’s a significant likelihood that the general incompetence and laziness of the Onondaga County board of elections is itself a violation of state law.
So egregious is the dysfunction of the county board that the state board of elections, for the first time in its history, felt obligated to write a public letter of correction and condemnation to Dustin Czarny and Michele Sardo. The state has mandated daily reports from the county and has threatened to take over the county elections system if the local commissioners don’t fix things immediately.
Put another way, New York has 62 counties, each with two elections commissioners and a board of elections, and never has any set of commissioners or their board so troubled the state as to engender this drastic an intervention. In short, this is the worst they’ve ever seen.
And it could have national implications.
Onondaga County is the population center of the 22nd congressional district of New York. It is a district which voted for President Biden in 2020, but which also elected Republican Brandon Williams to the House of Representatives. Williams faces an uphill fight next month against state Sen. John Mannion in a race which could quite possibly determine which party has the majority in the House. And that race could be thrown into turmoil by these newly disclosed failures at the Onondaga County board of elections.
That possibility ought to be fresh in the mind of Onondaga elections officials as in 2020 the board of elections in neighboring Oneida County screwed up the tally in a House race between Claudia Tenney and Anthony Brindisi, resulting in no winner being declared until the following February.
Further, this negligence and incompetence by the Onondaga County elections commissioners comes at a time when many Americans fret about our democracy and its strength. Some believe illegal aliens are voting and tallies are being rigged, and others believe that voters are being suppressed and results will be rejected. Together, all Americans have the right to an election system that is open and honest, and that welcomes all legal voters and operates with integrity.
The ballot box is where the voice of the people is heard, and accessing and trusting that ballot box is the guard rail of our Republic. Every board of elections in every county in this country must be dedicated to protecting and implementing that principle.
And in Onondaga County they have failed.
As candidates speak and voters decide, the Onondaga County board of elections failed to adequately prepare for the coming election and literally let voter enrollment forms pile up by the thousands, unprocessed and excluded.
Defenders say this is the consequence of intense interest in the presidential election. That is nonsense. There is a presidential election all across the country, and in more than 3,000 boards of elections they have accepted and processed enrollment forms for Americans who want to vote.
The county and the state are now helping the Onondaga County board of elections dig out of the hole it created, and hopefully its dysfunction will not impede or endanger voting for county residents. Hopefully the military and other absentee ballots will get out. Hopefully everything will be OK.
But one thing is clear – the commissioners have to go. The overseers of this worst-in-the-state mess must not be allowed to stay. The culture they created and tolerated must be flushed.
Elections commissioners in New York are political flunkies. Each party gets to appoint one, and the job usually goes to somebody’s sister-in-law or a party operative who is owed a job but isn’t quite smart enough for a real job. They get a good paycheck, they get some years in the retirement system, and the votes get counted.
But Onondaga County must have better flunkies than these.
If it’s the middle of October and you’re the elections commissioner and you’re not ready for the November election, you’re in the wrong line of work.
If they won’t protect your rights, they don’t deserve their jobs.
Fire Dustin Czarny and Michele Sardo.