Center for Civic Design

Voted by mail (from our kitchen table) yesterday and put my ballot in the mail to return. There were a ton of improvements to the absentee ballot process since the June primary and it’s clear New York is trying to improve after a disastrous primary.

Unlike the primary, and in previous years, I could track my absentee ballot. I could see when I applied, when staff were reviewing my application, and when it was approved. The tracker didn’t tell me my ballot was issued, but it arrived 3rd wk in Sept, in line with BOE projection

On the ballot itself, the instructions are much, much clearer. In June, it was a single sheet in tiny font printed in 3 languages. This time around, instructions were much clearer and on the envelopes, with a big red X telling you where to sign

This was a problem during the primary because people in NY had ballots rejected for not signing/dating, but it was easy to miss that you had to do that because of poor design on the ballot envelope during the primary.