Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.

State Senate

Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he’ll back both Democrats and Republicans on a case-by-case basis.

Manhattan

Rep. Charlie Rangel re-affirmed his support for Guillermo Linares’ Senate bid.

Julie Menin has already maxed out on fundraising for the Manhattan BP race.

Brooklyn

Simcha Felder is in talks with a top GOP operative about managing Felder’s campaign – perhaps indicating the Senate GOP is behind his candidacy.

Opponent David Storobin continued to hit golf balls during a Jewish prayer at a recent charity outing.

Andrew Gounardes’ Senate campaign keeps hammering away on the Marty Golden/Feminine Presence story.

Elsewhere

Sean Patrick Maloney announced his campaign team against Nan Hayworth.

Cuomo’s next big push will be for campaign finance reform.

The New York City Board of Elections is chafing at criticism, but nonetheless is seeking improvements.

Mayor Bloomberg mocked the Board of Elections (again.)

To read more from City & State click here.

Commissioner Frederic Umane.

It’s been more than a year and a half since the New York City Board of Elections voted to oust its executive director George Gonzalez, after the BOE came under fire for a mangled primary election in Sept. 2010. But the board has never replaced Gonzalez, and commissioners said they simply had not found a qualified replacement.

A ballot in Russian. Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.

At a Board of Elections Commissioners’ Meeting Tuesday that was overshadowed by the Rangel/Espaillat congressional primary, commissioners couldn’t decide whether or not to support a costly bill passed by the state Legislature this session that requires ballots to be printed in Russian.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s counsel had written to the BOE seeking its advice and recommendations on whether or not the governor should sign the bill, but BOE counsel Steve Richman said that implementing it would be enormously expensive.

Implementing it would cost the city “$600,000 to $700,000 per election,” Richman said, for the more than 2,700 interpreters that would be needed to staff polling sites, and an additional $6 million per election for ballots.

The bill requiring the Russian language ballots was “written in a poor an unclear manner” that made it difficult to interpret, Richman said.

The cost projections seemed to alarm the commissioners, who said they would like Richman to write back to the Cuomo with their cost findings, without a recommendation on what the governor should do.

A bill requiring translation of voting materials into Russian was passed in 2009, and a stronger bill was passed this year because the earlier bill was never implemented.

All of which has displeased Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz, who co-sponsored this year’s bill with State Sen. David Storobin. Cymbrowitz drafted a release calling for Richman to resign.

“Mr. Richman’s action comes after years of inaction,” the release says.

“The Board of Elections has refused to abide by a 2009 law, which I fought for, requiring that voting materials be translated into Russian. As the Board’s top legal official, he is responsible for his agency’s failure to abide by the law,” Cymbrowitz said.

To read the full article at City & State click here.

“One of the things we’ve pushed for at the BOE is to figure out a brand new way of closing these procedures to minimize the potential error that could arise,” said Commissioner J.C. Polanco at a BOE Commissioners’ meeting Tuesday afternoon.

“Unfortunately, the legislature didn’t move on any of those concerns,” he said.

The Board has been widely criticized for its handling of this primary and past elections, and State Sen. Adriano Espaillat is using vote-count errors and other reported “irregularities” from primary night as grounds for a legal challenge to the primary results, which his attorney Martin Connor filed in New York State Supreme Court today. A group called LatinoJustice is also asking the Department of Justice to investigate the Board of Elections’ handling of the primary.

Polanco deflected criticism that BOE was to blame for any of the reported problems, including stories of a shortage of bilingual poll-workers and voters turned away from polling sites, in addition to the uncounted ballots.

“What you saw that night was reporting done by the AP from numbers given to them by the NYPD,” Polanco said, adding that the NYPD was “not at all” to blame for what happened.

Polanco said the BOE was being unfairly maligned by the campaigns.

“I think its unfortunate. What’s happening is the campaigns are launching incredible vicious attacks to the hardworking men and women here at the board of elections,  and they’re based on absolutely nothing but a conspiracy theory,” he said.

“The reality is we have hardworking men and women here at the Board of Elections that are working tirelessly to make sure that each one of these ballots are counted,” he said.

Common Cause executive director Susan Lerner said the primary SNAFUs were “ par for the course.”

“This is an election where we only had a few primaries. Imagine how much worse this is going to be in September,” she said.

To read the full article at City & State click here.