WHEREAS the right to vote and have one’s vote counted is fundamental to our nation’s democracy; and

WHEREAS the New York City Board of Elections is entrusted with the dual role of administering elections fairly and counting the results accurately and efficiently; and

WHEREAS the board has a history of problems, including with voters having difficulty casting their ballots and with long delays in vote-counting, a state of affairs unbefitting the elections board for a world capital such as New York City; and

WHEREAS the board’s performance following the mayoral primary on Sept. 10, 2013 was particularly egregious as it took the board two and a-half weeks, 17 days, to count votes in the Democratic contest; and

WHEREAS the long delay in counting thousands of votes had serious practical and political implications because of the uncertainty over whether there would be a runoff between the top two Democratic vote-getters; and

WHEREAS the board’s failure to count these votes in a timely manner meant that the candidate who came in second in the Democratic primary had to make a decision on whether to concede without knowing the full vote count or whether the frontrunner had in fact gotten the 40 percent of votes necessary to win the primary without a runoff; and

WHEREAS the delay in getting results after this primary followed similar issues in other recent elections; and

WHEREAS the New York City Board of Elections needs to operate at a far higher level of efficiency in order to avoid similar serious problems in future elections; and

WHEREAS, considering that New York City voters will go to the polls again in 2014 to elect members of Congress, a governor and state legislators, there is an urgent need to fix our electoral system; therefore be it

RESOLVED that the United Federation of Teachers calls on the state and city to work quickly on enacting meaningful and concrete changes that ensure New York City has the fair, efficient and reliable election system that its residents need and deserve.