City kids are creating homemade election buttons, inspired by the presidential race – and vintage campaign paraphernalia on display at the Museum of the City of New York.
Children from the city’s Lower East Side Life Program Family Shelter recently attended a button-making workshop as part of the museum’s “Campaigning for President: New York and the American Election” exhibit. (more…)
Don’t wear your favorite Barack Obama T-shirt or your shiny John McCain campaign button Nov. 4: You might get hassled at the polls.
An obscure, seldom-enforced state law bars anyone from wearing political buttons and other campaign paraphernalia within “a 100-foot radial measured from the entrances of the voting booth.”
With the election just over a month away, the law is suddenly gaining notice: an email begging potential Obama voters to “PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE” leave T-shirts and buttons home on Election Day is circulating on the Internet – spurring worried calls and emails to state election officials. The New York Civil Liberties Union plans – for the first time – to include a similar warning in its voter information materials.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders in Pennsylvania are calling on officials to enforce that state’s similar “passive electioneering” law banning campaign paraphernalia at the polls, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sept. 19.
In New York, election officials said they would stick to the law even as they tried to downplay concerns.
No Jail Worries
“No one will be thrown in jail over a shirt at the polls,” said state Board of Elections spokesman Bob Brehm, whose office has been bombarded by calls and emails from worried voters.
But Brehm noted that anyone wearing a campaign button or T-shirt will be asked to remove the item.
Jason Weingartner, executive director of the New York Republican County Committee, said the law is a good one – as long as it’s consistently applied. “It doesn‘t put undue pressure on individual voters who are exercising their constitutional rights,” he said.
City Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) agreed, but added that in his experience the law “isn’t as strictly enforced as it should be.”
Palyn Hung, a NYCLU staff attorney, said her group is including warnings about the law on its voters’ rights cards.
“We’re not saying you’re absolutely prohibited (from wearing campaign paraphernalia), but we’re advising people that they might not be allowed to go in” to the polls, she said.
History of Lax Enforcement
While election and party officials are familiar with the law, the general public isn’t. Voters wearing campaign buttons to the polls largely have been ignored for years, said David Epstein, a political science professor at Columbia University.
The law “is generally not enforced in New York or it’s enforced unevenly. Sometimes, they’ll let you wear bumper stickers though they will definitely kick you out if you start soliciting people,” he said.
New York City Board of Elections Executive Director Marcus Cederqvist, though, recalled a long-ago brush with poll workers.
“I was forced to remove a button once,” he said.
Steve Richman, the city Board of Elections’ general counsel, said the law is at least three decades old – and carries a penalty for those who refuse to comply.
“It’s a misdemeanor – seven months to a year in jail,” said Richman.
No one, though, could remember anyone being put behind bars for wearing a campaign button to the New York polls. But some officials recalled voters who went to extreme measures to try to evade the law.
“One year, a voter brought in a sheet cake with a candidate’s name and an inspector smeared the name with a knife,” said Helen Kiggins, the commissioner of elections in upstate Onondaga County.
Phone and email messages left with the Obama campaign did not get an immediate response. Peter Feldman, a McCain campaign spokesman in New York and New Jersey said, “We are okay with the law.”
(UPDATE: Obama spokesman Blake Zeff said, “We are grateful for the historic enthusiasm Obama supporters have generated, and want to assure them that registered voters will not be denied the right to vote. While we will help them comply with the law and they may be asked to remove a button or turn a shirt inside out, we encourage voters to show their support for Senator Obama.”)
Surrounded by campaign materials and holed up with his laptop and overactive cell phone in a corner of the Starbucks on 181st Street in Washington Heights, Gregg Ross carefully coordinated volunteers for Barack Obama Tuesday morning.
New Yorkers at polling sites around the city weren’t satisfied to just let their votes do the talking for them on Super Tuesday. Many had lots to say about the candidates, the campaign, the country – and themselves. Here’s a sampling:
In 2004, Janet Pommells, a Coney Island resident since 1990, crossed party lines to vote for George W. Bush because she believed his rhetoric about Saddam Hussein and the war in Iraq.
Between classes and on the way to work, Super Tuesday brought young people out to vote in huge numbers. And among them, supporters of Barack Obama were easiest to find. Voters 18 to 33 were drawn to Obama because they thought he could unite a divided America — and for that matter, the world.
Local students, energized by the presidential race, signed up as campaign volunteers – passing out flyers, making phone calls and flocking to rallies leading up to Super Tuesday.
Whether they’re working for Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton, the political newcomers said they’re driven by a desire for change – and a hope they can help shape the country’s future.
“People want a renewed faith in politics,” said Anna Durret, leader of Students for Hillary Clinton at Columbia University.
This year’s unusually competitive presidential primary has led some of Brooklyn’s own media elite to an unusual decision: for the first time, some local news outlets made endorsements in the national race.
“I don’t know how much difference it makes,†said Ed Weintrob, who publishes The Brooklyn Paper, a weekly. “But we felt collectively we should let people know what our thinking is. Hopefully they’ll consider our points.†(more…)
The Rev. Calvin Butts, the politically influential leader of Harlem’s famed Abyssinian Baptist church, endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton last month. But that didn’t stop volunteers from Harlem For Obama from distributing flyers outside the W. 138th Street church, trying to sway voters.
Djenny Passe-Rodriguez spoke with Harlem churchgoers about the appropriateness of religious leaders endorsing candidates from the pulpit.
Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential bid has drawn the interest of African immigrants – including those from Kenya, where the candidate’s father was born.
Some are planning to vote for Obama, while others say he has no chance of winning because of thee color of his skin.
Adeola Oladele spoke with African immigrants in Brooklyn.
On Saturday afternoon, Barack Obama supporters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge shouting the senator’s slogan “Yes We Can.” A short subway ride away on the No. 6 train, Hillary Clinton backers put on a rally in Manhattan’s Union Square where “Madame President” echoed throughout the park.
In a city where the Giants and their Super Bowl heroics loomed large, there seemed to be as much conversation - and action - generated by the pre-election hoopla for Super Tuesday.
