Bard College officials continue to take legal action to move a vote to campus, even after the campus for visitors has ended.
Bard is part of an organization that sues the Dutchess County Board of Elections to relocate red hook’s Five District that votes for the November 3 general election of st. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, raising security considerations in the midst of COVID-19. Pandemic.
On Monday, the school announced that the campus would be closed to non-students or workers without the school’s permission, showing the conversion landscape of the spread of the virus in New York.
Still, school officials say they would welcome the electorate to campus if the county election repositioned the polling station and would do whatever is obligatory to keep voters safe.
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Bard College sues Dutchess Electoral Council to move vote to campus
“While the school has implemented strict measures to involve COVID, it will take equally ordinary steps to ensure that voting on Election Day is easy, fair, and safe,” Bard College President Leon Botstein wrote on the school’s website.
The move was taken to protect the campus from what the school considers a building in regional instances of COVID-19 and because it was through a Nuvance Health consultant, Botstein said in the statement. , according to the school.
The school encourages students to use online orders instead of buying food on the user or dining off campus, but has not banned it on and off campus. It also transfers all prospective student visits to virtual tours.
Botstein, along with school officials, a student, and the Andrew Goodman Foundation, a social justice organization, filed a lawsuit against the Dutchess County Board of Elections in September to move the vote from St. John’s Episcopal Church. John the Evangelist on campus.
The organization cited safety considerations and that the church did not think was available to others with disabilities. He noted that the site is not suitable for the highest percentage of electorate registered in the district living on or around campus.
“. . . the genuine question other people ask themselves is: Is Bard safer than the existing location?This is evidently Bard, which is more than 3 times larger than the existing polling place in Barrytown,” said Jonathan Becker, the executive vice president. “and the other people in Barrytown recognize that,” the other barrytown people told the Journal.
Church leaders sent a letter to the Elections Office stating that the area cannot be “a safe enough environment for election officials as well as for voters” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Republican election commissioner Erik Haight said the university’s resolve to close the campus “confirms” its position not to move voting to campus. Both Haight and the Democratic election commissioner were appointed to the trial.
While Soto agreed to replace the location of the polling place, Haight had in the past expressed considerations that the university campus would be an island environment and “could have an effect on the perceived neutrality of any polling place. . . “
Following Bard’s resolution for his campus as a whole, Haight warned that the goal of the lawsuit would be “to move the polling place to campus and then close it to the public under the guise of the pandemic so that only academics can vote,” and He said his initial resolution to reject the campus “is justified” through the resolution.
“I will never stop protecting the wishes of all voters,” Haight said.
On 13 October, Dutch Supreme Court Judge Maria Rosa rejected the petition, saying that the Electoral Council would have sufficient time to kindly inform the electorate about the replacement of the seat.
However, on Thursday, the city announced that the Board of Elections had to replace the polling place for Districts 7 and 8, from City Hall to Linden Avenue Middle School, raising a desire to ensure that social estating measures can be followed.
The decision, the plaintiffs said in a renewal and reapproval movement filed Thursday night, undermines the argument that the council can inform the electorate about a replacement in District Five before Election Day, and is grounds for re-agreeing.
Yael Bromberg, a leading voting attorney at the Andrew Goodman Foundation, said the decision to close the campus will not be the trial.
Saba Ali: Sali1@poughkeepsiejournal. com; 845-451-4518