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First early voting will be complicated for many New Yorkers

First early voting will be complicated for many New Yorkers

New York is the 39th state to allow some form of early voting.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

New Yorkers will get their first opportunity to cast early ballots this fall, but expectations the change will boost turnout are being dampened by a hodgepodge of local rules and the absence of any statewide races.

Thanks to a law enacted this spring, voters in the nation's fourth most populous state can vote in person on any of nine consecutive days before Election Day (Saturday, Oct. 26, through Sunday, Nov. 3, this year). New York is the 39th state to allow at least some form of early balloting. Of the 10 biggest states, Pennsylvania is now the only one without any early voting

But elections in the Empire State are run by counties, so the procedures for early will be different in each. The League of Women Voters of New York took a statewide look at what's in store and reported that many rural counties upstate will have just one polling place where people can make their choices for entirely local contests and referendums. In 18 counties, voters will have their choice of multiple polling places, but in nine others (including Albany, the five boroughs of New York City and two of its biggest suburban counties, Westchester and Suffolk) voters will be assigned to a specific polling place.

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Those nine counties must assign a specific polling place to each voter because all of their voter records are kept on paper, WRVO reported. They haven't been digitalized and officials can't easily transfer the information on the voter rolls from one site to another.

Part of the reason is Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo's budget office did not release until the end of August the full $10 million in funding approved to support early voting.

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Meet the change leaders: Scott Klug

Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.

After a 14-year career as an Emmy-winning reporter, Scott Klug upset a 32-year Democratic House member from Wisconsin in 1990. Despite winning four elections with an average of 63 percent of the vote, he stayed true to his term limit pledge and retired in January 1999.

But during his time in office, Klug says, he had the third most independent voting record of any member of Congress from Wisconsin in the last 50 years.

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Donald Trump at a podium

Former President Donald Trump recently said Vice President Kamala Harris is mentally impaired.

Howard Schnapp/Newsday RM via Getty Images

We should not denigrate the mentally impaired

Schmidt is a columnist and editorial board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Ableism, the social prejudice and discrimination of people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior, is just plain wrong and it is also un-American.

At a recent campaign rally in Prairie du Chien, Wis., former President Donald Trump disparaged Vice President Kamala Harris, suggesting she was mentally disabled and called her “a very dumb person.”

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"Danger PFAS" Caution Warning Barrier Tap

Heavily Hispanic areas near Chicago are home to environmental racism.

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Hispanic neighborhoods in Chicago suffer unequal exposure to chemicals

Sharp is chief financial officer at Environmental Litigation Group, P.C., a law firm based in Birmingham, Ala., that assists individuals and communities injured by toxic exposure.

The predominantly Hispanic populations in Rosemont, Schiller Park and Bensenville, near Chicago, have long been exposed to toxic chemicals known as PFAS originating from the neighboring O'Hare Air Reserve Station, which was closed in 1999. The phenomenon of environmental racism is not new to Chicago. Sites and facilities hazardous to the environment and human health have been placed near communities predominantly populated by Hispanic and Black people in the city for years.

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Gerald Ford

Republicans, including Gerald Ford in 1976, held the White House on the occasion of each of America's milestone birthdays.

Bernard Charlon/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

America at 250, and the Fourth of July presidents

Breslin is the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair of Political Science at Skidmore College and author of “A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation’s Fundamental Law.”

This is the latest in “A Republic, if we can keep it,” a series to assist American citizens on the bumpy road ahead this election year. By highlighting components, principles and stories of the Constitution, Breslin hopes to remind us that the American political experiment remains, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, the “most interesting in the world.”

An odd pattern has emerged in the history of presidential politics. Every time the United States celebrates a major birthday milestone, a Republican sits in the White House.

When America celebrated its golden jubilee in 1826, Democratic-Republican John Quincy Adams was enjoying his second year as the country’s chief executive. When the nation rejoiced that it had reached its centennial 100 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Ulysses S. Grant was our president. At America’s sesquicentennial in 1926, Calvin Coolidge occupied the White House. And during the bicentennial almost 50 years ago, Gerald Ford was completing his one and only term at the helm.

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