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Onondaga County voter registration soars; elections commissioners request more positions

Onondaga County Elections Commissioners Michele Sardo and Dustin Czarny present their budget request to lawmakers Sept. 20, 2024.
Scott Willis
/
WAER News
Onondaga County Elections Commissioners Michele Sardo and Dustin Czarny present their budget request to lawmakers Sept. 20, 2024.

Voter registration forms are flooding into the Onondaga County Board of Elections, and the commissioners say that’s just one reason they’re requesting additional staff in the county budget. County lawmakers are considering the changes as they continue to review the county executive’s spending plan.

The board of elections prides itself on efficiency, but additional tasks are taking a toll on an already understaffed office. Democratic commissioner Dustin Czarny says they often work 60 hour weeks to keep up with the volume, and the office has high turnover. He says the board has one worker for every 14,000 voters, when the average statewide is one for every 8,000 to 10,000.

“So we're asking for six new people that will help us deal with all the equipment that we have, all of these new burdens and voter registration.," Czarny said. "That still brings us to one for 11,000. We're still one of the worst in the state, but we believe that our staff will be able to better handle the load with those six additional people.”

Czarny and Republican commissioner Michele Sardo presented a bi-partisan request to lawmakers for consideration. Sardo says they’ve processed about 15,000 registration forms and have at least 18,000 to go. She says it’s not a one-step process.

“It's constant data entry," Sardo said. "When you register a voter, whether it's the Republican registering the voter, the Democratic side has to approve that to verify it, and and same with Democrat registration; a Republican has to review it. So these forms could be touched three to four times. It's just a long process. The absentees are the same way.”

Sardo invites members of the legislature’s majority republican caucus to stop by their offices to see firsthand what the 20 overburdened full-time workers do on a daily basis. Legislature chairman Tim Burtis seems sympathetic to the board’s struggles as they try to meet changing…and unfunded state mandates.

“That's very frustrating and very hard for our folks to administer, if you ask me," Burtis said. "And you never know where we are headed with the state passing those things down.”

Burtis says the legislature put money in contingency for the board of elections last year, and they used it all. But he didn’t indicate if they’d do the same this year.

Scott Willis covers politics, local government, transportation, and arts and culture for WAER. He came to Syracuse from Detroit in 2001, where he began his career in radio as an intern and freelance reporter. Scott is honored and privileged to bring the day’s news and in-depth feature reporting to WAER’s dedicated and generous listeners. You can find him on twitter @swillisWAER and email him at srwillis@syr.edu.