Essex County Dem Committee Meeting notes:

• Treasurer’s report shows around $7300 balance…not bad.
• If you receive an absentee ballot and change your mind to vote in person, you’ll have to vote via provisional ballot (affidavit). That’s a change to accommodate the new process of opening absentee ballots and counting them as they are received. This will expedite reporting election results, eliminating the two week delay between reporting the machine totals and the absentee ballot totals.
• More changes to come: 500 plus bills under consideration by the legislature (!!). Many involve election reform.
• Starting July 1, absentee ballots will have postage prepaid return envelopes.
• Election inspectors still needed regardless of party affiliation. There’s a bill to raise the wage and I’m trying to find it.
• Status of redistricting – State boundaries are probably ok, Congressional Districts are being deliberated by higher courts. This probably won’t impact us, regardless of the ruling.
• Names have been drawn for candidates for the June 24 primary ballots…Purtorti on first line, Castelli second line.
• For Lt Gov, too late to change the primary ballot unless legislation passes to allow Brian Benjamin (our Lt Gov who recently resigned after being arrested for bribery and fraud) to be removed from ballot, even if he dropped out. In NY, voters choose the Gov and Lt. Gov on separate ballot lines, they don’t run together.
• Billy Jones (our new Assembly Member and guest speaker for our June 20 meeting) does have an opponent for the general election.  Stephen Chilton is running as a Republican and Conservative Party candidate. We should help the Jones campaign with Independent petitioning and we’ll discuss that at our May 9 meeting.