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Despite court rulings, Haight continues fight against Bard College polling location

Nov 02, 2021 1:01 pm

William J. Kemble reports in the Daily Freeman that the Republican election commissioner in Dutchess County who has lost two court cases trying to block a polling site on the Bard College campus says he will keep up the fight next year. Dutchess County Republican Elections Commissioner Erik Haight said he will continue to fight the rulings next year. “It is unfortunate that the county leadership has condoned, actively or through their silence, Commissioner Haight’s efforts to undermine democracy, even as he has now wasted well over $100,000 of taxpayer money over the past decade in failed attempts at voter suppression that have been repeatedly rejected by the courts,” Bard College Executive Vice President Jonathan Becker said after an Oct. 29 State Supreme Court ruling mandating a polling place on campus. Haight calls the decision "stupid.... Voters, for a very good reason, don’t get to choose their own poll sites,” Haight said. “It’s up to the Board of Elections to choose … because the law assumes a certain level of impartiality. … So when the court … replaces its judgment for the Board of Elections’ judgment, then we end up with this stupid ruling for multiple poll sites in the same election district,” he said. But courts do get to overrule politicians when they make mistakes. Haight wants to move the polling spot from the center of the Bard College campus to the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard. But alcohol is sold there, making it ineligible to be a polling place. Read more about this story in the Daily Freeman.

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