ALBANY – State Senator Peter Harckham is sick and tired of ICE agents making extra-judicial arrests in homes, workplaces, schools, college campuses and immigration courts that have included citizens and non-citizens alike, some held in incommunicado for days, and on Wednesday he introduced legislation in Albany to protect residents while going to or returning from polling places statewide.
Harckham, who represents constituents in four of Putnam County’s six towns in addition to 13 communities in Westchester and the Town of Stony Point in Rockland County, said, “To maintain lawful access to polling places during our free elections in New York, our residents need to be assured that they will be protected from civil arrest while exercising their right to vote, as guaranteed by Article II in the State Constitution. It is too easy to see that efforts to conduct arrests at polling places without warrants are simply intimidation tactics aimed at disenfranchising voters.”
Harckham’s legislation amends the state’s Civil Rights Law, Judiciary Law and Election Law, and states: “Residents who are present at polling places and there in good faith are privileged from civil arrest, and that it is a contempt of court and false imprisonment for anyone in violation of these proposed protections who makes or willfully assists in a prohibited arrest.”
Harckham stressed that the bill does not “pertain to law enforcement professionals acting lawfully in their duty to maintain safety and order regardless of the nature of the property or premises.”
He said all New Yorkers “should feel safe at polling places, whether they are U.S. citizens casting their ballot, or non-citizens accompanying a family member or friend. Recent claims by the federal government that non-citizens are voting in elections and election fraud is widespread are false.”
National news agencies reported last month that the United States Department of Justice, without justification, sent federal election monitors to key polling sites with high Latino populations in California. In this election, 66 percent of Latino voters expressed a concern regarding the presence of federal agents at polls.
While New York State Law already protects against intimidation at the polls, Harckham’s proposed legislation would further solidify those protections, as well as ensure that individuals cannot be civilly arrested while traveling to and from a polling location as well. This will allow all New Yorkers to feel safer casting their ballot or accompanying someone who is casting their ballot while also improving the state’s efforts in carrying out its constitutional duty of holding free and fair elections, the senator said.
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