THE NEW ELECTION LAW

New York, 1895

THE DUTIES THAT ARE IMPOSED ON TOWN OFFICERS.

Larger and Better Equipped Polling Places Must be Provided — Counselor Van Vechten Makes Some Timely Suggestions for the Guidance of Public Officers.

The new election law should be carefully studied by all public officers. Counselor Van Vechten is familiar with the law, and in the following letter he makes some valuable suggestions to town officers:

To the Editor of the Long Island Farmer:

Permit me through the columns of your paper to call the attention of the various town boards in the county, and also the attention of the common council of Long Island City, to the fact that by the act amending the election law adopted by the last legislature, it is made the duty of said town boards and common council, to designate on the first Tuesday of September, the various places in each election district in the city or town at which the meetings for the registry of voters and the elections shall be held during the year.

The act further requires that each room so designated shall be of a reasonable size, sufficient to admit and comfortably accommodate at least twenty electors at a time outside the guard rails and prohibits the designation of any building or part of a building within any part of which intoxicating liquors, ale or beer shall have been sold within prior to sixty days before such designation, if in a city, and prohibits the designation of a place other than in a city if in such room or any room adjacent thereto with a door or other passage way between the two rooms, intoxicating liquor or ale or beer has been sold within the said time.

In addition to the necessary ballot and other boxes, guard rails, voting booths and supplies therein, and the furniture of such polling place necessary for the lawful conduct of each election thereat, it is made the duty of the said town boards and common council to have placed at a distance of one hundred feet from each polling place, the necessary visible marks or barriers designated in the act under consideration as "distance markers." It is unlawful to do any electioneering between such markers and the polls. The act is silent as to what the "distance marker" shall consist of, and in the absence of any description of said distance markers, I suggest that the town boards select either a small triangular flag of red bunting to be attached to a staff and placed at the proper distance from the polls, or a sign-board upon which should be pasted or printed a notice reading "Electioneering within the limits indicated by this distance marker is prohibited by law." Flags would be cheaper as they need not be very large and the suggested color, red, is the universally accepted sign of danger. It will be necessary also that the said town boards and common council arrange with some surveyor to run a line or circle around the polling places marking the one hundred foot distance. Whether the entrance to the polling place or the centre of the room in which the election takes place should be taken as the centre or starting point for the one hundred foot distance, I am unable to state, but think and suggest that the entrance door would be a desirable starting point. Yours truly, F. H. VAN VECHTEN.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, June 28, 1895, p. 1.