Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-NY, has a legal responsibility to call a special election to fill the state’s vacant 27th Congressional District seat.
He also has discretion as to when to schedule. Tuesday in Western New York, the governor said he’s still working on a final decision but continues to lean toward April 28, 2020.
He said it just seems to make sense since the state already has a presidential primary election scheduled for that day.
“What people have to remember, special elections, first of all, are very expensive. An election is no longer one day. An election is now a ten day affair,” Cuomo said.
“That means you have to pay people to come to the polls for ten days, open up the polls. It’s easily over a million dollars and fewer people participate in the special election because it’s scheduled on a short time frame,” he said. “It’s not a normal election day and people have lives to live. And they want to participate. They want to vote, but make it easy for me to vote. We have an election coming up in April. It’s a major election. People are coming to vote any way. My inclination is save the million dollars and lets hold the election in April which is a regularly scheduled election, doesn’t cost us the million dollars, we get more turn out.”
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