To the Editor:
Democracy is about having a choice of candidates from various parties when you go to vote. If behind the scenes the system is rigged so that there is only one candidate to vote for, there goes democracy. We see this happening at the grassroots level in the town of Berne.

Both the Democratic Party and the Working Families Party have been under attack by “election snipers.” I am writing about the attack on one Democrat-endorsed candidate, Tim Lippert.

The Republican and Conservative parties both endorsed a candidate for town council who is registered as a Democrat. She was elected as a Democrat to the position of town clerk from which she announced her retirement at the end of her term in December.

Her endorsement for town council by the Republican and Conservative parties was not a surprise. As town clerk she has clearly acted in the interests of the current conservative majority on the town board.

The Berne Democratic Committee called out to registered Democrats to run for all the open town positions in this year’s election. The committee endorsed registered Democrats who embrace the values of the Democratic Party — in this case, Timothy Lippert for a town council seat.

But the candidate for the Republican and Conservative parties already on the November ballot wants to monopolize that ballot by getting herself on the Democratic line as well. How? By forcing a famously low-turnout June primary.

Forcing a primary was an easy process and comes with a big price tag for the citizens of Albany County — that’s us in Berne. In a town with Berne’s population, it took finding only 13 registered Democrats to sign a petition.

Now the county will have to shell out thousands of dollars to conduct the primary with nine days of in-person early voting at the Berne firehouse on Canaday Hill Road in Berne, with absentee voting, and with in-person voting on primary day (June 22) in the usual two polling places in the town for this one position on the Democratic ticket.

You can say, “Well that’s democracy for you. The rules were followed.” I say let’s get out and vote on or before June 22 for Timothy Lippert because Tim is the registered Democrat on the ballot who acts like a Democrat. And because keeping the grassroots watered in Berne keeps democracy alive in America.

Mary Ann Ronconi

Berne

Editor’s Note: Each Berne Democratic candidate filed a petition containing 41 signatures with the Albany County Board of Elections, although only 13 signatures were required. The number of signatures required for a designating petition in a town like Berne, which has a population of less than 3,000, generally is 5 percent of the “then enrolled voters of the party residing within the political unit in which the office or position is to be voted for (excluding voters in inactive status),” according to New York State Election Law. 

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, however, the number of signatures required for a petition was reduced by 70 percent, so the number of required signatures listed in the Albany County Board of Elections’s 2021 enrollment figures is about one-third the normally required amount. Despite this, each candidate who filed a party-line petition in Berne got the normally required number of signatures based on the relevant party’s enrollment numbers.