Biden vs. blank ballot as ceasefire advocates pressure prez

BY THE VILLAGE SUN | New York Democrats going to the polls to vote for president will have another option besides Joe Biden.

Part of a fast-spreading national movement, a coalition called Leave it BLANK NY has been calling for voters to leave their ballots unmarked to push the president to support a ceasefire in the Mideast.

Early voting for the presidential primary election starts in one week. Registered voters can go to the polls early from Sat., March 23, to Sat., March 30. Primary election day is April 2.

To find out where to vote either early or on election day, check findmypollsite.vote.nyc.

Setting up a potential rematch of 2020, Biden and Donald Trump already have sewn up their parties’ nominations, winning majorities of the needed electoral delegates.

A number of also-rans will still be on the New York ballot, even though they have already dropped out of the race, including Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips for the Democrats and Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie and Nikki Haley for the Republicans.

Write-ins are not an option on the New York presidential ballot. However, blank ballots are counted.

The protest-at-the-polls kicked off in Michigan, the U.S. state with the biggest Arab population at 2 percent, whose primary election saw more than 13 percent of Dems vote “uncommitted.” The movement has rapidly expanded to other states. On Super Tuesday in Minnesota, 19 percent, or nearly 1 in 5 of Democratic poll-goers, voted “uncommitted.” In Washington, “uncommitted” got 7.5 percent of the vote. In Hawaii it scored nearly 30 percent — though admittedly out of a tiny turnout of barely more than 1,500 voters.

Under Democratic Committee rules, any candidate, including “uncommitted,” that gets 15 percent of the state vote is eligible to win electoral delegates.

Leave it BLANK NY includes a number of Muslim groups, Jewish Voice for Peace and five Democratic Socialists of America chapters from around the state, plus Local 100 Fightback, a dissident faction seeking to topple the current leadership of the Transport Workers Union, which represents the M.T.A. bus and subway workers.

Leave it BLANK NY’s Web site is headlined: “Tell Biden: Count Me Out for Genocide.”

“The New York Presidential Democratic Primary is on April 2nd and we have an opportunity to send President Biden a clear message that New Yorkers want a lasting ceasefire,” the page says.

“While there is no uncommitted or write-in option in New York, blank ballots are counted. Since only 1% of ballots are typically submitted blank in New York elections and the presidency is the only elected office on the ballot April 2nd, submitting blank ballots is a powerful way to make visible the thousands of New Yorkers who want Biden [to] invest our hard-earned tax dollars into our communities, not [send] more bombs used to massacre Palestinians.”