New York has the worst voting laws and election procedures of any non-Atlas-blue state, worse than those of many non-Atlas-red states. My guess is it's because of a generalized contempt for the electorate generated by the old "three men in a room" model of New York state politics.
I'm in small local elected office in Brooklyn (county committee), and it's wild how the machine politics of the state extend down to the smallest government jurisdictions. The District Leaders just voted to take voting power away from the county committee this year due to COVID concerns and an unwillingness to host a virtual committee gathering.
We're slowly working on democratizing things, but it's a systemic issue with the way everything's structured.
