Pro-Palestinian protest vote campaign claims success in NY primary, exact numbers are unclear

• Published date: 05 April 2024
• Author: LUKE TRESS/JTA
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Ahead of a series of Democratic primaries, activists across the country — particularly in swing states — have called on voters to choose "uncommitted" or an equivalent at the ballot box to register their opposition to Biden's policy. They've aimed for the number of uncommitted votes to surpass Biden's margin of victory in the 2020 election — a goal the campaign achieved in Wisconsin this week

But in New York, the campaign faced a technical challenge because the ballot does not allow voters to choose "uncommitted." Instead, activists launched an effort urging voters to submit blank ballots in protest.

According to one analysis by City & State, a publication focused on local politics, Tuesday's Democratic primary saw some 39,000 blank ballots, around 12% of the total.

Turnout was low because the primary is already decided, and organizers have no hope of threatening a Biden loss in New York, which is expected to vote Democratic by a large margin. But the Leave It Blank campaign called the numbers "an unprecedented and historic result."

A number of pro-Palestinian groups, including the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, the left-wing Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, the progressive Working Families Party and New York City's chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, all backed the Leave It Blank campaign.

But while many of the blank ballots were likely protest votes, calculating the exact number is more difficult in New York than in Wisconsin, Michigan or elsewhere. That's because the New York Board of Elections did not include a tally of blank ballots in its preliminary results, which will take a couple weeks.

City & State calculated them by comparing votes for candidates to total ballots for delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The discrepancy between the two figures yielded the 39,000 estimate.

In addition, the count likely includes ballots that were deliberately left blank along...