NYC Elections Clerk Is Fired for Voting

NEW YORK — A city Board of Elections clerk has been fired for disobeying an order and voting during her evening meal break on election day, officials said Wednesday.

The board’s commissioners voted to fire Debra Fuller, 65, who has been a clerk there for 20 years, officials said.

She said she voted on her meal break at 7 p.m., after showing up for work at 5 a.m., but her boss said the board was busy that day and all employees would have to work straight through and vote by paper ballot.

“I was gone for 40 minutes, and I’m entitled to a 45-minute meal break,” Fuller said in an interview Wednesday.

Douglas Kellner, a board commissioner, said Fuller was fired from her $26,000-a-year job after she ignored his order that no one was to leave the office.

“She was terminated after she left her post on election day without signing out or telling her supervisor,” Kellner said.

The Board of Elections is run by 10 commissioners appointed by the Democratic and Republican parties.

Although the part-time commissioners are meant to oversee the activities of the board, they in fact run the day-to-day operations of each borough office.

Kellner, a lawyer in private practice, said the board was so busy on election day that it could not afford to let workers leave.

Many workers, however, are distrustful of casting their ballots within sight of their political bosses, said Richard Wagner, president of Local 1183 of the Communications Workers of America.

“Many years ago, a worker’s ballot was put off to the side and everyone knew the results when it was opened. People have been a bit hinky ever since,” he said.

“We’ll be taking this to arbitration, but it’s a very long road,” Wagner said.

Fuller said that she had excellent evaluations from her superiors and that she had been a loyal worker for the organization.

John Ravitz, the executive director of the board, said he had been told that Fuller had failed to clock out, but Fuller and Wagner said workers never clocked in or out on election day.

Instead, they were dispatched around their respective boroughs to carry court orders, supplies, equipment or other necessities to polling places.