Time, date, place to be determined

Try the possibility of some New Yorkers going to the polls four times in a span of seven months.

Republicans still will vote on a presidential candidate on April 24. But after that, the when and where either are new or yet to be determined.

First, Federal District Court Judge Gary Sharpe on Jan. 27 ordered the state to move its primaries for Congressional elections from September, when state officials wanted them, to June 26.

Sharpe, ruling in a lawsuit against the state by the U.S. Justice Department, found that a September primary date would not allow members of the armed forces serving overseas to receive and cast their absentee ballots on time.

Under a 2009 federal law, primaries must be held at least 80 days before the general election in order to allow members of the military and their families to receive and mail their ballots in time to be counted.

The state received a waiver from the Department of Defense in 2010. The Pentagon refused a request for an extension last fall leading to the suit.

With Congressional primaries set, the question still to be determined is where the state will eliminate two districts as a result of the 2010 Census.

A state task force for redistricting released drafts of new state Assembly and Senate district lines nearly two weeks ago.

A woman answering the phone at the task force’s main office last week said she had no information on when new Congressional lines will come out.

Population losses between 2000 and 2010 required that New York go from 29 seats in Congress to 27. The conventional wisdom was that Democrats would agree to eliminate a seat downstate while the GOP would forego one upstate.

Then former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner of Queens was replaced by Republican Bob Turner last year after Weiner was forced to resign from a seat Democrats held for more than 80 years.

Even Assemblyman Rory Lancman (D-Fresh Meadows), who has formed an exploratory committee to run against Turner, acknowledged Tuesday that all is contingent on Turner’s 9th District surviving the redistricting process.

Congressmembers Joe Crowley (D-Queens and Brooklyn) and Carolyn Maloney (D-Queens and Manhattan) also said they had no inside information last week.

While moving the Congressional primaries to June 26 was done in consideration of the nation’s soldiers and sailors, state officials said moving the state Legislative primaries to the same date would not show the same consideration to state senators and assembly members.

The Albany session ends on June 21, and elected officials claim they would have little time to campaign back home in their districts unless they did so during the session, leaving Sept. 11 as a third day to cast ballots.

And, of ocurse, Election Day remains set in stone on Nov. 6.

For now, anyway.