New York has canceled its Democratic presidential primary initially scheduled for June 23 amid the coronavirus epidemic in an unprecedented move.
The Democratic members of the State's Board of Elections voted Monday to nix the primary.
The decision came after Bernie Sanders conceded the Democratic presidential nomination to former Vice President Joe Biden, rendering the primary unnecessary, the New York Times reported.
According to the Times, board officials had struggled with the decision but concluded that the spread of the virus was "too great to justify holding an election with no real meaning."
This decision may have upset some Sanders supporters, the Times reported , who had hoped for him to be on the ballot and hold a presidential primary - which according to the board's Democratic co-chairman, Douglas A. Kellner, served no important meaning.
"What the Sanders campaign wanted is essentially a beauty contest that, given the situation with the public health emergency, seems to be unnecessary and, indeed, frivolous," Kellner told the Times.
A Sanders-aligned group named Our Revolution responded to the decision in a statement of their own.
"Suppressing the Sanders vote in New York will again lead to attacks on the Party across the nation and harm the volunteer effort that our group and others are building for Joe Biden," said the group's chair, Larry Cohen, the Times reported.
New York will still hold its congressional and state-level primaries on June 23.
New York City-run health clinics will soon take a new tack on coronavirus testing.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that the clinics would begin using a procedure that lets people collect samples themselves in a health care worker's direction.
He says the "self-swab" tests would allow for more and more comfortable testing and make it safer for test-seekers and health care workers alike.
