Polls are open . . . if staff can get there
A top official with the New York City Board of Elections said the agency is struggling to find ways to get enough workers to polling sites in time to open them Tuesday morning, blaming the overnight subway shutdown that’s been going on for weeks.
“We hope so,” Manhattan GOP Commissioner Fred Umane, who serves as the board’s secretary, told The Post Monday when asked whether there would be enough poll workers on hand to avoid the overcrowding and hours-long lines that have plagued other cities this pandemic-struck primary season.
“We have to get them there,” he added. “It’s hard to book 10,000 Uber rides.”
Poll workers are required to be onsite at their locations an hour before New Yorkers start casting ballots at 6 a.m. However, the subway system is now closed from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. for coronavirus-related cleaning — leaving the BOE, which has known about the overnight issue for weeks, scrambling to come up with alternate arrangements at the 11th hour.
The MTA pointed to its ride-hail voucher program and bus system as two possible alternatives.
The transportation fiasco comes on top of complaints that the BOE’s vote-by-mail program failed to get absentee ballots out to New Yorkers who requested them.
“I do know a number of people who have not received their ballots, I’ve talked to 10 people who have not,” Assemblyman Robert Carroll (D-Brooklyn), who is also an election lawyer, said on Monday.
“Obviously, we are in unprecedented times so I am willing to say, ‘Look, there’s a little bit of latitude so I’m willing to understand,’ but I don’t like the fact that I’m worried about whether or not people are getting their ballots, whether or not they can vote tomorrow,” he added.
State Sen. Brad Hoylman said the dysfunction would only fuel calls for reforms at the BOE.
“This is yet one more indication that the board needs a serious overhaul,” he said Monday, adding that he’s received dozens of complaints.
“I’m worried about how it’s going to look tomorrow mainly because I’ve had constituents say they submitted an application and never heard back.”
The city’s BOE — a fiefdom controlled by the local political parties under state law — was unable to provide tallies about the number of ballots it had mailed and received back as of Monday, despite repeated requests from The Post.
But figures from the state’s Election Board show that more than 676,000 absentee ballots had been mailed in the five boroughs as of Friday — 204,614 in Brooklyn, 196,122 in Manhattan, 162,747 in Queens, 83,836 in The Bronx and 28,926 in Staten Island.
That means two out of every three votes cast in Tuesday’s primary contests could be cast by mail, assuming the turnout rivals that of the 2016 Democratic presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
A party breakdown wasn’t immediately available, but political observers say the ballots likely skew heavily Democratic, as does the city.
Ballots can be postmarked as late as Tuesday to count — meaning votes will trickle in for days after the primary, making it difficult to project winners on election night.
“If there’s a spread of 10 percentage points between the candidates you can call the race on election night. Under 10, you probably wait for the paper ballots to be counted,” said consultant George Arzt, who is working for Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s (D-Manhattan) re-election bid.