Hizz own medicine!
Blas waits (& waits) to vote
Punctuality-challenged Mayor de Blasio, who has been known to keep people waiting, met his match on Tuesday, standing in line for 3¹/2 hours in Brooklyn to vote, as he again blasted the Board of Elections for the glacial process.
After joining a blocks-long line snaking around the Park Slope Armory at around 1:20 p.m., Hizzoner first had to endure some heckling from passersby.
“Get to work!” yelled one cyclist. “You’re the worst mayor ever!” intoned another critic walking by.
But the waiting was the hardest part, as de Blasio spent the entire time on his feet before finally casting his ballot at 4:50 p.m.
The mayor — wearing a suit and a blue medical mask — passed the time by gamely gabbing with constituents waiting in line and, toward the end of his wait, dished out slices from a pizza to those around him.
At first, de Blasio took the wait in his lanky stride.
“Everyone else is waiting,” said the mayor, early in his wait. “They’re doing it because they care and they want to make their voices heard.”
But after finally voting, he grumbled about the sloppy operation, echoing critiques he and Gov. Cuomo made Monday about hours-long lines for early voting across the city.
“That was a long wait, but it was worth it,” he said. “It shouldn’t take so long. I know they print out the ballots. I get that that takes a little extra time. But it’s really lack of machines, lack of personnel, lack of hours. That’s the fundamental problem. They can overcome that.”
First Lady Chirlane McCray, meanwhile, breezed in and out at the same polling place, simply dropping off an absentee ballot.
De Blasio’s firsthand brush with the waiting game came as state elections officials said the city BOE’s breakdown ran afoul of state rules.
“While the current voter enthusiasm is higher than anticipated, boards with voter wait times exceeding thirty minutes must work to come into compliance with the early voting wait time standard,” wrote Robert Brehm, co-executive director of the state BOE, in a Monday missive to the separate city BOE.
Brehm cited a rule approved last year compelling local elections officials to roll out additional equipment at any early-voting site where waits exceed 30 minutes.
The city BOE did not respond to a request for comment.