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Long Lines Form at Polling Places as Displaced Residents Find Ways to Vote
Driven From Home by Storm, But Going Back Briefly to Vote
(about 2 hours later)
People whose lives were upended by Hurricane Sandy joined other voters on Tuesday to cast ballots after elected officials in New York and New Jersey rushed to relocate scores of polling places that had become unusable because of power failures, flooding or evacuations.
Just after daybreak, under a pink-hued sky, the first voters began to pick their way through the sand and muck that had been the streets of Bay Head, N.J. Sidestepping the occasional dead fish with its one-eyed stare, they steadily found their way to the firehouse, where a huge generator powered one of the few sources of heat in the tiny seaside borough.
With neighborhoods still inundated by debris, silt and water, many people had to go to great lengths to cast a ballot in places that are little recovered from what officials describe as the worst storm damage to hit the New York City region, and where the prospect of more violent wind and torrential rain is looming this week.
From dawn till past nightfall on Tuesday, displaced residents from dozens of storm-smashed communities up and down the New York and New Jersey coastlines streamed home, gathering with their neighbors for the first time since Hurricane Sandy, with one simple goal in mind.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that a powerful northeaster expected to hit the area late on Wednesday could bring a surge in the water level of 2 to 4.5 feet at high tides — far less than the hurricane brought ashore, but enough to reflood low-lying areas.
“I wasn’t going to let no hurricane stop me from voting,” said Amos Eberhard, 61, of Queens, who journeyed 90 minutes by bus to the Rockaways from Brooklyn to cast his ballot.
Mr. Bloomberg said that the city would not require an evacuation of Zone A — its low-lying waterfront areas — but that police cars with loudspeakers would travel through several shorefront neighborhoods to alert residents. He implored residents to use shelters. The storm is expected to carry winds of 25 to 35 miles per hour to the city, with gusts up to 55 m.p.h. late Wednesday afternoon.
For many people whose hometowns have been evacuated, whose houses were damaged by flooding or fire, or whose regular polling places were rendered unusable by a lack of electrical power, this was an Election Day unlike any in memory.
With one eye on the approaching storm, untold thousands of residents in the region devoted their energy, patience and, in some cases, ingenuity to voting.
On Staten Island, voters from flooded-out neighborhoods trudged past National Guard trucks on a sports field and a line of drivers desperate to buy fuel by the local high school, where some said through tears that they had lost everything but their determination.
Just after daybreak in Bay Head, N.J., Shelly Coleman and her husband, Terrance, bundled up in winter jackets, left their sodden, water-damaged home and headed to the Bay Head firehouse, where a makeshift polling place had sprouted — literally overnight.
In Long Beach, the Long Island city that suffered some of the storm’s worst damage, Jose Barcia, a waiter who immigrated from Franco’s Spain — and withstood five feet of water on his first floor last week — said he was grateful just to be able to cast a ballot.
The couple walked through the sand-blown and mucky streets, sidestepping the occasional dead fish that lay on its side, a lifeless eye staring up at them. The firehouse, powered by an industrial-size generator that rumbled like the engine of a jet airliner, was one of the few places with heat in the tiny seaside borough, just below Point Pleasant Beach.
“I love America,” Mr. Barcia said, after voting in a darkened elementary school, where hundreds of people, some walking with canes, pushing strollers or clutching pets, clamored to vote.
“Guess what? We got water back on Friday. It was so exciting,” Ms. Coleman said, approaching the borough’s clerk.
And on the barrier islands of New Jersey, where emergency workers from around the nation are removing debris and downed power lines and plowing piles of sand to make the streets passable, Ocean County officials drove a bus across Barnegat Bay to deliver provisional ballots to National Guard troops, Red Cross volunteers and law enforcement officers.
Another voter, Leslie Wentz, 58, said she had no heat and had not showered in days. The election, she said, was not her top priority, but she voted anyway.
Aboard the bus, poll workers rolled into Ortley Beach to see a moonscape of vanished homes or their skeletal remains. In a supermarket parking lot, they found an Army mess tent, a Navy heater, and police officers including Summer Cunliffe, 29, of Lakewood, serving up chili, soup and corn bread to relief workers.
“I think everybody is just in survival mode,” she said. “Everybody is trying to survive. The town is doing a great job. The church is doing a great job, but I feel like the federal government is not coming in and doing anything. I can’t get anybody to help me.”
Ms. Cunliffe said she was grateful for the opportunity to vote, because her attention had been focused on other matters.
Though the region hit by Hurricane Sandy is not expected to be in play in the presidential election, the combination of the storm and heavy turnout yielded long lines, confusion, frustration and anger.
“The biggest thing was getting out here and giving the hard-working men and women the food to eat to keep them going,” she said.
At several polling sites in New York City, the vote scanning machines being used for the first time in a presidential election malfunctioned, forcing workers to resort to paper ballots and slowing the process even more.
Throughout New York, some displaced residents seeking to use provisional ballots to vote away from home reported problems from elections officials who declined to accept them. And in New Jersey, so many displaced residents sought to vote by e-mail or fax that the state extended by three days the deadline for returning provisional ballots, to 8 p.m. on Friday.
Maura Green was trying to vote in the East Village but her ballot was rejected by the scanning machine, and she had a hard time getting help from poll workers some of whom were blaming one another for the problems.
But in the hardest-hit locales, municipal officials and ordinary citizens insisted not just on their right to vote, but to do so as close to home as possible.
“It seemed the poll workers were not very organized or didn’t prepare,” Ms. Green said. “It was very chaotic. They didn’t seem to have a plan.”
In Bay Head, where nearly all 800 voters had been evacuated for the storm, Ocean County officials had initially refused to allow residents back in, even for Election Day. But Mayor William Curtis mounted a fierce resistance, and on Tuesday, the county relented.
Mr. Bloomberg said in a briefing that he was aware of the problems. He said machines were delivered late to some sites, others opened late, there were long, confusing lines and some polling sites did not have sufficient fuel to power generators.
“They didn’t want to deliver voting booths down here,” Mr. Curtis said. “They wanted us to go across the bridge because they didn’t think there was going to be enough people here to vote. I just said, ‘No, no, no.’ ”
“Be patient; it is worth the wait to be part of the process,” the mayor said. But he also criticized some of what was happening, like the jamming of ballot scanners and the collation of paper ballots for results.
He added: “This is us. This is our home.”
“It is just a nightmare and it is really hard to understand in this day and age how you could do that,” he said.
So Bay Head’s refugees filled the firehouse Tuesday, exchanging survival stories and recovery updates: Who has water? Hot water? Heat? Propane?
Mr. Bloomberg and other officials have emphasized the efforts the city has exerted to recover after the storm and provide tens of thousands of New Yorkers with food aid and emergency shelter, while also trying to coordinate the logistics of holding a presidential election so even voters in the worst-hit areas, like Staten Island and the Rockaways, can take part in it.
“I’m going to vote in here all day long — it’s nice and warm,” declared Brent Wentz, 72, as he arrived early Tuesday.
As of Tuesday, about 350,000 homes are still dark, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said. Although power has been restored to more than 1.7 million homes in New York since the storm hit, Mr. Cuomo affirmed his annoyance with Consolidated Edison and the Long Island Power Authority for the pace of restorations, a message that resonated among some voters as they made the trek to the ballot box.
“It’s the little things,” added Patricia Applegate, 60, the municipal clerk. “You don’t realize these little things that you take for granted until they are gone.”
Randy Harter, 66, an artist and designer, voted in Westchester County, where his frustration at what he described as an incompetent government response to the storm had transformed into frustration with his voting experience.
To the north, Sea Bright, N.J., in Monmouth County, was so ravaged that officials were unable to set up a single polling place there. Voters were redirected to Fair Haven, a few miles to the west, where Caitlin Dinsmore, 33, made the trip from where she has been staying even farther inland to cast her ballot.
When Mr. Harter asked an election worker for help to fill out a paper ballot he had never seen before, he was told: “Just fill it out.” When his ballot was inserted, the machine jammed. A second machine also jammed. He eventually was given an envelope in which to place a ballot that would be hand-counted. The entire voting experience took 45 minutes, Mr. Harter said.
“I couldn’t wait to get out,” said Ms. Dinsmore, still using crutches because of a sprained ankle she suffered during the storm. “I mean, life goes on, right?”
On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, hundreds of voters waited on the sidewalk and packed into a gym at Public School 163. Voters had to wait in different lines to determine their election district, to get a ballot, to fill out the ballot and to get the ballot scanned. The process took an hour. There was no help for the disabled, and people grew increasingly upset.
On the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, poll workers faced a different form of adversity. They arrived at Public School 180 early Tuesday to welcome displaced voters at a makeshift polling station set up in tents on the school playground. But they discovered that their portable toilets and a large generator had been stolen overnight. A small generator was left behind, but its gasoline had been siphoned off by the thieves.
Officials tried to make the process work smoothly especially for those living in areas hard hit by the hurricane.
The workers found fuel and opened the site. Voters flooded into the dimly lighted, low-slung tents overlooking Jamaica Bay, and brought with them surprisingly positive attitudes.
New Jersey and New York both said they would allow voters uprooted by Hurricane Sandy to cast provisional ballots anywhere in their states.
Nicole McCormick, 35, a medical administrator who rode out the storm in an upper-floor apartment, then moved in with a friend in Jamaica, Queens, stood in the inch-deep dried silt on the playground blacktop — residue from seawater that had cascaded head-high — and described her pride at voting.
But the provisional ballots would, in many cases, allow residents to vote only in statewide contests and in the presidential election, in which President Obama is heavily favored in both states. The ballots could not be used in local and Congressional races, which in some areas are far more competitive.
Of the storm, the cleanup and the election, Ms. McCormick said: “It’s all connected. We feel like we’ve lost so much, so we’re making an effort to vote — because we don’t want to lose our voice, too.”
New Jersey went further, saying it will let displaced voters vote by fax or e-mail. Ballot-integrity advocates warned that this raised risks of fraud by hackers, or mischief by partisan local officials because electronic ballots lack secrecy and are not safeguarded by witnesses.
A few steps away, Thomas J. Hannan, a Belle Harbor resident whose house had been flooded, scoffed at complaints about Election Day logistics.
Across the storm-damaged region on Monday, some residents voted early, saying it felt like an important step back toward normalcy.
“Someone said to me that the local polling sites were poorly planned,” he said. “And I said, ‘So was this hurricane.’ ”
On Tuesday, the line to vote at an East Village polling station extended half a block down First Avenue and rapidly built westward on Ninth Street. By 8:40 a.m., at least 175 people were patiently reading papers, manipulating smartphones and drinking coffee, advancing not even a foot a minute.
David
M Halbfinger and Corey Kilgannon reported from New York, and Wendy Ruderman from Ocean County, N.J. Ruth Bashinsky contributed reporting from Long Beach, N.Y.; David W. Chen from Monmouth County, N.J.; and Randy Leonard from New York.
Alex Schroder, 23, said she hoped it would be no longer than an hour, because she had to get to her job as a preschool teacher.
“I am really excited to vote,” she said, “so I don’t mind waiting.” She said that she really wanted Mr. Obama to win, and that the issues in this election — women’s roles, economics, gay rights, the environment — were deeply important to her.
In Forest Hills, Queens, Ann Dichter, 63, said she had never seen as busy a polling place in her 10-plus years there as she did Tuesday. Asked what was on her mind this day, she began a tirade against one of the presidential candidates, then stopped and summed up her mind-set thusly: “Women’s rights.”
In New York, there are very tight Congressional or legislative races in Queens, on Staten Island, on Long Island and in Westchester County, all of which were hit hard by the storm. Candidates in those races went to great lengths to ensure that their supporters could surmount the extraordinary obstacles to voting this year.
On Staten Island, the Congressional campaign of Mark Murphy, a Democrat running against Representative Michael G. Grimm, a Republican, sent volunteers to gasoline lines across the borough with iPhones to help idling voters figure out where they should go on Tuesday. Mr. Grimm’s campaign said it was recruiting volunteers with full gas tanks to transport to the polls voters whose cars were destroyed or had no gas.
Just before the election, local and state officials were plainly having trouble conveying information about Election Day obstacles and remedies. New Jersey officials could not say how many polling places had been moved — though they said fewer than 100 still needed “some resolution.” Polling places require power to run their electronic machines. As of Monday night, more than 100 polling places in New York State had been changed, including about 60 in the city. Most were in Brooklyn and Queens; in two cases, in the Rockaways and the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx, the city was setting up polling places in tents powered by generators and outfitted with portable heaters.
The city’s Board of Elections also arranged for shuttle buses that would run every 15 minutes to ferry voters to and from polling places in three areas hit particularly hard by the storm: the Rockaways, Coney Island and Staten Island.
Juan Carlos Polanco, a commissioner on the Board of Elections, said it had done everything in its power to publicize the new locations of polling places.
But the board has a troubled track record, even when elections are not preceded by hurricanes. In 2010, computer malfunctions and delayed openings of polling places led Mr. Bloomberg to pronounce the board’s handling of the election a “royal screw-up.” In June, the five-way Democratic primary for Representative Charles B. Rangel’s seat took weeks to be counted.
Local elected officials were not optimistic about Tuesday. Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer, a Manhattan Democrat, said she had heard from utility workers scheduled to work 12-hour shifts on Election Day who had no idea how they were supposed to vote. And Councilman Jumaane D. Williams, a Brooklyn Democrat, questioned why thousands of voters taking refuge at evacuation shelters would not be able to cast provisional ballots at their shelters.
In Ocean County, officials took extra steps to allow displaced residents to vote. They sent a mobile voting bus to shelters there and in adjacent Burlington County. They also sought to address the problem of provisional ballots by printing 50,000 generic ballots and allowing voters to fill in the names of their local candidates.
For candidates in tight races, the effort to get voters to the polls was both frantic and delicate.
On Long Island, volunteers for Randy Altschuler, the Republican challenging Representative Timothy H. Bishop, a Democrat, called voters to make sure they knew that the election was still taking place and to offer rides. But every conversation began with a question about whether the voters needed help.
Reporting was contributed by Joseph Berger, Christine Hauser, Andrea Kannapell and Michael Paulson.
