by Ian Chant, Paul DeBenedetto, Sarah Ewald and Jermaine Taylor
“A royal screw-up.”
That’s how Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg described the debacle that surrounded primary voting in September.
Polling places opened hours late. New ballot scanners malfunctioned. There was even a shortage of supplies as basic as manila folders. It seemed like everything that could go wrong did in September’s primaries. The result was a perfect storm of issues that cost George Gonzalez his post as head of New York City’s Board of Elections days before Election Day.
But come Election Day morning, the coast seemed to be clear, with new machines humming along smoothly and support staff on hand to provide assistance to voters.
Laura Riley, polling coordinator for the James A. Bland Community Center in Flushing, Queens, said she had not encountered any problems with the new machines. If anything, she said, they represent an improvement over the past system.
“The old ones used to jam up on us,” said Riley, who has worked several prior elections. “You couldn’t pull the lever, and they were broken. We were constantly calling people. It didn’t make sense. I’ve just found that we don’t have to do that with these.”
Voters also seemed at ease with the new system, even in the face of its rocky start. “This one is better than it used to be,” said Milagros Martinez, a retiree from Brooklyn. “Now, you can do it and feel better about what you’re doing.”
In Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, Jose Carrillo, 56, said he felt the machiness were easier to use than the old lever-based ones. “The only thing you have to do is fill it out the oval, and pass it through the machine,” said Carrillo. “Very simple.”
Following the disastrous primary situation, poll site monitor Oliver Tan, 32, was delighted to get the more or less stress-free Election Day he had been hoping for. He had witnessed the September primary and attributed the troubles to an electoral case of opening night jitters.
“It’s worlds different,” Tan said on Tuesday morning. “But, you know, on primary day, they were trying out a new system with new machines and everything else. This time around, people are more familiar with things and that goes for the voters and the workers.”
Voters generally agreed that poll monitors on Tuesday were more prepared for the election than they had been for the primaries. “Some people who were there working, they didn’t get good training at the time,” said Kervin Campbell, 46. “But today, it’s no problem.”
Juanita Barr, a seasoned coordinator in her 12th year working on Election Day, complements the in-depth training poll workers receive with her own management techniques. She prepares workers by moving them from station to station throughout the course of the day.
“No one person will stay on one job,” Barr said. “That way they get to understand how it works.” By getting all of her team up to speed on the entire process, Barr hoped to ensure that any volunteer can help out in any situation.
Despite the preparations, the new system also had its share of complaints. Some voters waxed nostalgic for the lever system they’d grown to know and love. More importantly, though, some older voters complained that it was difficult to read the small print on the ballot.
“The process is better, but I was having problems seeing the print,” said City-As-School staff member Marcia Thomas, 50, in Brooklyn. “How are the elderly going to see?”
Even Mayor Bloomberg told reporters he had trouble making out the tiny letters.
“There’s absolutely no reason it should be so small,” said voter Peter Wortsman, 58, of the ballot’s small print. “Who are these things geared toward? I don’t get it.”
The fill-in ballot, which some voters compared to filling out an answer sheet for a standardized test, also presented a different sort of trouble for other seniors. John Ford, 70, said the new method was problematic for him because of his unsteady hands, a symptom of his chronic arthritis.
At one polling place in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood, even volunteers weren’t quite up to snuff for one voter.
“You get in there, and no one’s quite sure where to stand,” musician Andy Cohen said. “You ask where to hand it in and they’re like, ‘I don’t know.’”
Although efforts were made to train the electorate on the new system, one campaign volunteer, Harini Bangera, was concerned that efforts to educate older voters about the changes had been inadequate.
“Most of the elderly people, they’re very confused,” Bangera said. “My friend is 92 years old, and she was telling me, ‘I don’t know, I don’t understand this machine.’”
Arguments for and against the new voting process are likely to continue, part and parcel of the growing pains so often associated with bureaucratic changes.
“It probably took a minute longer than last time. And in New York, a minute is a lot,” said Fredda Kaufman, 69, who said she mourned the passing of the traditional voting booth that allowed voters to bring their children inside with them and personally involve them in the election process.
For some the downside of the new machines wasn’t attributed to nostalgia at all, but simply to aesthetics.
“It’s disconcerting,” said Jennifer Grossman, who voted in Cobble Hill, “The scanning machines look like garbage cans.”
—
