Voters in New York City need stamina and determination if they want to be heard.
A polling place in Brooklyn turned away certain early voters whose last names began with N-Z. According to an NBC report, voters couldn’t sign for their votes because the registration book for those voters wasn’t at the polling place. According to voter David Riemenschneider, the voting inspector told them:
“‘The place that has the books doesn’t open until 9, we’ll hopefully get it before 9:30 or 10, so come back later.'”
According to Riemenschneider, he was not offered a provisional ballot, which is used when there is a circumstance preventing the usual procedure. They are counted after election day. This can be an option for voters who can’t hang around waiting for workers to finish assembling materials on the day of the general election.
Riemenschneider’s story was not isolated. In one polling station at a Harlem apartment complex, voter records weren’t present or were incomplete when the polls opened. Broken vote scanners led to very long lines in Brooklyn Heights and Upper East Side. Voters from Harlem, Queens, and the Bronx also reported broken scanners. In Crown Heights, police escorted missing ballots and voter rolls to a poll station. By the time it was set up, most of the voters had left. Almost immediately one of the vote-counting scanners broke.
Wait times varied from 45 minutes to 2 hours. Some witnesses report that potential voters left without casting their ballot because of the lines. Other voters chose not to vote by affidavit because they doubted that their vote would be counted.
Brooklyn’s Democratic primary this season was marred by an administrative error that led to the purge of over 102,000 active voters from its rolls ahead of that election. New York City officials ordered an audit of the city’s election processes at that time, but clearly, serious challenges continue to exist.
A poll worker explains that they are trying to fix the problem, but still have no information about when we can vote pic.twitter.com/XdUBWzbKg0
— Hannah Sheehan (@hsheehannyc) November 8, 2016
Featured Image via Liberal America media library
