Election Day Precinct Report: South Bronx, NY II
Report from the polls in city neighborhoods.
In South Bronx, a broken voting machine and misinformation did not deter residents from coming out to the polls in high numbers this election day. “Normally, we don’t have this amount of turnout,” said Ronald Topping, a Board Of Elections employee at the 52nd or 63rd district polling place, P.S. 277. Topping has worked with the Board of Elections for the past eight years. “We barely had 150 voters in the last primary, on September 9th. Now, [at 2:30 p.m. today] we have double that, and we still have seven and a half hours to go. Participation is a lot more active than it was in the past. Overwhelmingly active, are the adjectives I’d use.”
As funk music played unobtrusively on a boom box near the wall, voters moved speedily through short lines. “It’s pretty quiet,” said Officer Trinidad, a policeman overseeing activity at the polling place. “The line hasn’t been more than 15 people at a time.”
Short lines aside, P.S. 277 has had its share of problems this election day. One of precincts’ three electronic voting machines broke at the beginning of the day, so voters in line for that machine had to cast paper ballots. “If anyone wanted to stuff a ballot box, it would be really easy here,” said an unidentified woman volunteer conducting an exit poll for the University Collaborative Polling Project. Some South Bronx residents were also told by unidentified sources that they could register and vote on Election Day, and so showed up to the polling place only to be turned away. “This same thing happened in 2004,” Topping said. “The Republicans won big in Ohio because of that.”
As voters exited the polls in this historically Democratic Bronx neighborhood, they repeatedly credited one issue with bringing them out to vote: the poor state of the economy. “This is the first election where I feel we need to come out and vote,” an unidentified voter said. “I have never felt it like this year. We need a change, so let’s see what happens.”