Election Day: Do I Actually Have A Republican City Councilwoman?!

I have been working at a polling place for the last few years. I now check in voters. It is a long day (open up 5, voting 6-9, with two-hour breaks, clean-up), but I appreciate doing my small part for democracy.  

I started as an assistant for the ballot marking device (BMD), which is used to help people with disabilities to mark the ballot. Nearly no one used it when I was there. Once a blind person voted and used it. 

This year, the two assistants were very gung-ho about it. Many people used it, including those who did not have a disability. One value is that it will not let you make a mistake. It would be helpful when we have rank choice voting (local primaries), which confuses people. It is good that one woman in particular pushed its usage. Good for her to be enthusiastic.   

Elections in New York City are usually not too dramatic. There were very few surprises this year. One bit of history is that one of the wrongly convicted "Central Park Five" (Trump wanted them executed at the time, paying for a full-page ad) was elected to the city council.  

The ticket in my district had multiple uncontested candidates (district attorney and judges) as well as two generally [note that qualifier!] funding ballot measures (small school districts and sewers).  The two ballot measures easily passed by 75/25 type numbers.  

The one competitive race was city council, one first termer against another newcomer.  One article from yesterday noted:

[Kristy] Marmorato took a hard stance against a proposal to house former inmates with medical needs in a facility within Jacobi Medical Center. Marmorato said it was the Jacobi proposal that compelled her to mount a run.

I wrote about this local controversy earlier this year. City Councilmember Marjorie Velázquez, the incumbent, was not a supporter of the location. She was not as "hard" about it from what I can tell, but it is not like she was a supporter. Personally, I thought the whole thing was a scare campaign. This is what "compelled" Marmorato to run? Having a halfway house in a hospital complex, five minutes or so away from a police station?

The turnout, even with many days of early voting, was fairly impressive at my polling location. A quick check did not suggest to me that there was a notable influx of Republican voters (my immediate area has a conservative party office that still has a picture of the most conservative candidate in the primary, who lost, outside) though did not do a close analysis. 

The district as a whole is something like 60/40 Democrat, which is not too blue for the Bronx. Still, the last Republican who won the city council was around twenty years ago.  So, it is a tad stunning (maybe if voters expected it more, more Democrats would have turned out) that as of now, it looks like the Republican won. The small group of Republicans in the city council will not increase since in "the most closely watched race," one lost.

[ETA: With a hat tip to Bing "Copilot Chat," which is helpful to get information with links, I found out that each district has around 10x more voters than those that took part in the local city council race. A result of less than ten percent of the electorate is a democracy failure.]

A reflection of turnover and how a relatively small number of voters can matter, reports are those conservative party voters -- KM ran on the Republican and Conservative Party line while MV only ran on the Democratic Party line ... no Working Family candidacy -- was the difference. The current results cite her winning 792 votes on that line.

The split is 5863 vs. 5779 in favor of the Democrats without the conservative voters.  The incumbent would in that match-up win by less than one hundred votes (fewer votes than the write-ins). The counting is not complete but a seven-hundred vote deficit is seriously an uphill battle. 

There was an op-ed arguing that New York should not have off-year elections. There were some very important ones, including protecting reproductive liberty in Ohio, re-election of a Democratic governor in Kentucky, and Democratic control of the Virginia legislature.  

I think there is some value in having an election focused on local issues. Nonetheless, I think having the city council elections in even off-year elections (so overlapping with House and Senate races) does make sense. Small turnouts might not matter most of the time. But, there still are close races. My own district underlines that rather starkly.

I am concerned that more people do not vote. The lack of information many have about judicial races and ballot measures is bothersome. I continue to think judicial races, the candidates mostly chosen behind the scenes with few options to pick from without much information provided to the voters, is a sham choice. And, a few ballot measures are appropriate. My role in sewer funding, however, is unclear to me.  

A final problem that arises is that people still do not know what polling place they are assigned. I would estimate at least twenty people came to the polling place by mistake, though happily a sizable subset only had to walk a few minutes away. An absentee ballot is tedious (you have to fill out a detailed envelope, with small print that one elderly voter simply could not read; the BMD is not set up for it either) and is not encouraged.  

Overall, my city council representative (bothersome, but it remains to be seen how she governs) aside, the Democrats had a good time of it. Ohio not only protected reproductive liberty (more than abortion rights) but supported marijuana legalization. A good salve after the NYT dropped a scary poll that Trump still leads in several key swing states. 

My polling place was down to one voter check-in table. This meant a busy time for a few periods. I am rather sure that one table would not work in a presidential year. But, it wasn't too heavy for us to handle. And, it helped pass the time. Overall, it was a low-drama day internally.

The relatively heavy turnout did lead to a late shortage of stylus pens (with little rubber tips for voters to sign in, and the pens to fill out the ballots). We had enough stickers. And, it was nice to see many couples and people with children (young and teens) come to vote. A couple had dogs, which are technically not allowed. Perhaps, they were special support animals!

ETA: My city councilwoman had radio silence, including not giving a statement to the press and posting a standard tweet about official happenings, after the race was called. She has now conceded. 

Regarding her statement, I too want "fear" (see her opponent's reason for running) to not be our driver. A reference is made to some Bruckner Boulevard housing development matter, which I simply don't care about. Not saying the issue is not important. Just saying it was not on my radar.

(This NYT analysis argues MV's support, a flipflop after she determined it was the right thing to do, on the Bruckner Boulevard measure was the deciding factor. I don't know. I would need to see the vote breakdown. 

The city council vote was unanimous but perhaps the local rep's vote mattered. It would help if I was told if that was the case. The issue involved additional multi-residence housing. This adds context to the winner's comment about locals having power over their communities.)  

Her opponent talked about neighborhoods not having a say, which seems to be at least in part a nod to the halfway house. A small segment of people were upset at that and they had their say. Sigh.