The Independent View: NYC Polling Place for One Voter Who Does Not Vote

For all of the problems with yesterdays New York City Primaries, this deserves a post. I found this on DNAInfo New York By Alan Neuhauser.

A single Midtown voter had a private voting booth and two workers set aside just for him at a primary day polling site on West 58th Street, even though he'd apparently moved out of the area.

"It's frustrating, it's ludicrous, to be here for hours," one of the booth's poll workers said, asking not to be identified because she was instructed not to speak to the press.

For 15 hours, as hundreds of voters lined up to cast ballots at five neighboring machines at the site, and as dozens of other ballot machines across the five boroughs jammed and broke, the single machine sat unused.

Its pair of poll workers, each paid $200 for the day, passed the time chatting, reading, doing crosswords, and exchanging photos of their grandchildren.

"It's very unusual," the site's poll coordinator Ines Reuss said. "I've never heard of this before. I think it's crazy."

The Board of Elections attributed the mix-up to outdated voting rolls.

"He did not inform the board that he'd moved," BOE communications director Valerie Vazquez said.

"We're not checking to see if a person has moved or not. It's not realistic. They have to inform the board if they're no longer at the polling site. We have to make sure we're fully staffed to be able to serve the voters who live in that particular site."

The voter is a registered Democrat with an address at a commercial building at 251 W. 57th St., the official told DNAinfo New York.

That building, now known as 3 Columbus Circle, underwent a gut renovation in 2008 after becoming nearly vacant. At a residential address just a block away that also listed the voter as a resident, a doorman there said he moved away two years ago.

Attempts to reach the man were unsuccessful. Voting files show he did not cast a ballot in 2012.

But the New York City Board of Elections website states:

Controls for Keeping a Registration Current, the Board has developed two programs:

The Board of Elections compares its file of registered voters to a file received from the United States Postal Service (USPS) of people who have submitted a change of address. For voters that match, the Board of Elections sends a confirmation notice to indeed verify if the voter has moved.

Reports received by city/state agencies (Mental Health, Corrections, Health Dept., Motor Vehicles, etc.) as mechanisms for keeping the voter registry current.

I wonder if he filed a change of address?

There were thousands of hand marked ballots that will start to be counted starting on 9/16/2013. It could take awhile and might change the results of races from a run-off or to an outright win. Wonder if they will ba able to finish the count and possible court cases before the run-off on 10/1/2013?