City Councilman Mark Levine tweeted video spanning a long line to vote in Upper Manhattan.
“For a ghost town there sure are a lot of people lining up for early voting today in New York City,” he wrote, an apparent reference to President Trump’s recent unfounded claim that the Big Apple is desolate as a result of a lengthy pandemic shutdown.
After issues with a new voting system arose in March, election officials have promised a smoother in-person process, free of the long lines and hours-long waits that marked primary voting in some places. The state had spent $300 million on the new system, designed to make same-day registration and voting simpler. But officials said it was strained severely by the volume of primary voters.
In some central and northern California counties, about 15 in all, election offices were unable to connect to the system at all. The delays were acute here in Los Angeles, which has 1.4 million registered voters. Spreading the in-person voting out over days, officials have said, will tax the system less.
The apparently large turnout in New York also comes after the state experienced significant problems in the primary and in the mailing of absentee ballots late last month. The elections board struggled to tally a flood of absentee ballots in June primaries, leaving some races undecided for weeks.
The memory of those problems did not appear to dampen enthusiasm.
By the time polls opened at Central Park East High School Saturday morning in the largely Hispanic neighborhood of East Harlem, there were roughly 700 people wrapped around two blocks, with the line folded and doubling back to accommodate the volume of eager early voters.
Several people brought camping chairs and stools to make the wait in line more comfortable. One woman carried a handheld speaker playing Latin music.
Rene Tabra, 64, was first in line, having arrived at 6 a.m., although the bulk of the queue did not start forming until roughly 9 a.m., she said.
Tabra, who had asthma, was a babysitter before the pandemic swept the city but she is out of work due to her doctor’s concern for the risk of taking public transportation. Tabra said she did not even consider mailing in her ballot in this election.
The naturalized citizen from Peru chose to vote in person “because I have the power.”
The local who moved to the neighborhood a year ago from the Bronx said dropping a ballot in the mail just wouldn’t be the same.
“I really want to have the feeling and the adrenaline,” Tabra added.
While most wore masks, the line was so long people were only a foot or two apart in some spots. Around 10 a.m., when the poll site opened, a poll worker made her way through the crowd with instructions to space out six feet.
“I’m not nervous,” said Denise Gardner who traveled from Carnegie Hill to her early voting site. She said that while “social distancing could be better, everyone seems to be respecting the masks.”
Gardner, 54, who was carrying a cane with a colorful pattern and getting around in a boot due to a right foot injury, was near the end of the seemingly endless line but later moved to a considerably shorter separate one reserved for people with disabilities.
The office manager for a wholesaler company said she chose to vote early because she will be tied up working at a poll site on Election Day and because “I don’t trust the Postal Service right now.”
She was driven to vote as soon as possible this election cycle due to the significance of this presidential contest, which will determine whether Trump, possibly the most polarizing commander in chief in history, will remain in office.
“It’s about the character of the office,” Gardner said. “And we need to really drain the swamp and get Trump and his cronies the hell out of there.”
There are fewer early voting sites in the city than there are on Election Day, bringing people from neighboring areas like Gardner to central locations and generating longer lines like the one at the high school on East 106th Street. Thirty blocks south, on East 75th Street, a similar scene was playing out.
Jacobs reported from New York.
