Rockaway, Queens. (Photo: Getty)

Earlier this afternoon, "a group of irate Orthodox community leaders" held a conference call to protest poll site changes implemented in the Far Rockaway neighborhood of Queens. In the call, local Jewish leaders alleged their new voting location was designed to dampen turnout in their ideologically conservative community as it struggles to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy's devastation.

"We're a group of people who really, really suffered tremendously," Richard Altabe, a board member of the Far Rockaway Jewish Alliance, said. "Or voting rights are about to be taken away from us. It's going to be difficult enough to get people to vote....Our ability to speak and have our voices heard is going to be squashed by circumstances. I'm really, really horrified."

The new poll site in Far Rockaway, the leaders said, was a mile away from their current one. Eli Shapiro, of the Far Rockaway Jewish Alliance, claimed they presented a closer, alternative site to the Board of Elections but were shut down

"We've been told that the Democratic commissioner won't sign off on the change of location," Mr. Shapiro said, but he was unable to elaborate further on the specifics.

Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Altabe both represent organizations that formally endorsed GOP Councilman Eric Ulrich's campaign against Democratic Senator Joe Addabbo, which is among the most highly-watched in the entire state. Mr. Ulrich's campaign organized the conference call.

"Absolutely. Why else did they do that? Why else would they disenfranchise a community?" Mr. Altabe said when asked if it was a conspiracy to boost Mr. Addabbo's reelection bid. "I would not like to believe that Joe Addabbo himself would want such a thing. Even though we supported one candidate over the other, we don't believe Joe Addabbo to be an evil person."

Others have also sounded the alarm over the BOE's Election Day plans tomorrow, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg. As of this writing, the Board took down their list of poll site changes online, and the hotline number for more information, 1-866-VOTE-NYC, results in a dial tone. An alternative number provided by good goverment groups, 1-866-OUR-VOTE, is available, however.

BOE Commissioner J.C. Polanco said his agency is working "around the clock" to ensure all New Yorkers can vote tomorrow.

Mayor Bloomberg touring the damage in Queens. (Photo: Getty)

During a press conference updating New Yorkers on the latest developments in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Mayor Michael Bloomberg also addressed arrangements made for Election Day this Tuesday. As at least 60 polling sites are without electricity or are otherwise compromised by storm damage, a number of last-minute decisions have been implemented by the Board of Elections. Needless to say, Mr. Bloomberg did not sound confident.

"The Board of Elections tells us that about 143,000 voters in all five boroughs will be assigned to poll sites different from their usual site," he explained. “Over the next day, it's going to be critical that the Board of Elections communicates this new information to their poll workers. Unfortunately, as you know, the Board has had a history of not opening all poll sites on time."

(Find out if your polling site has been moved here.)

Mr. Bloomberg made sure to note the city's Board of Elections is managed by the political parties, not his administration.

"As you know, the mayor's office does not run the Board of Elections, I've always believed the Board of Elections should be overhauled to increase its accountability and efficiency," he said. "The fact that the board has been unable to agree on selecting a new executive director for two years, shows just how dysfunctional it is. The difficulties that they've had preparing for Tuesday, I think further underscores that."

This was not the first time he's been critical; Mr. Bloomberg called the Board among “the most easily corruptible” in the world in the wake of the primary elections earlier this year.

Later in the press briefing, a reporter asked the mayor how confident he was in the agency's ability to pull off the election in less than 48 hours.

"I have absolutely no idea," he answered.

(Photo: Getty)

President Barack Obama, who had been campaigning in Florida as Hurricane Sandy began to batter states in the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, has canceled further events in the Sunshine State in order to return to Washington, according to a dispatch sent out by the White House this morning.

"Due to deteriorating weather conditions in the Washington, DC area, the President will not attend today's campaign event in Orlando, Florida," Jay Carney, Mr. Obama's press secretary, announced. "The President will return to the White House to monitor the preparations for and early response to Hurricane Sandy."

Additionally, in a subsequent press release, Mr. Carney announced Mr. Obama's Tuesday plans have also been scuttled, stating, "The President will no longer travel to Green Bay, WI tomorrow for a campaign event, so that he can stay in Washington, DC on Tuesday and closely monitor the impact of and response to Hurricane Sandy."

The president's Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, also had to adjust his schedule to avoid campaigning in states where emergency resources are needed for storm response efforts. Mr. Obama's position, however, may be much more politically beneficial to him as he manages a crisis just seven days before voters head to the polls.

“If there is a serious disaster in the next few days anywhere on the Eastern seaboard, no one talks about Romney then," the Brookings Institution's John Hudak explained to the Fiscal Times. "Romney is no part of any story, except, of course, I’m sure he’ll hold a press conference to speak on the tragedy, as anyone would do as the challenger. But all eyes are on the president. It’s something money can’t buy.”

Update (10:19 a.m.): Mr. Obama's Tuesday cancellation was added.

Officials said the almost-illegible text on the very bottom of the poster was what many voters were presented with last Thursday.

On the steps of City Hall earlier this afternoon, council members and good-government advocates gathered to "sound the alarm" over problems that occurred during the September 13 primary elections, and urged both the Board of Elections and legislative bodies to act promptly to rectify the situation before November's presidential election, when far more people are set to vote.

Councilman Jumaane Williams, who tweeted up a storm of frustration last Election Day and who led today's event, urged everyone to pay particular attention to the tiny font size used on the ballots, which he said was significantly smaller than in past elections and created substantial problems for seniors unable to read the letters. To prove his point, he pointed to a poster that illustrated the smallness of the font. His colleague, Councilman Vinnie Gentile, channeled Jimmy McMillan, exclaiming, “The font is too damn small!"

A host of other problems were cited as well, including poll workers giving inaccurate information and improperly sending others to the wrong polling location, which allegedly led to a number of voters to give up in frustration.

Also on hand at today's press conference was Board of Elections Commissioner J.C. Polanco, a Bronx Republican who's become a bit of an antagonist to the board's critics since elected officials blasted the city's vote-counting operations in the wake of the June 26 congressional primaries.

"I couldn't stay quiet," Mr. Polanco told Politicker about his new media-friendly role. "There was misinformation being given."

Of today's event, he said, "There were some things at the press conference today that were unfortunately misguided." Mr. Polanco argued the Legislature is responsible for all of the election woes described and said the BOE was more than happy to work with lawmakers to fix the problems.

Of course, the State Legislature in Albany is not known for fixing election problems. Notably, State Senate refused to move the state's primaries to the same date as the federal election after losing a lawsuit, instead choosing to hold two separate primaries despite the expense and confusion involved.

We asked Common Cause's Susan Lerner why she is optimistic anything can be accomplished when it's more than possible some powerful political forces prefer lower voter turnout.

"What's the alternative? That we say nothing can change?" she rhetorically asked. "This is actually something easy for them to change."

My colleague David Freedlander has already weighed in with some thoughts, which you are more than encouraged to do as well by emailing him at dfreedlander [@] observer.com.

Here's some of what I'm watching:

Upsetting Conventional Wisdom

The collective thinking of most observers has incumbents Charlie Rangel and Nydia Velázquez favored to beat back their challengers with Hakeem Jeffries, Sean Patrick Maloney and Grace Meng as the frontrunners to win their primaries. But surely Election Day won't reflect conventional wisdom entirely, right? Where will the surprises come from?

At a glance, Rich Becker, with strong local support and a snippy campaign operation, would seem to have a solid shot at beating Mr. Maloney for the right to challenge GOP Rep. Nan Hayworth for her Hudson Valley-based district. Mr. Maloney has more campaign cash and influential labor support, however, and it's difficult to see where the final vote tally will end up with the two candidates' non-parallel strengths.

And while Mr. Rangel's campaign has been revving up into full gear lately, he's being pressed on multiple fronts and State Senator Adriano Espaillat has a path to topple him with a plurality of the vote. Mr. Espaillat's base is in the Dominican community, and Mr. Rangel's three other African-American challengers, notably the surprisingly strong campaign of Clyde Williams, are more likely to be taking votes away from the incumbent than Mr. Espaillat. Two things to watch for here are Mr. Williams' share of the vote and how well Mr. Rangel performs in the Bronx -- the one part of the reconfigured district he has never represented in in his lengthy tenure.

Barron vs. Jeffries

There's no way to slice this race and have it not be fascinating. With the larger-than-life personality of Councilman Charles Barron and rising star Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries going toe-to-toe, political observers have already grabbed their popcorn and staring directly at New York's 8th Congressional District, previously held by veteran Rep. Ed Towns.

The seat's boundaries were changed in redistricting, taking the majority African American district and sending it down through Russian Jewish neighborhoods like Brighton Beach as well as white areas like Howard Beach in Queens. With Mr. Jeffries campaigning hard for these votes (he's been running a steady stream of ads on post-Shabbos Jewish radio, activists in these neighborhoods have rallying hard against Mr. Barron and there is a Sephardic anti-Barron PAC in the mix), it will be particularly interesting to see how big of a margin he racks up in these precincts and what turnout looks like, as socially conservative constituencies may not necessarily be excited for the idea of a liberal congressman named Hakeem either.

Even though Mr. Jeffries is the favorite candidate in the race, Democrats are concerned about some of Mr. Barron's more provocative positions and statements and there are more than a few operatives that won't be able to rest easy until they see the Associated Press declaring his rival the winner.

Anyway, what will you be looking for tomorrow when the results come trickling in? Is there a certain candidate that needs to clear a threshold in order to remain legitimate? A challenger that will show herself to be a rising star if she does well? Will endorsements matter? Incumbency? The economy?

Let us know what you will be looking for by shooting an email at dfreedlander [@] observer.com. If you promise to refrain from excessive spin, anonymous and semi-anonymous submissions are welcome.

Here are some of our thoughts:

Vito Lopez’s Big Day
A lot of the framing of this election season has been about the “Brooklyn Spring”—insurgents rising up against the party establishment. If only it were so simple. Instead Vito Lopez, head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party is backing one longshot and one favorite. The longshot is Erik Dilan, who is going up against local icon Nydia Velazquez. The favorite is Hakeem Jeffries, who is going up against firebrand Charles Barron. But even here the lines are so neat. Mr. Jeffries is also a favorite of Brooklyn’s Democratic reformers who want to boot Mr. Lopez out, as well as Gov. Andrew Cuomo and most of the city’s elected class. So even though Mr. Lopez counts himself a Jeffries fan, a win here won’t be too big of a mark in his favor—although he did make things a lot easier for Mr. Jeffries by chasing incumbent Ed Towns out of the race. A win by Mr. Dilan, however, would represent an incredible coup for the Brooklyn boss and would amount to a stunning comeback for someone who even only a few years ago looked like he was done for due to a series of city and federal investigations into his non-profit.

Most wise political heads I have spoken with think Ms. Velazquez is the favorite headed into tomorrow, but pay attention to the margin of victory. She has skated through Election Day after Election Day for decades now, and if Mr. Dilan gets under 10 points, expect the congresswoman to see regular challenges from now on, possibly again from Mr. Dilan in 2014.

Will Ethnicity Trump All?
The redrawing of the lines meant that Gary Ackerman’s old seat in Queens is now a plurality Asian, and that Charlie Rangel’s Harlem seat is now a majority Latino. Ethnicity is just about thicker than anything in New York politics, and it will be interesting to see if Mr. Rangel’s long record and incumbency beats out the desire of Hispanics to elect one of their own, Adriano Espaillat, to Congress (if he wins, Mr. Espaillat would be the first Dominican in Congress.) Meanwhile, out in Queens, Grace Meng is running to become the first Asian from New York in Congress. Her opponent, Rory Lancman, has a lot of support from some of the politically powerful labor unions affiliated with the Working Families Party. Will pathbreaking candidates energize enough voters to beat out sophisticated ground operations?

And speaking of the WFP:
Over the last several years, the Working Families Party has found itself on opposite sides with the Queens County Democratic Party. And in a sign of the shift in political power from county machines to labor machines, the WFP won more often then they lost. The Meng/Lancman race though is a pretty big stage for the WFP, and it will be interesting to see if they can topple the county party—which backs Meng—in order to get one of their own in Congress.

Turnout, Especially In the US Senate Primary:
With the odd June primary, turnout is expected to be stunningly and embarrassingly low. How low remains anyone’s guess, and is actually the biggest wild card headed into tomorrow. If not enough people show up to vote, even the wildest of wild cards has a shot, and easy favorites could be in for a humbling election night.

For those and other reasons, pay attention to turnout in the GOP US Senate primary between Bob Turner, Wendy Long and George Maragos. That race has gotten an awfully little bit of attention, and if turnout is as low as it appears to be, then Kirsten Gillibrand should be feeling pretty good over the next several months.

Carl Paladino (Photo: NY1)

For Republican voters in New York, it's Election Day today and you have the choice of voting for Mitt Romney for president, or for one of the three other names on the ballot, two of whom are still technically vying for the nomination.

And it's sentences like the above that has fueled former gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino's latest beef.

"You guys in the press have been beating down any opposition to Romney for months. You started four or five months ago telling us, 'Romney's going to win. Romney's going to win,' and trying to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy," he declared on Inside City Hall last night. "That's wrong!"

Mr. Paladino proceeded to suggest the press is in the tank for Mr. Romney because he's paying them off with gobs of money spent on advertising.

"Romney has spent an awful lot of money. Where did the money come from? Who's buying this election?" he asked. "You never bring that up, but he's fed a lot of money to the press and to the TV stations for rotten negative advertising. That's how he has gotten where he is."

When the media keeps reiterating Mr. Romney's advantages, Mr. Paladino said, the public blindly starts supporting him.

"Yes, they like to be on the side of the winner," he said. "When the press is telling them that Romney is the winner, they say, 'Well I guess I'm for Romney.' That's an easy formula to figure out."

Mr. Paladino's preferred candidate in the race? Newt Gingrich. Asked for a prediction, Mr. Paladino said, "I think you're going to see a resurgence that will start right here in New York State. I think Romney's going to be very surprised by the results tomorrow."

The latest Siena poll, taken before Rick Santorum dropped out, had Mr. Gingrich at 6% and Mr. Romney dominating the field. Mr. Gingrich, who can't even really be called a long shot at this point, has been focusing on Delaware, which also votes today.

It is now the second week of February and due to some colossal inertia in Albany, if you were this citizen who dreamed of service in the Legislature, you would likely not know a) which district you live in b) whether or not that district has a sitting lawmaker and c) when, precisely, election day is.

In other words, New York is about to embark on an election season as chaotic and unpredictable as any in memory.

“Excuse me! It’s the twilight zone!” screamed Doug Muzzio, a professor of public policy at Baruch College, when asked to give his assessment of the state of play. “The craven self-interest and disregard for even the rough-and-tumble of democracy by these people—they don’t get it at all. They want the game fixed and they are the fixers!”

He paused for a moment to catch his breath, or to keep his aorta from exploding into the telephone.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE DOING!”

The immediate reason for this political clusterfail is that—through a combination of sloth, happenstance and perhaps Machiavellian political calculation—two unrelated events traveling down parallel tracks went profoundly off the rails.

The first is that last year the Department of Defense denied the State of New York a waiver to hold its primaries in September. The waiver had been granted ever since Congress passed a law three years ago mandating an earlier election day to help military personnel stationed overseas with voting.

The Department of Justice sued to force the state to move up the September primary, and after several months of delays, a federal judge ruled two weeks ago that the primary for congressional seats was to be held June 26.

As soon as that news broke, those considering a run for Congress—and those consultants and staffers helping them—broke into a sprint, as election day went from a comparatively leisurely eight and a half months away to now only five months off. (Privately, some politicos still doubt that this will really be the election day, perhaps expecting the power brokers in Albany to somehow defy a federal order or being so inured to chaos that they refuse to believe the state could actually have settled on a date when the elections are supposed to be held.)

But even if candidates for Congress at least know that they will face voters on June 26, this news does nothing for those in the State Assembly or State Senate and those who hope to join that club. The judge’s order applies only to federal races, so the state primary date remains unsettled. Republicans in the State Senate have argued that the June primary is too close to the end of the legislation session (which is slated to be completed the week before) and could thus lead to unnecessary politicking (ahem) during what are supposed to be business hours. They have pushed for having state races decided on the old election day in September, or, possibly, pushing the primary to August—when, Democrats point out, most New Yorkers are away, or at least tuning out politics.

If the Republicans prevail, or if they are unable to come to an agreement with the Democrats (which will, in essence, mean Republicans prevail), then New Yorkers will be asked to go to the polls four times in the course of eight months: once for the presidential primary in April, again for the congressional primaries in August or June, a third time for state legislative primaries in August or September, and then a fourth time for the general election in November.

Presumably by then ballots will have been printed with actual candidate names on them. Currently, voters around the state don’t have any idea who is vying to be their representative. For months, lawmakers in Albany have been holding hearings as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process to redraw legislative and congressional maps. Drafts of those maps were expected by last October, with final versions in hand by the first of the year at the latest. Instead, winter is turning into spring, and no candidate knows precisely which neighborhoods to go door-knocking in. A draft of the new maps for the State Senate created three districts out of whole cloth and pushed seven Democratic incumbents into four districts.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has threatened to veto it, sending the matter to the courts and creating more uncertainty and delay.

And if you are that citizen called to a career in public service, what does your pitch to voters sound like?

“Hi, I’m John Q. Public. Please come out and vote for me in June. Or in September. Unless you are drawn out of the district. The incumbent has been failing our community. Unless he is drawn out of the district. In which case, never mind.”

“The redistricting process has been shockingly late—I say shockingly late,” said Vince Morgan, a community banker who has been laying the ground work for a run against Charlie Rangel—in a Harlem district that could move up to the Bronx and Westchester, or could stay where it is and gobble up Hispanic voting blocs in Manhattan. As a hedge, he said he has begun making his case to voters in areas far removed from his home in the central part of the old district. “It’s not frustration—it’s anxiety. We are all very anxious waiting for the lines to come out. I have a better chance of telling you what the winning Pick Four numbers are than giving you a date when this will all be settled” (though, Mr. Morgan points out, any confusion would effect his bid minimally, since “God blessed me with charisma”).

If Mr. Morgan and the residents of Harlem are confused, consider for a moment their neighbors to the north in the Hudson Valley region. The congressional district there has been one of the quintessential swing districts in the county, voting Democrat during Democratic waves (as in 2006) and Republican during Republican ones. The seat is currently held by Republican Nan Hayworth. If the towns of Poughkeepsie and Newburg are drawn into the district—they are now represented by Maurice Hinchey, who lives in Ithaca and who is retiring before the end of the year—it will become what is known as a “Plus Five” Democratic district—one sure to elect a Dem. If those two towns are grabbed by another district, then it becomes a “Plus Five” Republican district, making the incumbent, Ms. Hayworth, surely safe.

Rather than wait for the dust to settle, no fewer than five Democrats have thrown their hats into the ring, even though any of them could get drawn out of the district in the end.

“It certainly knocks the heck out of your fund-raising operation. There is a lot of hesitancy about getting involved,” said Joe Mercurio, an adviser to Matt Alexander, the mayor of Wappingers Falls, who is running for the seat. Mr. Mercurio described the awkwardness of asking potential voters for money for a candidate who may or may not be vying to represent them.

“Shit happens. This is a living-off-the-land kind of campaign.”

Or consider the case of Mark Levine, a political activist in Washington Heights. He had been planning to run for the City Council in 2013, until rumors started flying that Albany map makers may draw a Dominican-majority congressional district. If that were to happen, the incumbent state senator, Adriano Espailliat, would run for it, creating a vacancy in the State Senate that M. Levine  would have only a few weeks to prepare a run for—or, depending on Albany, a few months. Or, he too could wake and find himself drawn out of the district entirely.

“It’s just crazy. I’ve got little kids, and I don’t know if I can take them on a summer vacation, or a spring vacation for that matter,” he said. “I’ve become so frustrated with the process that I have to stop reading the blogs, trying to ignore every tiny rumor and ignore what is beyond my control. It was becoming extremely unproductive.”

But as tempting as it is to presume that it is simply the forces of nature that have conspired to create disarray, a confluence of unfortunate events, recall that the chaos favors the status quo. As long as would-be challengers don’t know which district they are running in, they can’t campaign. Until election day is finalized, they can’t start gathering signatures. They can fund-raise a bit, but for a fight against whom, exactly?

And so if you happen to notice a certain hair-pulling anxiety among would-be politicos who aren’t sure what the next few weeks will bring, those who have been ensconced in office for a while sound quite willing to let the process play out for as loooonggg aaassss iiiittt ttttaakkkess.

To wit, earlier this week, The Observer caught up with 40-year incumbent Charlie Rangel. He insisted he was running again, even if he couldn’t be sure where exactly—a piece of missing intelligence he sounded like he was taking in stride.

“This will be hard for a young fellow like yourself to understand,” he said. “But after 81 years, this should be the worst of my problems.”

dfreedlander@observer.com

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