Results tagged “runoff”

PolitickerNY reports that the NYC Board of Elections has been so worried about funding that it sent a letter to Mayor Bloomberg—and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, city budget director Mark Page, City Council Christine Quinn and others—stating it wouldn't have "the necessary funding to enable it to meet its financial obligations to vendors and poll workers for the General Election to be held on Tuesday, November 3, 2009." Uh...

After the super low turnout at last week's primary runoff elections, State Senator Joseph P. Addabbo (D-Queens) has introduced legislation to get rid of runoffs. City Room reports that Addabbo, who will look at various avenues to eliminate them, said, "Spending $15 million to hold an election the voters do not wish to participate in is a waste of taxpayer dollars in a time of economic difficulty. That money could have instead been spent more wisely, like on our seniors or school children."

Yesterday's runoff elections saw a total of 228,000 ballots cast, which the Post calls a "record low." Based on estimates that the runoffs would cost the city $14.4 million, that's about $63 per vote. Another way to cut the numbers: That's 7.3% of registered Democrats.

Today's runoff elections for Public Advocate and City Comptroller were greeted by lower voter turnout. According to NY1's results, Bill de Blasio has won the Public Advocate race with 62.50% of the vote to Mark Green's 37.50% while John Liu won the Comptroller race, with 55.68% of the vote while David Yassky earned 44.32%. This means the Working Families Party had a big night— both its candidates won.

If you're like most of us, you so totally meant to vote in today's primary run-off (especially since you're paying through the nose for it). But you're definitely going to vote after work tonight, in between the million other friggin' errands on your list. Well, hopefully somebody finds the time, because it's lonely out there for a poll worker today. Coordinator Joseph Lawrence is trying to put on a brave face, telling City Room turnout was "better than I expected: maybe 4 percent instead of 2 percent." But at most poll sites "there’s nothing to do, the time just drifts by." Old man river... And at PS 163 on the Upper West Side, at least one poll worker had to be awakened when a voter shockingly appeared to participate in the democratic process.

Now that there are two runoff elections tomorrow—one for Public Advocate and the other for City Comptroller—it's believed that the city will shell out over $14 million (including matching funds to candidates) to hold the elections. And only 10% of the city's 3.1 million Democrats are expected to head to the polls.

The primary run-off election is this Tuesday, and last night, City Comptroller candidates John Liu and David Yassky had their last debate. And apparently, with the race running close, they left nothing to chance by coming out swinging.

David Yassky is best known in some political circles as the man who was the only white candidate in 2006 for the Congressional seat being vacated by Major Owens, leading some to accuse him of racial carpetbagging. Now he has the unenviable task of trying to pull an upset in Tuesday's comptroller runoff election against John Liu, blocking him from being the first Asian-American elected to citywide office.

With only a few days left before the public advocate runoff, the biggest question in the race seems to be: do you feel comfortable with Mark Green because he's already had the job or would you rather just see him go away like he promised three years ago? Green and Bill de Blasio are tied in the polls at 46 percent going into Tuesday's contest, expected to get miniscule turnout after only ten percent of Dems turned out for last week's primary.

Last night, primary returns showed that City Councilman Bill de Blasio earned 33% of the vote, with former Public Advocate Mark Green getting 31%. While both men will now be in a run-off (on September 29) since neither got 40%, the analysis is that de Blasio's results were surprising—the Daily News writes that he "pulled out a much better performance than the pre-primary polls suggested"—while there will be "hand-wringing" at Green's campaign headquarters. de Blasio told his campaign staffers, "You pulled off one miracle: You can do it again in two weeks," while Green said, "Because we've gone from a cluttered four-way race to a clarified head-to-head contest, I sure will contrast my story as a lifelong, independent consumer advocate, fighting for the middle class, and his proven record as a lifelong political insider." The other challengers in the race were Councilman Eric Gioia, who 18%, Norman Siegel, with 14%, and Imtiaz Syed with 3%.