Results tagged “runoffelection”

Besides costing a lot for a record low voter turnout, here's another runoff election fun fact: Quite a few Dem lawmakers and politicians didn't vote! The Daily News reports that among the no-shows (or those who couldn't get their absentee ballot acts together) were State Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr., State Senator Eric Adams and William Scarborough, and Assemblyman Felix Ortiz. The Citizens Union's Dick Dadey said of Espada, "He craves respect as a Senate leader but shows disdain for democracy by not voting."

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, the Democrat candidates for NYC Public Advocate and City Comptroller will be decided today in runoff elections, because no candidate received at least 40% of the vote during September 15's primary. In the PA race, it's City Councilman Bill de Blasio vs. former Advocate Mark Green (in the primary, de Blasio got 32% to Green's 31%), and in the Comptroller race, it's City Councilmen John Liu (who got 38%) vs. David Yassky (30%). If you're a registered Democrat, go vote—because it's costing the city millions anyway!

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.