Thousands Of Voters Switched To Distant Polling Sites

By weeks end, Barbara Conacchio the voting agencys Queens Chief Clerk reported that a clerical misinterpretation of voting code numbers resulted in the incorrect assignment of voting sites in the four Assembly districts.
     
A series of Board of Elections (BOE) computer errors mistakenly assigned 25,000 Queens voters in four Assembly districts to the wrong polling sitessometimes at the opposite ends of the borough.
Residents of such diverse communities as Hollis, Flushing, Jamaica, Long Island City, Bellerose and Bayside were affected.
Voters reacted by swamping the elected officials of the 26th, 29th, 30th and 33rd State Assembly districts with angry calls. By last Wednesday, voters in the 26th AD had begun a mad scramble for rides in order to vote in the critical local September primaries and elections.
Residents who had voted in a school around their homes for decades, were suddenly sent crosstown to another school:
Flushing voters were sent to Long Island City.
Jamaica voters were sent to Bayside.
Long Island City voters were sent to Woodside.
Woodside voters were sent to Long Island City.
In the meantime, beleaguered Queens local officials fired off demands for the BOE to rectify the problem for
voters.
Conacchio said that corrected instruction cards had been rushed out late last week to the misdirected voters, and that another mailing would be sent out by the BOEs Queens office before Election Day.
Each election district changeover caused a unique set of voting problems. In the Bay Terrace community, a suddenly switched election district voting center sent over a thousand local residents scrambling for rides in order to vote in the coming September elections.
The problem began when Baysides 26th AD voters, formerly in the 16th ED, were quietly redistricted to the 32nd ED and assigned new voting centers. Voters, who for decades, had to walk just a block or two to PS 169, on 23rd Avenue, now would have to trudge uphill nearly a mile away to Bayside H.S. at 32nd Avenue, to cast their ballots.
Cong. Gary Ackerman [D-5thCD] and Assemblywoman Ann-Margaret Carrozza [D-26th AD] both warned that the major impact would be on seniors and handicapped persons who lives in the area. Equally hard hit, would be the voters who mistakenly showed up at the old PS 169 polling site.
Early last week, BOE spokeswoman Naomi Bernstein insisted that the law mandating redistricting also required that voting sites be changed. The walking distance from voters homes to the new site in Bayside HS, she said complied with the law. Adding to the uproar, the BOE initially said that no changes could be made until 2003.
An outraged Assemblywoman Carrozza called upon the BOE to demand that this latest move be shelved. "Forcing the elderly and handicapped to travel for nearly a mile is upsetting," she declared.
Phil Konigsberg, president of the 5,000-member Bay Terrace Community Alliance, expressed concern that the switch of polling sites could impact the areas normally high voting rate.
"How can the Board of Elections ask our residents, many of whom are elderly and dont drive, to walk one-and-a-half miles or take buses just to vote?" asked Konigsberg. He also warned of the chaos that may occur when voters show up at the old voting locations at PS 169 and they are told they cant vote there anymore.
By mid-week, after the impact of the clerical errors were examined, the Board of Elections acted swiftly by mailing corrected notices to voters in the affected Assembly districts.