Districts And Donts

With a reported 34.2% of registered voters showing up at the polls last Tuesday, the last time voter turnout was this dreadful was in 1990 when only 38% cast their ballots. Explanations and conspiracy theories as to why the turnout was so depleted have since been bandied around. Some pundits are convinced that voters simply conceded the election to George Pataki, while others may have felt none of the candidates merited their attention.
Lost in all the hyperbole of last weeks elections was the issue of redistricting, when elected officials sliced up jurisdictions into new legislative districts, according to the results taken from the latest census, processed once every 10 years.
Redistricting is an underrated issue in politics that gets little press coverage. In this years elections,however, it may have been the root of much voter dismay and disruption at the polling sites, specifically involving the gubernatorial election between George Pataki and Carl McCall.
Last Tuesday, some of the women of the Mon-tuak Senior Center on 120-08 Farmers Boulevard in Jamaica, got a firsthand appreciation for how redistricting can influence the outcome of an election.
Because of redistricting and acknowledged imperfections in the voting system that the Board of Elections attributed to short-term planning, the women, all of them African-American and many of them in their late 80s, were asked to travel distances that required a two bus trip in order to cast their vote. Some of them didnt make it.
"I was very upset because a lot of my seniors from here werent able to vote in the primary or the general election where they were used to voting, including myself," said 78-year-old, Marion Whitley, president of the tenant association of Mon-tuak and captain of election district 31-29. "The ones who were able to, had to take two buses to Rochdale. There are people who have canes and walkers or are in wheelchairs that cant get there, and a lot of people dont have the funds to take a cab there and back. Cards were sent out telling people where to vote, but a lot of people never got those cards.
"They should know where the senior houses are located, so they can make some arrangements for them like sending transportation for them. The elderly people who live here, for years have been voting in the same place. Why would they change them and send them some place else. Maybe they didnt want them to vote," said Whitley.
And 86-year-old Emma Samuels had a similar experience. After arriving at PS 15 on 121st and Lucas Street where she had voted for years, she was told she had to go to PS 130 on Bidell Street, two miles away. "I wouldnt have voted at all if it wasnt for Reverend Davis," she said. "I walk with a cane, and I was very unhappy about being told to go somewhere far away. Reverend Davis drove me there. If it wasnt for him, I wouldnt have voted."
Woman after woman at the senior center complained of never receiving notices of changes in the locations of polling sites, and they were turned away in droves from their regular site and told to go to an inconvenient one. Many were so exasperated by the switch they chose not to vote at all. In this case, all the chaos and confusion that resulted benefited the incumbent, George Pataki. All of the women said they would have voted for Carl McCall.
"If you suppress the vote in this area, youre suppressing Carl McCalls vote," said Henry McCoy, the district leader for the 33rd AD, who is also African American. "You have a lot of people of my generation who are coming from a part where we didnt have a right to vote. And this is a modern way of taking our vote away. When you make it impossible for the seniors to get to the polls, its a new way of just taking their vote away. Its also ironic that the same thing happened 10 years ago when Dave Dinkins was running."
Some of the women saw voters at the polls who had the right address on their voters identification card but were told by the inspectors there that they were registered some place else. One woman spoke of a husband and wife who lived together but had to vote at separate locations. Another said that an entire neighborhood in the 33rd District was sent to PS 18, two-and-a-half miles away from where they were supposed to vote, at PS 118, the result of a typographical error.
The Board of Elections took some of the blame for errors like these, but defended their practices, placing the blame on the voters themselves for not paying attention to the change of address on their voting cards. Naomi Bernstein, a public relations and communications representative at the Board of Elections, has heard these complaints all before.
"Back in August we sent out letters during the primary indicating where their poll site was located," she said. "Many of these people didnt bother looking at the notices and they went to their old poll site where they went before redistricting took place. We tried to rectify the situation by sending out three mailings between the primary and the general elections, but they didnt read the mail. Unfortunately, many peoples cards had changed. Were working on that. Because of the shortness of time all the data [from the census] wasnt appropriately processed."
The seniors werent buying it. "Nobody should be disenfranchised because of lines and districts," said Reverend Edward Davis, who drove a lot of the seniors to the polling sites last Tuesday. "With the conditions that African Americans and Latino Americans face today, none of our rights should be denied because of one particular group thats in power. No one group should be able to determine through lines who can vote."
For complaints concerning this matter, call Barbara Clark of the 33rd Assembly District at (718) 479-2333.