Ferrer And Weiner To Play Waiting Game

As of press time for The Queens Courier on Tuesday night, New Yorkers were still holding their collective breaths to see if there would be one more election before the General in November.
All night, Fernando Ferrer was locked in and around the 40 percent necessary to avoid a runoff election with the second place finisher, Brooklyn-Queens Rep. Anthony Weiner.
With 6,032 out of 6,033 precincts reporting, Ferrer fell just short of 40 percent (39.96).
Certainly the closeness will not prevent a circus of a recount.
In what will probably resemble the 2000 presidential election, inspectors will pore through antiquated voting machines and suspect paper ballots from voters who claimed they were registered and didn’t show up in Board of Elections books.
Also, voters use paper ballots when machines break down, which was reported a lot in Queens by many campaigns.
If Ferrer reaches the 40 percent mark after all is said and done, he will take on Mayor Mike Bloomberg in November. If not, a runoff will be needed in approximately two weeks.
But the big story may turn out to be the low turnout of the election.
The emails rolled in all day from frantic campaigns…”Every vote counts! There’s only seven, five, three hours left! Low turnout election!”
In some races in Queens, turnout was equivalent to or less than that of the primaries in 2003, when there was nothing on the ballot but City Council.
Overall, that is a good sign for Mayor Bloomberg. If a lot of Democrats stayed home in Tuesday’s election, pundits say that means support for the incumbent is even stronger than previously believed.
And while the four Democratic nominees traversed the city for 15 hours greeting voters and commuters, Bloomberg stayed above the fray, participating in previously scheduled events and looking a lot more like a legislator than a candidate.
Approximately 450,000 voters turned out to cast a vote. That is significantly less than the nearly 800,000 cast in 2001’s mayoral primary on the heels of September 11.
editrich@queenscourier.com