BOE preps for record wave of voters

Having received nearly three times the number of voter registration forms in 2008 that it received in 2007, the New York City Board of Elections (BOE) is bracing for a record turnout in the November 4 election.
“We have seen an unprecedented interest in the upcoming election as evidenced by the record number of voter registration forms that our offices have received,” the BOE commissioners said in a statement issued on October 28, one week before New Yorkers hit the polls and help elect the next President of the United States, as well as various local leaders.
From October 1 to October 15, the deadline for the BOE to receive voter registration forms postmarked by the October 10 cut-off date in New York, the BOE collected 204,000 forms. Additionally, the BOE received over 500,000 forms from January of this year through the end of September compared to an approximate total of 250,000 for all of 2007.
BOE Public Affairs Director Valerie Vazquez-Rivera, while acknowledging that she and fellow staffers have had their work cut out for them, said, “We’re confident that every single person that met the criteria and the deadline that was imposed by New York state election law, will be in the system and registered.”
“We’re working nine-to-nine, seven days a week,” Vazquez-Rivera said, pausing for a few seconds in between tending to her pre-election duties.
Vazquez-Rivera said the BOE has added no new polling sites to its list of 1,351 across the city, but has beefed up its phone bank and added 2,000 more poll workers to the 32,000 there were during the last Presidential election.
At the polls, voters can expect the traditional Shoup Lever Voting Machine but they will also see, for the first time in a general election, at least one Ballot Marking Device, or BMD, at every polling precinct. BMDs allow disabled voters to cast their vote in private via a computer mouse-like clicker, other handheld apparatus or straw-like hands-free device. The ballot marking machines print out a result of a voter’s selection, which, for Tuesday’s election, will subsequently be hand-counted along with the ballots of able-bodied voters.
Voters whose names do not appear in the list books at their proper polling site can still cast a vote by requesting an Affidavit Ballot, the BOE says, noting that voters can also request a Certificate to Obtain a Court Order that would allow them to vote on a machine. State Supreme Court justices will be on hand at polling locations in Queens from the time they open at 6 a.m. until they close at 9 p.m.
“We’re excited for this election as we are every other election and we look forward to pulling off another successful election,” Vazquez-Rivera said.