Posted in Lonely-ola, baby-sitting Nassau ballots

Friday November 20, 2009 11:42 PM By Bill Murphy

Lonely this weekend?
 

Not as lonely as the Nassau County police officers who will have to baby-sit the paper ballots cast in the election this year.
 

One officer at a time will sit outside the locked counting room in Mineola from 3:45 p.m. Saturday, when counting stops, until it resumes at 9 a.m. Monday. The officers have been guarding the room on overnight shifts since the election ended.

The following weekend might be brutal. If the count is not finished by 3:45 p.m. next Wednesday, Thanksgiving Eve — and the betting is it will not be — then officers will take turns guarding the room from that time until 9 a.m. the following Monday.

There is a bathroom on the premises, and they do get a meal break.

Ackerman to suit up for state dinner

Friday November 20, 2009 4:21 PM By Tom Brune in Washington

Rep. Gary Ackerman landed one of the much sought-after invitations to President Barack Obama's first formal state dinner next Tuesday, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India. And so he had to buy a new tuxedo.

Nice tie. Are we winning?

Friday November 20, 2009 1:40 PM By William Murphy

Mineola attorney Peter Bee toned down his tie on Friday.

Bee heads the team of attorneys representing Republican candidates in the Nassau County ballot count, and his tie is one of the pleasant distractions in the humdrum days.

Friday’s tie was relatively sedate: small black and gold elephants on a red background.

He started out the day Monday, the first day of the paper ballot count,  wearing a tie with a Ronald Regan motif. Tuesday’s was an American flag festooned with yellow ribbons. Wednesday’s was a flashier American flag.

Thursday’s was a lawyerly tie with the words “prenuptial agreement” in the middle and a his-and-hers division down the middle. The “his” column listed “25 cents and a clean shirt;” the “hers” column said, “everything else.”

“And that’s what my wife said was going to happen if I don’t start getting home earlier,” Bee said.
 

HAVA chuckle in Nassau

Friday November 20, 2009 9:07 AM By William Murphy

The federal Help American Vote Act, a 2002 law meant to help localities modernize their election systems, draws some bipartisan derision at the Nassau County Board of Elections, where workers are sorting through the absentee ballots to decide key county elections.

Not the least — but certainly not all — of that derision is aimed at the rows of 450 HAVA-mandated voting machines for the disabled, which cost some $3.5 million.
A total of 17 votes were cast on those machines on Nov. 3rd, and some of the ballots were cast by able people when the mechanical voting machine in a polling place was out of commission.

Both Democrats and Republicans say privately that a better, less expensive way must be found to serve all voters. Meanwhile, they take out their frustrations on HAVA with humor.

Some supply closets are marked “H.A.V.A Supply Closet.” The water cooler invites a drink of “HAVA WATER,” and spot where the coffee maker used to sit is marked with a “HAVA COFFEE” sign.
 

Murdoch on Paterson: He retracts, you decide...

Thursday November 19, 2009 12:39 PM By Dan Janison

Rupert Murdoch, the Newscorp. tycoon, is reported to have apologized now for saying Gov. David Paterson is blind, doesn't read Braille, and "doesn't really know what's going on."

Some of the reaction has gone this way, as the AP reported:

"Carl Jacobsen, head of the National Federation for the Blind of New York, said that when Paterson was young, children with partial sight were often told not to learn Braille. He called Murdoch's comments prejudice.

"'If he wants to take issue with the governor's politics, that's his right as an Australian, but he should not denigrate an entire class of people,' Jacobsen said. 'I just think Mr. Murdoch should think twice before he has to issue another apology.'

Despite a paucity of official detail from his corporation, which includes Fox, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal, Murdoch is supposed to have called Paterson and had a cordial talk.

More of the story is here.

Nassau count: Democrats, Republicans, parking spots, pizza and more

Thursday November 19, 2009 11:26 AM By William Murphy

Scenes from the Nassau County ballot tally:

1) “Hey! That’s a Republican parking space.” That was a shout in the parking lot behind the Board of Elections offices in Mineola shortly after 8 a.m. Wednesday as workers began to arrive for the daily grind.

The board is run jointly by the Republicans and Democrats, and most everything is divided up along party lines, including parking spots.

Hours later that same day, two board workers were observed sitting on the loading dock, seemingly keeping an eye on the large fan that was blowing air into the building. “One Democrat, one Republican,” someone remarked.

That wasn’t government make-work, a board official explained. The books that voters sign at the polling place were stacked on tables inside the roll-up doors of the loading dock, and one worker from each party was assigned to keep an eye on them.

(The workers are union, but not civil service, and can be fired at the whim of the party.)

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2) As the ballot count began Monday, one board worker plowing through the mounds of paperwork at a counting table scrunched a handful of rubber bands into a ball, and wrapped a rubber band around the collection to form a small ball — smaller than a golf ball.

By Tuesday, her collection was the size of a tennis ball.

By Thursday morning, it was larger than a softball.

By Friday, a soccer ball?

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3) The paper ballots were counted for Long Beach City Council elections on Wednesday, and pace slowed noticeably as the number of objections rose. The race was tight, sure, but Long Beach is notorious for its loosey-goosey compliance with election procedures.
 

Remember the 1992 Democratic primary, where dead people were alleged to have voted via absentee ballot?

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4) And there is the $2 million pizza joke, which started Monday when County Executive Thomas Suozzi ate a slice of pizza with workers during the lunch break.

“He bought that with the $2 million he had left over from this campaign,” a Republican joked. Many Republicans think Suozzi left up to $2 million in his campaign coffers_unspent because he thought he was a cinch for re-election and wanted to have money in the bank for a race for higher office.
 

Nassau ballot count: lowering the temperature

Thursday November 19, 2009 9:09 AM By William Murphy

The seal on the counting room door in the Nassau County ballot tally was broken at 8 a.m. Thursday to give maintenance workers a chance to fix the air circulation system.

One Democratic official and one Republican official were present as the blue seal, #452, was removed under the eye of a Nassau County police officer who had sat outside the room all night.

Actual counting work was not expected to begin until later in the morning.

Workers said the temperature in the windowless room with six counting tables was a steady 78 degrees for most of the past three days, although the thermostat was set at 60.

A county maintenance worker showed up at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday to check the vents, but left without fixing anything. Two maintenance workers were on hand Thursday morning.

[UPDATE: By midday, the air in the counting room had improved to tolerable levels.]

Nassau count: final Wednesday numbers

Wednesday November 18, 2009 8:15 PM By William Murphy

Here’s the raw vote totals from the Nassau County Board of Elections after they closed down Wednesday night.  Keep in mind, the count is by Assembly District and as the counts shifts to new districts, so may the margin between the candidates.
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County Executive:
Incumbent Democrat Thomas Suozzi 119,504
Republican challenger Edward Mangano 120,057
Conservative challenger Steve Hansen 9,592
(Mangano leads by 553)
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County Comptroller:
Incumbent Democrat Howard Weitzman 116,057
Republican challenger George Maragos 117,003
(Maragos leads by 976
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14th County Legislative District
No change. No paper ballots in the legislative district were counted Wednesday.
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Democratic backlash against Giuliani's terror-trial fears

Wednesday November 18, 2009 7:05 PM By Dan Janison

Here's an ad released by the Democratic National Committee whacking Rudy Giuliani about trying terrorists in our courts. The message: Rudy was for it before he was against it.