Voters travel far to Oyster Bay

Just a handful of voters were in the gym at the Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School polling site Tuesday afternoon in Oyster Bay hamlet, but poll workers said hundreds of voters had streamed in through the course of the day.

Voters there included people from communities as far away as Great Neck whose homes had storm damage and who cast affidavit ballots, poll workers said.

Poll workers said they experienced trouble with one of their optical scanners earlier in the day, but Board of Elections workers had quickly come to fix the problem.

Keryn Meierdiercks, 23, of Mill Neck, has been staying with her father in Kew Gardens, Queens, since Sandy struck and was going home after she cast her ballot to see whether her power had finally been restored, she said.

Meierdiercks, a restaurant manager, said she drove — gas shortage and all — from Kew Gardens to her polling site in Oyster Bay to exercise her right to vote.

“I wanted to make sure I voted,” she said. “If you don’t vote, you don’t have a say and you can’t complain about how things are going.”

Meierdiercks said she voted for Barack Obama because she does not trust Mitt Romney’s plan for the country.