New Yorkers helped re-elect President Barack Obama, but not without some technical difficulties.

The damages wrought on the city by Hurricane Sandy prompted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to issue an order allowing evacuated residents to vote at any poll site in the state by using affidavit ballots. Many sites failed to get word of the order, which went out only the day before the election, however, and some city polls quickly ran out of the 250 affidavits that the city printed for each election district.

Jammed ballot scanners added to the confusion of relocated polling sites and affidavits, which combined resulted in lines that stretched blocks. At some sites, voters waited three hours or more to cast their ballots.

The city’s Upper East and Upper West sides were particularly burdened with delays. Many storm-struck New York residents fled to friends’ and relatives’ homes in the city’s less-damaged neighborhoods, so these polling sites were disproportionately crowded.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized the Board of Elections for failing to be organized. The Board of Elections, in turn, argued that it did not have enough time to train poll workers following Cuomo’s order.

PIZZA-DELIVERY RAPE SUSPECT INDICTED

Cesar Lucas, the 16-year-old delivery boy accused of raping a woman in her West 61st Street apartment in September, was indicted Nov. 8.

Lucas reportedly entered the 35-year-old tenant’s unlocked home around midnight on Sept. 29 after delivering pizza to one of her neighbors in the building. He found the victim in bed with her 7-year-old daughter, and raped her with the daughter in the room.

“Women should not have to sleep with one eye open for fear of intruders,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance in announcing the indictment. “The defendant is not only charged with committing a rape, but with doing so in the presence of the victim’s child. I commend the victim for her tremendous courage in coming forward.”

Specifically, Lucas was charged with rape, sexual abuse, endangering the welfare of a child and burglary, the latter for taking money from the victim’s wallet before fleeing the scene. He wrote a confession to the crime after he was arrested, citing his motive as feeling “horny,” but pleaded not guilty.

Last month, the victim sued Lucas, and also his employer Sal’s Pizza, her building’s management company, her building’s condo board and the on-duty doorman.

KRIM PARENTS LAUNCH LULU AND LEO FUND

Marina and Kevin Krim, parents of the two siblings stabbed to death by their nanny in their West 75th Street apartment on Oct. 25, have established a fund in their children’s honor. The Lulu and Leo Fund, named after the 6-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy, will fund education in two subjects the Krims say their children loved: the arts and sciences.

“Our children have loved the many art and science programs in the cities in which we have lived, such as Lulu’s beloved ‘Art Afternoons’ class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” the parents wrote on the fund’s website, www.lululeofund.org. “Unfortunately, there are many children who do not have access to these programs. We created the Lulu & Leo Fund to help more children benefit from these education experiences in art and science.”

In a statement on the site, the Krims express thanks for the outpouring of support they have received from the community over the past weeks, and ask for help ensuring their privacy, so that their third child, 3-year-old Nessie, who was out of the apartment with Marina at the time of the murder, can grow up “like any another kid.”

Yoselyn Ortega, the 50-year-old nanny, was formally charged with the murder on Nov. 3. She cut her throat following the stabbings, and remains in treatment at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

NYC Board of Elections Commissioner “J.C.” Polanco (via Twitter)

With Election Day rapidly approaching, the devastation from Hurricane Sandy could have residual consequences that may alter the outcome of local and federal elections. With many polling sites still without power and thousands of residents displaced due to flooding and damage to their homes, the New York City Board of Elections has been scrambling to come up with solutions that would allow voters to cast their ballot.

To read the complete article please visit www.cityandstateny.com.

Is it too late to complain about Rep. Charlie Rangel? Or the Board of Elections? Or the way people voted last month?

I thought it was, given that the congressional primary election was held June 26. That night, we learned that Rangel had beaten back a serious challenge from State Sen. Adriano Espaillat.

Or we thought we’d learned that. As I write this, though, the Rangel lead over Espaillat has narrowed considerably. The June primary is making July news.

Now it turns out that the Board of Elections, consistent with its ongoing efforts to screw up, did not report correctly the early returns. Everybody is ripping into the board—and rightly so. But our state, local and legal leaders need to actually do something. Wanted: a system for tallying ballots that is both accurate and reasonably fast. Then we can go back to worrying about the quality of the candidates, like Rangel, who has become, sad to say, a considerable embarrassment.

His ethical lapses include improperly using his office to raise funds from businesses and, my personal favorite, not paying taxes for 17 years on a rental property in the Dominican Republic. His ability to function effectively has been seriously hampered, but our political elites gutlessly lined up for him during his recent re-election bid.

But who really deserves the disdain in all of this? Voters. They finally got a congressional primary that mattered and most still could not be bothered to participate.

I couldn’t participate. After the lines got redrawn, I moved out of Rangel’s 15th Congressional District without even leaving my apartment. Nobody ever sent me anything about how my congressional district has changed—I googled it. Repeatedly. Then a smart neighbor told me Google was right.

Now I’m living in the district of Rep. Jerrold Nadler. He’s fairly verbose. I once saw him almost talk his way through a fire drill. I was interviewing him and people were leaving the building. It was awkward; he just kept speaking. At least he says smart things, like when he saved Bill Clinton’s butt during the impeachment hearings.

Even living in a new district, I kept getting calls from the campaign of Clyde Williams, another Rangel challenger. “I’m getting your mailings and your messages,” I told the staffer, “but I’m not in the district any more. You really need not to waste money and time on me.”

The Rangel race amounted to one frustration after another, and it contains lessons for people all over town. First off, we could have used a little less clubhouse politicking on the part of Rangel’s supporters, who should have known better, and more from his opponents, because there were too many of them. They split the anti-Rangel vote. They needed to get in a room and decide who was going to run.

I get that Rangel delivers for his district. He votes well, which is not nothing. Certainly, when I moved into his district, I was thrilled to support someone with a keen understanding of congressional maneuvering, a progressive unafraid to do the horse-trading of an effective legislator. Eagerly, I backed an esteemed veteran as he took the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee. I thought Rangel rocked. But hey…my excuse is I was coming from Jersey. Even today, Rangel is the least embarrassing congressman I’ve ever had.
Unfortunately, that’s not saying much.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He’s available through email at ccmnj@aol.com and on Twitter @cmoorenyc.

Alec Baldwin. Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.

Manhattan

Despite the holiday, the Espaillat-Rangel race is still in full-tilt.

The dispute at the Board of Elections harkens back to a past race.

State Senate

How competitive will this year’s state Senate elections really be?

2013 Mayoral Race

Billy Baldwin says Alec Baldwin’s prospects of running for mayor are real.

Eva Moskowitz (who’s not running for mayor) panned Bill de Blasio (who is).

To read more from City & State click here.

“We know they know of price of buying government favors in Mexico, and I think all of us are deeply concerned that they may know the price of buying government favors in the United States, and possibly New York,” Lancman said. “I think that the Justice Department should examine very, very closely those who have accepted contributions from Wal-Mart.”

As it turns out, some of the state’s top Democrats, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, have accepted money from the Arkansas retail giant, in turmoil over charges that it bribed Mexican officials and then covered its actions up.

A quick look at state Board of Elections filings shows that Cuomo has taken $1,000, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver $1,500 and the State Democratic Party $15,000 from Wal-Mart. A slew of others have also taken Wal-Mart donations, including Republican Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos. In other words, the three most powerful people in state government have taken money from the company.

In  a follow-up statement provided to City & State, Lancman said he was simply calling for a broader investigation into Wal-Mart’s actions in New York — and not calling into question the motives of those individuals who accepted the company’s donations.

To read the full article at City & State click here.

City Council members demanded answers from the city’s Board of Elections Monday, Oct. 4, regarding its handling of the Sept. 14 primary. New optical scan voting machines were debuted during that election, causing headaches for some voters.

During the hearing, poll workers and public interest groups voiced their concerns about voter privacy, late poll site openings and quality of worker-training to Gale Brewer, the Upper West Side Council member who chairs the Government Operations Committee.

West Side residents prepare to vote before the Sept. 14 primary. Photo by: Andrew Schwartz

Brewer wanted to clear up problems in time for the Nov. 2 general election, although board Executive Director George Gonzalez said a full review would not be completed until December.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the primary was marred by “bureaucratic missteps” and accused the board of blaming lack of funding “as an excuse for poor performance.” The Office of Management and Budget, she said, had consistently funded the board’s needs.

Gonzalez, however, argued the Board of Elections suffered from “chronic underfunding.”

He said the switch over to electronic voting machines “would be monumental under any circumstance” and said a preliminary analysis showed problems were similar to those of past elections.

The committee didn’t take stock in the board’s findings. Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr., of Queens said “a full review that’s completed after the election is not acceptable.”

Upper West Side resident Barbara Lee, who testified at the hearing and worked at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School as a scanner inspector during the primary, said she witnessed many problems.

Privacy was a “big issue,” she said, as were machine paper jams and a lack of knowledge among poll workers about key procedures.

“I think that they were kind of nervous and overwhelmed by the new system and it didn’t go as smoothly as everyone had hoped,” Lee said.

Gonzalez said only 85 percent of about 27,000 poll workers passed the required training exam. Additional training will be provided for coordinators before Nov. 2, he said, but the board lacks the resources to retrain everyone.

Jerome Koenig, an Upper West Side resident and former chief of staff for the State Assembly’s Election Law Committee, didn’t notice any major problems at his polling site but said a “little more training” would help.

“I had to stop them from taking the ballots out of the privacy sleeve and putting them in the machine themselves,” he said. “They shouldn’t be near the machine at all.”

Brewer had her own privacy problem when she cast a ballot at her 97th Street polling site, which opened at least an hour late. The woman in front of her was given a sleeve in which to place her ballot, but Brewer wasn’t offered one.

“People did feel that their votes could be seen,” she said. “I got that complaint a lot.”