As Rangel-Espaillat heads to court, voters claim they were blocked, or confused
Adriano Espaillat. Azi Paybarah via flickr
10:21 am Jul. 2, 20122
State Senator Adriano Espaillat hopes to get a judge to help oversee the recount in his race against Rep. Charlie Rangel.
Both sides are acknowledging votes may not have been recorded properly by poll workers. And supporters on both sides are stepping forward to say voters were improperly turned away from voting. (Espaillat supporters made direct reference to "Florida" during a rally last week.)
One Espaillat supporter, Ruben Vargas, told reporters that voters with "Dominican accents" were turned away from the polls on Tuesday. Vargas said voters with Puerto Rican accents did not have the same problem.
Yesterday, a number of callers to WBLS's show, "Express Yourself", said they too were turned away from voting in last week's primary.
The first was a woman who said she lived in the Bronx and "definitely would have voted for Charlie Rangel."
She said her name was Janice. She recalled going to the polling place that "that I always go to," but said an election worker told her "this is for Republicans."
Janice read aloud information from her voter registration card. She said she lived in Election District 91, Assembly District 76, Congressional District 07, State Senatorial District 32 and Council District 18, and Civl Court District 01.
One reporter on the program, Herb Boyd of the Amsterdam News, noted the woman did not live in the NY-13 congressional district and therefore was not eligible to vote.
Later, "Audrey from Parkchester" called and said, "I was turned away from voting."
She said poll workers told her Tuesday's primary was for Republicans only and that Democrats were going to vote in September.
"That's right!" exclaimed the show's host, Gary Byrd. "As a matter of fact, the person who spoke to me said the same thing."
Then, a third woman named Kim called.
"I had a problem too when I went to the polls on Staten Island," she said.
Kim said election workers at her polling site said it was only for Republicans.
The host asked who she was going to vote for.
She said, "Definitely Charles Barron, for sure."
Barron, a city councilman, was running for Congress in a district in Brooklyn and Queens.
These stories seems to say less about the systematic disenfranchisement of voters in the Rangel-Espaillat race as they do about general voter confusion, and the quality of the information given out by the Board of Elections and poll workers.
In case is is not perfectly clear -- if Audrey is indeed from the Parkchester section of the Bronx-- the poll worker gave her accurate information. There was only the Republican Primary for US Senate in Parkchester, which is well to the west of the CD 13 boundaries in the Bronx.
"Only Republicans can vote" was a complaint I heard all day long on Election Day.
Voters hat were no longer in the 13th Congressional District because of
redistricting discovered that they were now in Jerold Nadler's District in Manhattan
of Jose Serrano's District in the Bronx. Both of these Congressmen were unopposed on
Election Day so there was"no Democratic primary" in those districts.
The only contested primary in their districts for which you could vote was the Republican Primary.
This is why those wanting to vote were told that only could only vote in the Republican Primary
and they had to be registered Republicans. I heard this complaint all day from voters in
Manhattan who live West of Amsterdam Avenue when they discovered for the first time
that Congressman Rangel was no longer their congressman due to redistricting.They were
upset and assumed that they were being kept from voting.
Alfred Placeres