East Siders Go to the Polls

By [Dan Rivoli] Most of the races East Siders will be voting for are foregone conclusions. Democrats are expected to win the two Senate races, and Andrew Cuomo is a lock for governor. Locally, state legislators will walk into a new two-year term. There are nearly a hundred heated House races throughout the country that will decide which party controls Congress. But East Side Rep. Carolyn Maloney is expected to handily defeat her Republican opponent Ryan Brumberg, who spent the campaign criticizing her votes for financial and healthcare reform. Still, Upper East Side voters seemed to live up to their reputation as loyal voters and came to the polls. Home to a large base of Democratic voters's and a chunk of Republicans's a good turnout will help Eric Schneiderman, the liberal Upper West Side state senator who is in a tight race for attorney general, and State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who faces a strong challenge from Republican Harry Wilson. (Those two races will not be decided by press time.) Pat Barry, on the Friends of P.S. 169 board, was manning a fundraiser book sale in the school at 110 E. 88th St. near the voting stations. Each Election Day, she said, the school holds the book sale. â??Turnout has been steady's very steady, Barry said in the afternoon after the lunch-hour rush. â??This is one of the better ones. We"ve had nothing but traffic. In a city where Democrats rarely have competitive general elections, there were Upper East Side voters that wanted to exercise their right to vote. â??I kind of view everything in New York as a foregone conclusion, said Shawn Dollinger, outside of P.S. 169 after voting. â??But it"s downright un-American not to do it. Still, in spite of Cuomo"s assured victory in the governor"s race, Dollinger was interested in seeing how well a certain candidate does. â??I would like to see how many votes the Rent Is Too Damn High guy gets, he said. (That would be Jimmy McMillan, the Rent Is Too Damn High Party candidate for governor.) There were some Democrats that pulled the lever for a Republican. Janet Kramer said she always votes for the Democrat but this year she filled in the oval next to Harry Wilson"s name, the Republican running for State Comptroller. After reading about his candidacy in newspapers, she found him to be a â??good man. â??I don"t have a problem with crossing over, Kramer said. For her votes on federal office, she added: â??I think Obama needs a Democratic Congress. I feel he"s been unfairly maligned. But there was more on the line this election day than just the election of candidates. This is the second time New Yorkers used new scanning machines that read paper ballots marked by voters. The new voting method had a rocky debut during the Sept. 14 primary as machines broke down, malfunctioned or jammed with a paper ballot. Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the primary day operation a â??royal screw up that was â??unacceptable. But there were some reoccurring complaints about the ballot this year. Upper East Side voter Linda Heller complained about the tiny print on the paper ballot, an oft-mentioned problem, and difficulty in filling in a small oval. Privacy, however, was her major concern. Heller, like all voters, was supposed to get a â??privacy sleeve or cover for her paper ballot. But she only realized she never received one after she had already cast her ballot. She preferred the old lever machines the state retired last year. â??You go in, you"re behind the curtain, Heller said. â??It"s you and your ballot.