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NYC Primary turnout ‘steady trickle’ in Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn

September 12, 2017 By Mary Frost Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Votes were coming in slow but steady at polling places in Brooklyn Heights and Downtown Brooklyn, with more voters than expected at Borough Hall. Photo by Mary Frost
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Beautiful, sunny weather may have encouraged voter turnout in the New York City primary election on Tuesday, where poll workers in Downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights said they were seeing a “steady trickle” before noon.

– At 101 Clark St. in Brooklyn Heights, which serves four election districts, numbers were “just starting to pick up” by 10 a.m. By that point, 188 votes had been cast.

– At P.S. 8 in the north Heights, voters started coming in at 6 a.m., poll workers said, though business did slow down after 9 a.m. The site serves five election districts, and 167 votes were cast by roughly 10:15 a.m. Poll workers said they expected the numbers to pick up after 5 p.m.

– In the little polling site at 10 Clark St. in the Heights, serving just one election district, 75 people had cast their votes by 11:15 a.m., with more seen walking through the door.

– In Downtown Brooklyn, at the Urban Assembly school on Adams Street, which serves four election districts, poll workers said business was brisk before 9 a.m. but dropped off after that. By roughly 11:30 a.m., 149 votes had been cast.

– Turnout was higher than expected at the Borough Hall voting site, which serves five districts, said coordinator Elizabeth Tretter. By roughly 11:40 a.m., 254 votes had been cast.  “I’m shocked,” she told the Brooklyn Eagle. “They started at 6 a.m. at a steady trickle and there was a rush at 8:30.” Tretter said she expected another crunch at lunchtime.

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See: Tuesday is primary election day, and several Brooklyn races are red-hot

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While voters are deciding whether to re-elect Mayor Bill de Blasio and Public Advocate Letitia James and choosing the next district attorney, Tretter said she also picked up voter interest in Brooklyn’s judicial races, a trend that seemed to hold true at several other Brooklyn polling sites.

At the 101 Clark St. polling place, one woman told the Eagle, off the record, that she was voting for the “non-machine” judges, referring to John O’Hara, Isiris Isela Isaac, Sandra Roper, Thomas J Kennedy and Patrick J. Hayes. This group is running for civil judgeships without the blessing of the Kings County Democratic Party.

Another woman, Karen (she did not want her last name used), a Brooklyn Heights resident who cast her vote at P.S. 8, also voted for the independent slate in the judicial race.

“I did my homework on the judges,” she told the Eagle. She found the issue of judgeships to be important because “the judicial system is all we have left” since President Donald Trump’s election.

After Trump’s travel ban she realized how important Brooklyn’s judges are, she said. “These cases come to our local judges here.”

Karen said that other issues particularly motivating her were transit and development.

“We’re getting 35 story towers but no additional transit,” she said. She also questioned the wisdom of building new towers “right here on the harbor” while the subway is still being fixed from Superstorm Sandy. “They’re building luxury towers right in a flood plain,” she pointed out.

Karen also said she would think twice before reelecting de Blasio in the fall.

“You let them knock down our hospital!” she said, referring to de Blasio’s reversal of his support for Long Island College Hospital (LICH), which was sold to a developer after years of controversy. “Thank you for getting arrested but then you absolutely turned your back on us.”

If you have any problems at the polls, contact the New York State Attorney General’s office hotline at 1-800-771-7755 or email [email protected] at any time Tuesday between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m.

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