Liz Thompson gently escorted 79-year-old Jean Williams out of the PS 86 polling site in Kingsbridge Heights. Williams isn’t moving quite as well as she used to, but she “always” votes, Thompson said.

I asked Williams why it was important for her to vote and a smile spread underneath her high cheekbones.

“That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it,” she said, then paused. “I vote to see the advancement of the community and the advancement of our people.”

Later, Williams found me on the corner and poked me with her cane, smiling again. “Did you like my answers,” she asked.

I did, I told her. It was a more succinct way of conveying what we wrote in our “Why Bronxites Should Vote” editorial.

This year, New York is back using the old school pull-level voting machines after the $95 million electronic voting system implemented last year was widely criticized.

Thompson said “over 50” people had cast their ballots at PS 86 as of about 11:30 a.m. and reported no problems with the machines. AT another site I visited (and voted at), on Cannon Place in Kingsbridge Heights, a poll worker said more than 60 people had already voted and he expected a big afternoon rush. No problems with the two machines there, the poll worker said

Not everything has gone as smoothly elsewhere. As of 9 a.m., the Times reported 311 had received 1,000 calls about the election, mostly people trying to find out where to vote, but there were 73 complaints about problems voting.

Republican candidate Joe Lhota was forced to file a paper ballot. Democrat Anthony Weiner waited more than an hour as the BOE worked to rectify an issue with his missing signature. And our old friend and former NN writer Heather Haddon, who now works for the Wall Street Journal, tweeted that she cast her vote into a box in Queens.

At the PS 206 polling site on Andrew Avenue in University Heights, the Bronx Bureau reported that one machine suspiciously only had levers for a couple of the several candidates in the hotly-contested 86th Assembly District race to replace Nelson Castro.

A supporter of 86th AD candidate Haile Rivera told a reporter she couldn’t vote because of the problems, but the poll site manager said no one was prevented from voting and that the site had four working machines aside from the busted one.

Yudelka Tapia, another candidate in the race was calling it a conspiracy. “How can a machine have levers just for two or three candidates?” she told the Bronx Bueau. At least one of the candidates who did have a lever on the machine was Victor Pichardo, who is widely supported by local elected officials, including State Senator Gustavo Rivera.

In other news, I’ve been back in the office for about an hour and have heard three times, a loud voice coming from a speaker on top of a truck about how I should vote for Bill Thompson for mayor. Thompson’s campaign, boosted by support from Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and firefighters, launched a massive get out the vote effort, with more than 400 staffers, here in the Bronx today, the Bronx Bureau reports.

Send us your voting stories and pictures by emailing norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or Tweet to us (@norwoodnews).

admin

Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.