Another perfect storm is headed to New York City — this time at the ballot box.
Experts are predicting that an unfortunate combination of the hurricane’s aftermath, the huge turnout anticipated in a presidential election year, election-district changes and relatively new electronic-voting machines could make Tuesday’s election the most challenging since 9/11.
“A potentially chaotic Election Day is in store,” wrote Neal Rosenstein in a release from the New York Public Research Interest Group, which monitors the city’s Board of Elections.
“Clearly, the BOE is under tremendous strain, even though workers are putting in 12-hour shifts. The problems are systemic. It’s going to be a high-turnout election. Over 50 percent of the voters have never used optical scanners. There’s going to be no power at some polling sites. Poll workers will be dealing with personal losses. We’re very worried.”
Board officials say they’re doing all they can and following a storm-contingency plan that prudently had them shifting records out of downtown Manhattan long before Sandy struck.
Unusable poll sites will be replaced with outdoor tents housing voting machines and heaters hooked to generators. Paper ballots are being readied just in case the machines fail.
Officials are discussing relocating about 60 poll sites.
Two tents are going to be erected for outdoor voting, one in The Bronx, one in the Rockaways.
Three “super” poll sites are on tap in Queens to handle 10 to 15 election districts from the Rockaways, including one at Aqueduct.
While it was badly battered by superstorm Sandy, Staten Island had 90 percent of its voting machines in buildings on high ground, and they should be ready to go, said one official.
Doug Kellner, co-director of the state Board of Elections, said there’s concern that some poll workers won’t be able to get to work, so arrangements have been made to allow anyone to be sworn in on the spot to fill unexpected vacancies.
The board’s Web site is being updated regularly, and it has developed an app for mobile devices.
But its help line, located in the main office on lower Broadway, was still out of commission as of yesterday.
“I am concerned,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler.
“Relocating voting places is very difficult. They may have to. But how do you tell the people? People are going to go to the wrong polling place. I’m concerned. We will pull off the election. We have to. There are going to be problems, obviously. I don’t know what they’re going to be, how we’ll handle them.”
There’s also a long-shot possibility for the strangest scenario of them all: extending voting for an extra day if voter turnout is extremely low.
Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver pointed out that there’s a provision in the election law for adding another day of voting if there’s a catastrophe that results in less than 25 percent of registered voters going to the polls.
John Conklin, a spokesman for the state board, confirmed that the board has the power to add one day of voting no later than 20 days after Election Day if the numbers come in at that level in any county, including one of the five boroughs.
Election lawyer Jerry Goldfeder said that would be horrendous, since supporters of a losing candidate would then get an unfair second shot once the results had already been posted.
“I don’t think it’s ever going to happen,” said Goldfeder.
He’s almost certainly right. But for those who bet long shots, there are 250,907 registered voters on Staten Island. If fewer than 62,727 cast ballots Tuesday, the perfect electoral storm could enter the history books.