Heat wave bears down on New York City primary election. Are polling sites ready?
As the city heats up to over 100 degrees, polling sites are preparing for the worst: a potential blackout.
It's a scorcher in New York City.
On Tuesday, June 24, as residents of the five boroughs headed to the polls to cast their ballots in what promises to be a unique primary election, heat radiated off the concrete.
The city is expected to break 100° by midday, and officials have sent out a heat advisory, urging residents to stay hydrated and cool, whether on their way to work or to the polling station.
Whether the heat wave will affect voter turnout remains to be seen, but candidates have already begun to express concern over the Board of Elections' ability to handle any potential power outages at polling stations should they arise.
Con Edison, the city's primary electricity provider, urged residents to conserve power, as outages hit Queens Monday night. Though no polling stations have reported a loss of power yet, Vincent Ignazio, deputy executive director of the Elections Board, told City & State Monday that ballot scanners were equipped with backup batteries capable of lasting several hours should an outage occur.
If the power is not restored by the time the batteries die, however, Ignazio told the outlet that the remaining ballots get put into "a separate bag in the scanner" to be scanned "in the borough at a later time … a few days tops." The process is similar to the way absentee or drop-box ballots are counted.
Paste BN has reached out to the board for comment.
Any delay in the tabulation will rachet up the anticipation in an already closely watched contest. Given the city's ranked choice voting system. The face-off, which polls suggest is essentially between ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo and Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, could stretch days as other candidates are eliminated in the instant runoff and the two men vie for a majority of votes.