New York City Board of Elections says the official vote totals for the special election, U.S. House 9th district, from September 13, are:
Bob Turner, 32,526 votes on the Republican line and 4,816 votes on the Conservative line.
David Weprin, 31,285 votes on the Democratic line, 1,425 on the Working Families line, and 946 on the Independence Party line
Chris Hoeppner, 143 votes on the Socialist Workers Party line
The Hoeppner vote, which is only .20%, is astonishingly low. Generally, when three candidates are on the ballot in a special election, it is unheard of for any of the three to poll less than one-half of 1%.
Furthermore, the day after the election, the unofficial vote totals had been announced as:
Bob Turner, 27,867 votes on the Republican line and 4,536 on the Conservative line.
David Weprin, 25,587 on the Democratic line, 1,248 on the Working Families line, and 764 on the Independence line
Chris Hoeppner, 277 on the Socialist Workers line.
The official totals are bigger than the election night returns for every party line, except for the Socialist Workers line. On the Socialist Workers line, the final total is only half as many votes as the election night total.
It is also plausible that the design of the ballot was such that it was difficult for an ordinary voter to even see Chris Hoeppner’s name on the ballot. Ballot Access News is trying to find a picture of the ballot.
2010 total votes ??? — for a mere comparison of the LOW turnout in the special election.
Cost per vote — 2010 and 2011 ???
In November 2010, the total vote in this district was 110,140 for the two candidates on the ballot.
Maybe if the Socialist Worker nominee had tried to get the cross-nominations of the Working Families and Independence lines, that could’ve been interesting. A third party fusion ticket is always worth it!
Ballot access should be equal for all. Let voters sign petitions for as many candidates as they want.
Again — NO moron HIGH cost per vote special elections.
Legislative body candidates/incumbents having rank order replacement lists — legislative body to fill a vacancy if no qualified replacement on the list.
Think 7 Dec 1941 Pearl Harbor — and the various EVIL killer morons attacking Democracy.
See the model airplane wannabee killer Devil case — one more terrorist moron likely to be put away for life.
Part of the number difference was explained as we needed 1,500 poll workers and only had 900 and the early call-in collection team was new and misplaced the entered numbers. What do you expect when New York City still has not hired an Election Director so who is running the show?
@#3: You don’t know much about the Socialist Workers Party. The SWP has been in a bubble for 30 years. They are unlikely to even acknowledge the existence of another political party. The WFP and Independence Party would be much more likely to endorse a Santeria priest than an SWPer.
I do agree that the total is astonishingly low, even for the SWP. I don’t think it is so much how the ballot is constructed, as how it looks to the poll workers when the machine is opened up at the end of the day. Having observed the process, I can believe that the poll workers simply stopped counting after getting the totals of the first few parties. If the SWP or anyone else is interested, it is possible to audit the machines. I believe you’d need to be an official poll watcher from one of the campaigns, though.
Or have the electronic machines replaced the mechanical machines already?
#6, thank you. New York now uses paper ballots that are counted electronically. The format of the paper ballot is unlike the format of paper ballots in any other state. The format pretends that the state is still using mechanical voting machines, and it keeps columns and rows, and even combines some parties into a single column with other parties (naturally, only minor parties are treated that way). It is ridiculous for paper ballots to look like that. The New York city Board of Elections, so far, is not returning my calls and e-mails, asking for a picture of what the special election ballot looked like.
# 7 NO sample PDF ballots on the internet ???
The new number for Chris Hoeppner is 286.
The total numbers for Turner = 74,684 and Weprin = 67,303.
a link I found of a sample of the ballot http://empire.wnyc.org/files/2011/09/sample-ballot2.jpg
SWP was listed below the Green even though they had no candidate. The D and R got separate columns for each party that endorsed them. A rigged ballot.
Citizen1, thank you very much for that link to the ballot. As you say, the major party candidates, with all their cross-endorsement lines, are on the top line of the ballot. Then, all by itself, is the name of Chris Hoeppner, in a lower line. The image is really fuzzy but it is possible to see that. I will keep trying to get a clear picture of that ballot.
I looks ok when I click on it to enlarge it.
I read that Weprin(D) won Queens 52-48. That means Turner(R) won Brooklyn by about 67-33. Since NY-9’s Jews live in Brooklyn, that means Obama is Dead Man Walking. (Rush Limbaugh says, ‘Debt Man Walking.’) I predict that Obama will be the first Democrat to lose the Jewish vote. Richard, please verify.
The old, creaky voting machines made in the 1960’s had eight columns. The new, paper ballots fed into scanning machines are squished into six columns. If the new, paper ballots were wider, then SWP would have been in the seventh column. I know because I vote in NY. Also, the Working Families Party got 10 times more votes than the Socialist Workers Party. (1,400 vs. 140) The two parties have similar platforms, but many people will not vote for the word, ‘Socialist.’
#15, some voters do want to vote for a candidate who has the label “Socialist.” In November 2010, a SWP candidate for US House in Iowa got 2.60%, and a SWP candidate for US House in New York got 2.33%. In both instances, there was a Republican and a Democrat also running.
Was there a Working Families Party candidate in Iowa and NY in 2010? My lasst sentence should have said, ‘The two parties have similar platforms, but many people would prefer to vote for the Working Families Party, instead of the Socialist Workers Party.
Green Party got 58,000 votes for governor in 2010; 50,000 is required for party status, and is reserved for four years. Greens did not run a candidate in NY-9. That is why column F was blank.