At 8:50 am the line of voters at John Jay began at the entrance to the school on 7th Avenue between 4th and 5th Street and snaked around almost to 8th Avenue.
It’s the longest line I’ve ever seen at any polling place in NYC. The mood is jovial. People are in a good mood, excited to be there. There’s a PS 39 bake sale in progress.
A local politico was handing out Josh Skaller brochures for the 2009 City Council election (he’s going for De Blasio’s seat; De Blasio is now running for Public Advocate not wanting to take on Marty’s third term).
Some people stop to ask, "If I know my voting district do I have to wait on line."
But there’s one line to get in the building. If you’ve got the voting card you got in the mail you can go straight to your voting booth in the hallway or auditorium. But if you need your building looked up (like I did) there’s a fairly short line.
I vote in the 36th District and there was a line of about 30 people on one aisle of the John Jay auditorium and only one voting booth.
District 8 had two voting booths and a very short line. Go figure.
But things were moving very quickly: I don’t think there are that many undecided voters around here standing in the voting booth waiting for inspiration to strike.
When I got to the front of the line the woman looking up names in the registration book looked bad.
I told her my name and she said, "I’m feeling really sick. There’s something going around my house."
She slowly went through the CO’s looking for Crawford. Finally I directed her to the CRs, I found my name, signed in and then she leaped up and got sick behind the voiting booth.
"Mister, mister," I heard her calling from behind the booth. One of the supervisors finally came over to her at the urging of some of the people on line. One woman dragged over a large garbage pail.
The line stopped moving for a few minutes and some people on line looked slightly nervous.
"Do you think we should get her a doctor?" someone said.
"Don’t you think they should get someone to replace her," someone else said.
When I got outside a woman walking out of the building stopped me.
"Don’t you feel great?" she asked.
I heard her talking on her cell phone to a friend.
"I feel amazing. I’m weeping. This feels so good."