The run-off elections for Public Advocate and Comptroller were held today in our fair city. In the last open Council election, only 16 percent of all eligible voters actually turned out, and North Brooklyn scrounged up even fewer. Tonight I went to the polls wagering that there would be a three percent turn-out...and found that my district's table had seen 20 people all day. A fellow Brooklyn voter said that he was voter #30 at his district's table, and a Manhattan suffragist felt that more people were working at the polls than entering them. So let's do the math! There are currently around four million voters in NYC. Of these, 66 percent, or 2.4 million, are registered Democrats. Given that there are around 6,200 election districts citywide, if the average turn-out/district today was 25 voters, then 155,000 Democrats voted, or 6.4 percent of the population. Also note that an election requires around 30,000 poll workers, which means 1 in 5 people at the polls today was...truly civically engaged.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
If we used Instant Runoff Voting, we could have also saved the $15 million cost of the runoff election paid by our taxes.
The 6.4 percent estimation is accurate! http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/nyregion/07turnout.html
Post a Comment