Me and My Unlimited Metrocard

The main thing you need to know about my day today is this:

I took 10 subways and 4 buses.

That's because I had to go to the Bronx twice.

After the endless day I had yesterday, I knew I was not going to haul my ass up to Hunts Point when the polls opened at, ahem, 6AM. (Plus I wanted to vote and figured I'd have to do that in the morning or not at all.)

So I went up at lunchtime instead.

Guess what?

People in Hunts Point don't vote at lunchtime.

At all.

After an hour of stalking the polling place, I packed it in and went down to school to do some more research.

Then I went back up for the post-work "rush." It was pretty slow, but there were in fact real live voters. And I talked to them. Yes I did. I even talked to some in my ridiculously rusty Spanish. And I got phone numbers from seven(!) of them. (Prof. Padwe had suggested that we call them the following day, once the results were known, to get their reactions.)

Then I headed over to my folks' place to watch the returns on NY1 (the local cable channel, which Zach and I don't get because we have DirecTV). If you're not familiar with NYC election law, the key thing to know is that in a primary, the mayoral candidate needs 40% of the vote to avoid a runoff. And, well, the top vote-getter on Tuesday night, Fernando (Freddy) Ferrer, had 39.95%. I am not making this up.

[More background info for out-of-towners: This year's Democratic primary was effectively a four-way race, and until just before primary day, three of the four were in a statistical dead heat behind Ferrer, the front-runner. Then one of the three, Anthony Weiner (Congressman from Queens) started surging, and it looked like he might, in fact, force a runoff.]

I waited as long as I could to see what might unfold, until my folks (and my Aunt Ellie, who was visiting) were about to pass out from exhaustion, and finally went home a little before midnight.

Will there ever again be an election in which the results are known definitively that very night???