Write your prediction (with your reasons) for the Town Supervisor and County Clerk primaries in the comments below or email me at danweinfeld@gmail.com. I'll update this post to feature the best and most amusing submissions. Maybe there will even be a prize for someone who both gets the races right and entertains us.
ok - some content too.
Absentee Ballots: the Westchester Board of Elections sent out 1,195 absentee ballots in response to requests and has received 463 absentee votes back as of the morning of Friday, June 18. Remember that New York is once again effectively allowing no-excuse-needed absentee balloting during this second primary season under pandemic rules. If you submitted an absentee ballot filling the health/COVID box, no campaign operative is going to be checking up on you that you really aren't home on primary day (as has happened in past Greenburgh primaries). It appears that several hundred absentee ballots are languishing unreturned at the town's many senior care facilities. We understand that in the past, the Board of Elections organized the senior facilities ballots but is not doing so this year. under COVID restrictions.
In contrast, in the 2020 primary for town assembly (which was the under-ticket to two high profile primaries in CD16 and CD17), Greenburgh Democrats returned 8,868 absentee ballots. Yes, the 2020 primary was the mother-of-all (non presidential primary) turnouts, and absentee voting was actively encouraged by the unprecedented move of NY State making voting (relatively) easy for once by proactively sending out absentee ballot applications (sending out absentee ballots unasked would have been too much to expect from NY).
Because of the unusual circumstances of the 2020 primary, there really isn't much to be learned from the absentee vote differentials, except that local primaries are returning to their pre-pandemic tepid level of voter indifference.
Who are our absentee voters so far?
Wise and Mature: The absentee voters so far have a median age of 79 years old and 360 of the 463 are 70 years and older.
Hooray for Hartsdale: The biggest contingent (121 or 26%) are from Hartsdale 10530. In an exception to the problems stated above with senior facilities returns, 34 absentee voters (so far) are from the 555 Grasslands Road senior residences in Valhalla (I did not make that up). 104 are from the "North Greenburgh" zips (10603, 10607, 10523) where Tasha Young may be expected to find her strongest support. A mere 23 come from Edgemont, pointing toward the lack of interest I've observed in this campaign in our presumptive breakaway Republic. In contrast, those meddling kids in Hastings have returned 41 absentee votes, once again showing that voting is that village's favorite pastime and suggesting that the Hastings-on-Hustings will once again play an outsized role in a townwide primary (where the voters have just about nothing at stake - harumph). In contrast to H-on-H, Irvington has returned 20, Dobbs 28. Tarrytown, has returned a remarkable 57 ballots. Tarrytown has a few senior facilities, but still this sum is puzzling and bears watching.
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