West Farms 10460: A Special Election Marked by Low Voter Turnout

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Brian Lehrer: It's Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we return to our series, West Farms 10460, about one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Bronx, one of the hardest hit by COVID and COVID unemployment, and how to bring more equality of all kinds to the neighborhood near the Bronx Zoo and the Cross Bronx Expressway.

We've spent the last few weeks in the series speaking to candidates vying to represent the neighborhood in city council and replace Ritchie Torres, who was elected to Congress recently. The special election to fill that seat was Tuesday. There is no clear winner yet and voter turnout was-- Disappointingly isn't even the word, doesn't begin to say how disappointingly low voter turnout was, even though there were 10 people on the ballot. To give you a sense of just how low it was. In a district with more than 81,000 registered voters, turnout only stands at about 3,600. With me now to run through the results, and also to put the low voter turnout into context is WNYC and Gothamist news editor, David Cruz. Hey, David, so great to have you on the show today. Hi.

David Cruz: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with this as an early test of rank choice voting in New York City because there were 10 candidates on the ballot. I don't think any of them got even 30%, right?

David Cruz: Correct. Right now as it stands-- What we know right now is that Oswald Feliz, a tenant lawyer, and former state committeeman for the 78th assembly district is in the lead with about 973 votes. He came as a surprise because unlike John Sanchez and Elisa Crespo, two other candidates in the race, he didn't have support from a Super PAC, or union endorsements like Aisha Bravo, another candidate who also received tons of Super PAC support.

Sanchez and Crespo are not too far behind. One of the candidates including Feliz unable to secure 50% of the vote, it could trigger the process of the rank choice voting counting process, provided absentee ballots don't all skew to one candidate. As my colleague, Brigid Bergin explained to me that the process may not happen until the second week of April, April 7th, after the Board of Elections has received all the absentee ballots. Just how many rounds we'll see in this election remains to be seen because this race was pretty tight.

Brian Lehrer: This is a good opportunity to explain a little bit about rank choice voting again because this is an extreme example of it, the way the math appears to me. 10 candidates in the race, the highest vote-getter got like 28%, you have to get to 50% in order to win the race. The way they do it, David, correct me if I'm wrong, here's how rank choice voting works.

First, the lowest placing candidate, so in this case, the 10th place candidate gets eliminated, and whoever that person's voters put as their second choice, gets those votes. If that doesn't put anybody over the 50% margin, then you do the same thing with the 9th place vote-getter, that person gets eliminated, and their second-choice votes go to somebody. Before we even get to third, fourth, and fifth place choices, because you can rank up to five candidates. In this scenario, it's going to take a long time to get somebody to 50%. It's weird.

David Cruz: Correct. I think it's also made even worse by the fact that you had such low voter turnout as well, and of course, you pretty much summed it up correctly, in terms of how the process works. I also should mention that voters do not have to make five choices, they can easily just pick one. That will also help speed up the process depending on whether or not a voter actually decided to just vote for one candidate. You're right, it can take a couple of weeks, we saw that in other special election races before. This is a very new way of waiting it out. Back in the day, you used to know right away who won a race on primary night, more or less, and now it's just going to take even longer, and that can easily cause some frustration.

There also was, from what I understood, some confusion surrounding rank choice voting. The candidates had a forum recently where they feel as if they had to act as an educator and a teacher on how the process works. People were a little bit dismayed by just why it's become a little bit cumbersome. Obviously, the idea is to just give voters even greater choice, and there could very well be someone that they also prefer to win, but back then you can do that, but with rank choice voting, you could do that now. I think it's going to take some time before people can really get used to the idea of rank choice voting and why it can be a little bit better than just straightforward voting.

Brian Lehrer: I want to mention that there was some big money that deserves scrutiny, and we gave it scrutiny when we have this candidate for a candidate interview on the show, but deserves ongoing scrutiny. Big money thrown behind one of the candidates, John Sanchez, who's currently in second place, so he has a chance of being elected to City Council Member. You reported in Gothamist on this with the headline, "The Most Expensive Election In NYC History": Why Deep-Pocketed PACs, Political Action Committees, Are Laser Focused On City Council Races. Isn't the Walton family that owns Walmart, one of the richest families in America, dumping a lot of money into this poorest congressional district in America in the Bronx city council race.

David Cruz: Correct. There is a Super PAC that had been established for a couple years now, but until recently it began seeing an $800,000 infusion from Alice Walton, who is the heir of the Walmart Corporation and according to Forbes Magazine, one of the richest women in the world. The Super PAC is called New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, and the PAC spent about $120,000 on mailers, and get out to vote messaging on behalf of Sanchez. There were two other PACs that also pumped a total of $120,000 in favor of Sanchez. He definitely had a lot of support from outside sources.

It's still unclear why he was specifically the beneficiary of these monies. He is a supporter of charter schools, and from what we've seen in previous reports, Alice Walton is also a supporter of charter schools as well. When I spoke with Sanchez, he told me that he had nothing to do with the Super PACs, and he is not for sale. It is worth pointing out that even money did not put him over the edge, it doesn't always necessarily mean that the more money you have, or more money that's spent on your behalf is a guarantee to win.

When you do the math of the amount of money that was spent for the 15th Council District, which stands somewhere around $880,000, between campaign money spent and other Super PACs that contributed to the race, which I think is a pretty significant figure for a special election. That ranks about $256 spent to convince one voter to go to the polls, and that's much larger than the $83 spent per voter just North of the 15th which is the 11th Council District, which had a special election that very same day.

Brian Lehrer: Can you put into context, Tuesday's low voter turnout? How does turnout in District 15 relate to turnout in other local races? As you say, there was another one in the Bronx this week, and there were a few in Queens over the last few weeks that were special elections too. How would you compare voter turnout?

David Cruz: Turnout is historically low in the 15th Council District. It's been that way for the however many years I've been covering the Bronx which is close to 10 years. When you compare the 15th to the 11th Council District which had double the number of voters come out to vote in the special election with about 6,994 voters casting a ballot, that compares to about 3,431 for the 15th. There's not one reason, turnout has always been low for that district.

Also when you look or compare those numbers to the 12th Council District in the Co-Op City area, which is also in the Bronx, that saw a little over 7,000 people vote. When you break those down to the percentage of voters who are eligible to vote, they're at 6%, which is pretty low, though not as low as 15th where 4% of eligible voters turned out, and that's also the lowest among the other special elections we've seen since this past December. Generally speaking, turnout in special elections are pretty low and we barely ever really see a double-digit turnout. The largest turnout was the race for the 45th Council District to replace Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, where we saw an 11% turnout. There's not just one reason why we see such low voter turnout within the 15th but also within the Bronx writ large. There's just a serious issue when it comes to apathy, when it comes to distrust of lawmakers, and it's pretty emblematic, and then it blankets the entire borough.

Brian Lehrer: Are there barriers to voting that relate to poverty? There was at least early voting, which is new to New York. There was about a week of voting in-person in addition to Election Day, how would you describe the barriers to voting, even for people who might be so inclined, but would have to go to more effort than maybe their circumstances easily allow?

David Cruz: In terms of that question, I don't think there are too many barriers, although I think that the issues are that the priorities for voting are just not there for voters in the 15th. There are issues of people being rent-burdened, there are health problems there that can cause people to really just take it easy and not want to go out and vote. One of the more glaring reasons, and this comes from engaged voters and political insiders that I spoke with, is the lack of civic engagement taught at schools writ large.

I walked around the neighborhood of Belmont the day after the elections, yesterday, and Belmont falls in the 15th. I spoke to this one resident who coincidentally used to work at the Board of Elections. He said the problem is simply voter disengagement and a lack of understanding in the power of voting. He voted, but he told me that he's found neighbors over the years and consistently who stopped believing in what government can do for them.

Another man, he's a building super, I spoke with him. He confirmed what this former BOE employee said that he simply doesn't believe in what government can do for him anymore because he's found, time and again, instances where politicians have been arrested for malfeasance. It seems as though like politics has been given a really bad name. Another person was unaware that there was even an election taking place. Another voter or perspective voter said that they are registered, but they just did not know enough about the candidates to really go out and make a concerted effort to vote.

The city has been trying to make voting more accessible. I think when you factor in voter disengagement and an apathy, or even lack of education, that's a recipe for why we see such low voter turnout.

Brian Lehrer: What are city and voter advocacy groups doing to address low voter turnout generally?

David Cruz: We know that over the years, the New Yolk city campaign finance board has paid closer attention to areas like the Bronx which have such low voter turnout through just NYC votes campaign. That's their campaign that they help highlight the impact of voting. Also, we have the Bronx Democratic Party, which has been trying to get more people to vote, but it's been a practice that we've seen in recent years. Back then, there used to be this premise and this theory that the Bronx Democratic Party simply did not want people voting because they wanted just a certain block of voters to come out and vote for a specific incumbent.

There are efforts that are being made. Obviously, we have early voting, and we have greater social media campaigns to try and get people to come out and vote. A lot of it does come down to the candidates as well. I think a lot of the candidates in this specific race were really trying to make a greater effort to convince people to head out to the polls, but I think some of them had mentioned that COVID has kept people from wanting to come out and participate in greater numbers. I think once COVID is behind us, we'll really just get a greater sense of how much of concerted effort there will be to get more and more people to come out to the polls.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, since we're having this conversation in the context of our series, West Farms 10460, focusing on this one neighborhood in the Bronx that doesn't get much media attention, and is also in what we always hear is the poorest congressional district in America, would you say that any West Farms issues were highlighted very well in this competition, 10 people desperate to represent them and have this job and go to city council to represent the district? Did anything get clarified or anything get made more prominent in a way that might make a difference for the neighborhood once whoever it is takes their seat?

David Cruz: I'm going to say no, specifically, because they were really speaking on broader terms. They were talking about issues of overdevelopment. They were talking about folks who are rent-burdened. There didn't seem to be any real effort to just hone in on West Farms. I think there are a lot of other issues at play within the district that have inspired these candidates to craft their messaging around just broader topics. I'm going to say no, I don't think that there was much of an effort to just really zero in on West Farms.

I should point out, and you've just mentioned this that, it is true that there isn't a lot of newspaper coverage within this area. That compares to the 11th Council District, which has two newspapers to help amplify the fact that there's a special election. The fact that there isn't a newspaper or some real, greater media coverage for this specific district speaks to why we're seeing such a consistently low voter turnout. It'll only take a major effort to try and amplify, and give this neighborhood great coverage before we can start seeing folks coming out to the polls.

Brian Lehrer: Hey, David, you know what? I'm going to extend this just a little bit because I see we just got a call from a poll worker who worked the special election this week. Let's see what Diana in the Bronx has to say. Diana, you're on WNYC.

Diana: Hi, thanks for picking my call. I wanted to point out that [inaudible 00:16:25].

Brian Lehrer: Diana, I just want to say we have a terrible phone connection so speak right into your phone as much as you can, we'll see if it makes it hearable.

Diana: Is it better?

Brian Lehrer: Oh, much better. Thank you.

Diana: I want to say two things. One was that I was a poll worker for the election. People came in complaining that maybe they knew who their first choice was, but that it's been so hard for them to find out information about five candidates, let alone all 10 in order to be able to choose five and rank them in order. It was a very hard task to do. I also wanted to point out that one important way, the outside money advantage, John Sanchez was that he knew he had enough money in his budget to be able to pay people to gather particular signatures to get him on the ballot.

The rule in New York for special elections is that whoever hands their signatures in first gets to be first on the ballot. The ballot order is determined by the order in which you hand in your signatures. I think all the other candidates had to depend just on volunteers to gather their signatures. That's one way that most people aren't aware of that money can really disproportionately affect an election because most people who do the rank choice voting, they have different sets of ballots that have the candidates in different orders so that the person who is first isn't first on every ballot.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for working as a poll worker, first of all, and thank you for your eyes on the process in that really interesting and informative way. Diana, please call us again. David briefly, is she right about how you get listed in what order on the ballot? Just if you hand in enough petition signatures first, you get listed first?

David Cruz: I personally haven't heard that, Brian. Although I can tell you that I'm not sure whether or not having the most money essentially mattered in this race because John Sanchez didn't really clinch enough votes to put him ahead. I can tell you that it does act as a supplement to the fact that you didn't have to use the money for mailers because the PACs had to use those monies to produce these mailers that went out to prospective voters.

It does call attention to the fact that money doesn't always rule the day. Sometimes it just involves the ground game. I think that's what happened with Oswald Feliz. He had started going out door-knocking a couple of months ago back in November. Clearly, he was trying to establish himself as the next candidate, or the next council member for the district. It's sometimes just good old-fashioned just walking the neighborhood wins the day. That kind of name recognition happens through this kind of door knocking.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting and to Diana's other observation, there's no way to really know but I wonder if rank choice voting, which has many things to recommend it in terms of being a good form of electoral democracy may have dissuaded some people from voting at all if they thought they were required to list five candidates, which as you pointed out earlier, you're not required to do anything but choose one candidate.

If people thought, "Oh, how am I going to figure out one through five," and that became another impediment to taking the effort to vote, who knows? Maybe it's another thing to follow as rank choice voting gets rolled out in a wider way this year, but we will leave it there with David Cruz. David, keep up the great reporting for Gothamist, and thanks for coming on with us.

David Cruz: Thank you, Brian.

 

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