Could heat-related power outages in NYC impact poll sites?

Potential power outages at polling stations caused by the current heat wave are threatening the New York City Board of Elections’ ability to count all first-round ballots on election night, and some first-choice results could be delayed by several days, BOE leadership said. 

The BOE previously said the first round of ranked choice voting results in Tuesday’s elections would be available Tuesday night, with the preliminary ranked choice tabulation not available until July 1. 

Power outages began to hit parts of eastern Queens Monday morning, leaving more than 3,000 people without power as of about 3 p.m. – though it’s not immediately clear if any polling sites in the area or in the city have lost power at this point. And with the heat index expected to exceed 100 degrees on primary day, polling places losing power is not out of the question. So, how will ballots be counted if power outages plague polling places? 

According to Vincent Ignazio, deputy executive director of the city BOE, scanners have backup batteries that would last for some hours in the event of an outage. But if the power is not restored by the time those batteries die, Ignazio said, the process of counting remaining ballots is not unlike that of counting absentee and affidavit ballots. Those ballots (and any still being cast while the power remains out) would get put into “a separate bag in the scanner,” which Ignazio described as “similar to that of a drop box,” and then are scanned “in the borough at a later time.” He estimated that would be in “a few days tops.” 

Some campaigns – particularly that of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo – have been vocal about concerns that the heat could have negative impacts on turnout, and have pushed for water to be handed out to voters and for portable air conditioners to be available on site. Fellow mayoral candidate Brad Lander called on the BOE to make sure air conditioners at polling places were working before primary day. Several candidates encouraged voters last week to vote early with the heat in mind. 

The city put plans in place to deal with potential heat-related problems on election day. “We’ve now delivered thousands of cases of water to the BOE for distribution to their polling sites,” Emergency Management Commissioner Zachary Iscol said at a press conference over the weekend. “Our team continues to source and place fans at polling sites without access to air conditioning.” He added that they have contingency plans in place for election day should any sites lose power, but didn’t go into detail. Meanwhile, a Con Ed spokesperson said the utility company was monitoring polling sites closely and that, in response to the heat wave, additional crews are on call to deal with any problems that arise. 

This wouldn’t be without precedent. In November 2012, the presidential election process in New York City was significantly disrupted following the devastation of Superstorm Sandy. ®Flood damage and power outages knocked out close to 60 polling stations, impacting a total of 143,000 registered voters. The majority were in southern Queens and Brooklyn. 

The Board of Elections merged several impacted polling sites into larger “super” poll sites.   In the Rockaways, for example, nine polling sites were combined into one voting location, housed in an outdoor tent at an elementary school, powered by portable generators.  In some areas where polling sites remained without power, ballots were placed in lock boxes and brought to other locations to be counted, slowing the counting process. Despite the challenges in areas severely impacted by Superstorm Sandy, analysis of the 2012 vote count showed that turnout wasn’t impacted significantly. 

The effect of potential power outages might be somewhat weakened, however, thanks to staggeringly high early voting turnout, which was twice as high as 2021. But it’s not fool-proof. Areas in eastern Queens most affected by outages Monday – Bellerose and Glen Oaks being the hardest hit – are also areas where early voting turnout was not particularly high. Those neighborhoods are also home to many of the Black and South Asian voters both Cuomo and Mamdani are looking to court.