Some New York City Polling Sites Run On Generators

VPM | By Robert Smith and Robert Siegel

Published November 7, 2012 at 12:44 AM EST

Updated October 9, 2024

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Of course, the polls will remain open for a couple of hours yet in New York State. But in New York, this election has proved especially surprising because of Sandy, the storm. NPR’s Robert Smith is on Staten Island, the borough of New York City that was most damaged. And, Robert, are they managing to pull off an Election Day despite the terrible damage of the storm there?

ROBERT SMITH, BYLINE: Well, it all depends on what you mean by pull off. You know, here in New York City, they always have something go wrong in elections. But I’ll tell you right now, I am in a neighborhood that is completely black. It is darkness. There is no electricity. It is block after block of homes with no lights on. And right in the middle is a tent lit by these huge, bright Klieg lights. That is the polling place. There’s no heat. There’s barely any electricity inside. But they are open until 9 o’clock tonight. They haven’t seen too many people today. They said it’s gone smoothly. But all over the city we’re hearing about delays, people don’t know where to go. There’s all sorts of problems here in New York.

SIEGEL: But are there actually voters there right now who are waiting to vote?

SMITH: Yeah. This particular polling place, it’s been light traffic. A lot of people have left this neighborhood. And in fact, Governor Cuomo here in New York signed a proclamation that says anyone can vote anywhere they want in the state with a provisional ballot. They just need to go to a polling place. Which is great, you know, if you’re a refugee and you have left your neighborhood. But it also makes things very difficult here. I mean, it has made lines long all over the city and it’s going to make things difficult as they have to verify those votes. So, luckily here, it’s not just a state that’s really in play for the presidential election, because they’re going to be sorting this out for a long time.

SIEGEL: OK. Sounds like a very complicated and difficult Election Day on Staten Island. NPR’s Robert Smith, thank you.

SMITH: You’re welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Robert Smith

Robert Smith is a host for NPR's Planet Money where he tells stories about how the global economy is affecting our lives.

If that sounds a little dry, then you've never heard Planet Money. The team specializes in making economic reporting funny, engaging and understandable. Planet Money has been known to set economic indicators to music, use superheroes to explain central banks, and even buy a toxic asset just to figure it out.

Smith admits that he has no special background in finance or math, just a curiosity about how money works. That kind of curiosity has driven Smith for his 20 years in radio.

Before joining Planet Money, Smith was the New York correspondent for NPR. He was responsible for covering all the mayhem and beauty that makes it the greatest city on Earth. Smith reported on the rebuilding of Ground Zero, the stunning landing of US Air flight 1549 in the Hudson River and the dysfunctional world of New York politics. He specialized in features about the overlooked joys of urban living: puddles, billboards, ice cream trucks, street musicians, drunks and obsessives.

When New York was strangely quiet, Smith pitched in covering the big national stories. He traveled with presidential campaigns, tracked the recovery of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and reported from the BP oil spill.

Before his New York City gig, Smith worked for public radio stations in Seattle (KUOW), Salt Lake City (KUER) and Portland (KBOO). He's been an editor, a host, a news director and just about any other job you can think of in broadcasting. Smith also lectures on the dark arts of radio at universities and conferences. He trains fellow reporters how to sneak humor and action into even the dullest stories on tight deadlines.

Smith started in broadcasting playing music at KPCW in his hometown of Park City, Utah. Although the low-power radio station at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, likes to claim him as its own.

See stories by Robert Smith