Annemarie Martinez, the poll coordinator for the city Board of Elections in Jamaica Estates, Queens, walked from table to table in P.S. 178’s gym, checking on her staff of poll officers — a group of 13 middle aged men and women who sat ready for a giant stream of voters to pour in.
“Maybe they’ll come after work,” poll official Jay Dean said.
But maybe there weren’t many voters because P.S. 178 is off the beaten path — and there weren’t any signs to help those unfamiliar with the Radnor Road school.
P.S. 178 lay on a one-way street, east of Saul Weprin Drive, where immaculate suburban driveways empty onto the Grand Central Parkway. A copse of skinny, rotten trees hid the school grounds from the traffic jams less than two blocks away.
In fact, this polling area is so well hidden that, on the day that voters were expected to turn out in droves, P.S. 178 was almost empty. Even the Clinton and Obama supporters were absent.
“I’ve been doing this for 17 years and I’ve never seen it so quiet,” said Martinez. “Maybe they thought that they had this place tied up and decided to campaign somewhere else.”
A spokeswoman for the Board of Elections said that there was no reason signs should be in short supply, especially on Super Tuesday.
“They had plenty of signs,” said the spokeswoman, Valerie Vasquez. “We provide signage to all of the polls: I don’t know why they weren’t up.”
The Board of Elections’ phone bank and website enable voters to find the location of their neighborhood polls. But first-time voters and others unfamiliar with the area were forced to rely on flawed directions.
“I don’t know where Radnor Road is,” said one subway worker. “But that way is numbers,” she said pointing south, “and that way,” she said, pointing north, “is names.”
“You want names,” she said.
After asking three transit employees, one gas station attendant, two nurses at an obstetrics clinic, a lone BMX biker and two morning joggers, this reporter could not find P.S. 178.
“Can you tell me where Radnor Road is?” the reporter asked a bus driver.
The driver smiled and pointed north.
“It’s right there,” he said, as the bus ground to a halt.
The road was a dead end.
