Residents anxiously await election results after casting ballots

Posted

It was a quiet night on Nov. 3 across the North Shore as residents patiently waited at home for the 2020 Election results after casting their ballots throughout the day.

“I think it will be close but I feel Donald will probably win,” said Glen Cove resident Philip Carlos, who had headed to the polls to vote at 6:30 a.m. to vote at Connolly School. He said the line was long, but it moved fast, taking him 25 minutes to cast his ballot.

David Cantor, another Glen Cove resident, said he arrived at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church to cast his ballot.

“It was all very civilized,” Cantor said. “I arrived at about 6 a.m. to be there as the doors opened and was a bit surprised to see there was already a line. Everyone was wearing a mask and keeping a reasonable distance so I felt quite safe.”

Cantor said that he made it inside at 6:30 a.m. However, Glen Cove resident Peter Luzynski had a very different experience.

“I voted at Landing School,” he said. “I was stopped at the door and asked where I lived. I told them and was told to go to a table in the back corner. It was a very small room. We were almost shoulder-to-shoulder. There was no social distancing. The blue booths where you mark your ballot were next to each other, no 6-foot distance. I asked the woman working there why there was no precautions being taken,. She could not understand it either.”

Luzynski said it took him 15 minutes to vote and that the room was so small it was hard not to bump into another person. “My wife asked me when we got home, do you think we caught the virus?”

As cities across the United States, such as New York City and Washington D.C., boarded up store fronts in anticipation of unrest from the election’s results, City of Glen Cove Police Department Chief William Whitton said that though the department was stepping up patrols, he did not anticipate any unrest in Glen Cove.

But when residents woke up, many final results were not in, including the presidential race between U.S. President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, the 3rd Congressional District race between Congressman Tom Suozzi and challenger George Santos and the Fifth State Senate District race between State Senator Jim Gaughran and challenger Edmund Smyth.

“I’m feeling very anxious, but optimistic,” said Ravin Chetram, the vice president of the Oyster Bay East Norwich Chamber of Commerce. “A lot of things are happening. I couldn’t sleep all night.”

Chetram said he was also nervous about the local elections, as Suozzi and Gaughran are falling slightly behind in their races. “With Long Island, where we’re at, it’s just that everyone is Republican and I have no issues with Republicans,” Chetram said. “I support [Town of Oyster Bay Supervisor] Saladino and I support [Town of Oyster Bay Clerk] Richard LaMarca. We need to have a balance.”

“I think it’s probably a message to the Democratic Party that the policies that they’ve been enacting over the past few years have been unacceptable to the people of Glen Cove,” said John Maccarone of the Glen Cove Republican Club. “I think we have a new state senator in Glen Cove.”

Cindy Silleti of the City of Glen Cove Democratic Committee said that her organization still has faith that Suozzi and Smyth will be victorious because of the record number of absentee ballots, which tend to lean democratic.

As of Wednesday, thousands of absentee ballots remain uncounted because they cannot be opened until seven days after the election.

There were 48,097 absentee ballots in Nassau County and 23,846 in Suffolk County outstanding. Northeast Queens, which Suozzi represents, had 13,947 absentee ballots. The registration of the ballots was 51 percent Democratic, 17 percent Republican and 32 percent blank. 

Laura Lane contributed to this story.