Election Day coverup; Poll posters are too political

Volume Number 1 Issue Number 7 / November 10 - 16, 2006

Chelsea Now photos by Tequila Minsky

These political posters displayed at a Tribeca poll site on the morning of Election Day were later covered up.

By Lori Haught

Political art stood out behind the “Vote Here” signs at the Communication Workers of America office at 97 Hudson St.

“Polling places are supposed to be neutral,” said Peter Hort, former Republican candidate for Congress, who registered a complaint with the Board of Elections over the art found in his local polling place.

Hort said that this location has been his polling site for a number of years and this problem has happened repeatedly. This year the two most prominently featured political artworks included a poster of President Bush with tape over his mouth and the text “got tape” and a poster with Uncle Sam stating, “So long, suckers! I quit! I’m tired of being the spokesperson for warmongering, racist, oil-hungry scum!”

Actor Harvey Keitel was among the voters at the Tribeca poll site on Tuesday.

Hort said his complaint was not against their political opinion but simply that it’s illegal to display overtly political artwork in a polling site.

“They can do whatever they want 364 days out of the year,” he said. “But in a poll setting, that’s an inappropriate poster.”

Hort said he originally complained to the poll workers when he went to vote at 8:39 a.m. He said the poll workers shrugged their shoulders and did nothing. He said he later called and registered a complaint with B.O.E. and the posters were then covered up.

At press time, Elections was unable to confirm or deny whether the complaint was on record, but a representative said they had no knowledge of political artwork being at any of the polling sites prior to Election Day.

Similarly, in the 2004 elections, the artwork in an exhibit on display at the Puffin Room, at 435 Broome St., a gallery space in Soho that for years had been used as a polling site, was deemed to be overtly political.

Carl Rosenstein, the Puffin Room’s director, said his gallery hasn’t been banned forever as a poll site, but will be as long Mayor Bloomberg is in office.

“Bloomberg and the Republicans removed it,” he said. “Nothing’s permanent, but that’s the way it is now…. What we had was approved by the Board of Elections,” he added. “They have the right and power to put the polls wherever they want,” he said of the administration. “They didn’t like that we believed in the First Amendment.”

The Puffin Room show had featured politically satirical artwork about then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft; one poster had an image of a Nazi officer with the slogan “Join the H.S.S.,” a satire of the Department of Homeland Security.

By Lori Haught

Political art stood out behind the “Vote Here” signs at the Communication Workers of America office at 97 Hudson St.

Hort said his complaint was not against their political opinion but simply that it’s illegal to display overtly political artwork in a polling site.

“They can do whatever they want 364 days out of the year,” he said. “But in a poll setting, that’s an inappropriate poster.”

Carl Rosenstein, the Puffin Room’s director, said his gallery hasn’t been banned forever as a poll site, but will be as long Mayor Bloomberg is in office.