Every Vote Counts (even after Sandy)!

Voting, Housing, Power: Problems Abound, Post-Sandy

More than one million people lack electricity a week after the storm

By Associated Press

Residents line up for bundles of food at an American Red Cross station in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn on Monday. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

NEW YORK (AP) - Voting in a the U.S. presidential election was the latest challenge for the hundreds of thousands of people in the New York-New Jersey area still affected by Superstorm Sandy, as they struggled to get to non-damaged polling places to cast their ballots in one of the tightest elections in recent history.

The campaigns of both President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have long assumed that the heavily Democratic region would support Obama, but determined voters were taking special election shuttles from storm-hit areas and voting by affidavit from any polling place they could reach after officials put emergency measures in place.

Early turnout appeared high, despite some malfunctioning machines and confusion over where to go.

Some polling places were in tents, and some voters were in tears.

"Oh my God, I have been so anxious about being able to vote," said 73-year-old Annette DeBona of hard-hit Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, who was there at dawn. "This is the happiest vote I ever cast in my life."