Election day round-up: the highs and lows of a long day

At 90 years old, Beatrice Woods may be the city’s oldest active voter. She is seen here leaving her voting precinct at the Community Center. Former mayor and city councilmember Tom Jankowski is assisting her.

By Charles Sercombe
The public schools’ millage renewal and city council incumbents all got a thumbs up from voters.
The second time proved to be the charm for the school millage renewal, winning by a whopping 1,563 votes to 348 – an 82-percent approval from voters.
The millage was defeated last February in a special election.
Council incumbents Anam Miah, Robert Zwolak and Abu Musa finished in the top three and will face challengers Susan Dunn, Saad Almasmari and Cathie Gordon.
Those knocked out of the primary were Monzurul Karim, Mohamed Alsomiri and Frank Woodman.
The November election will reduce the field of six candidates down to the final three, who will then go on to serve a four-year term on council.
Although Miah was the top vote-getter, the election was super tight. Miah finished just 21 votes from second-place finisher Zwolak and 93 votes from sixth-place finisher Gordon.
What that likely means is that anything can shift come the November election.
Note to candidates: There are no guarantees and you still have your work cut out.
The school millage result was perhaps the most surprising. Although supporters of the millage worked very hard in reaching out to voters, no one expected a slam dunk.
Schools Superintendent Tom Niczay credited that hard work from teachers, staffmembers, the school board and volunteers for the success of the millage.
He downplayed his own role, despite investing many hours into the campaign.
“I was just the passenger,” he said.
As far as election day went, you could not ask for a more pleasant day, weather-wise. The skies remained sunny and the temps were in the low 80s with little humidity.
Voter turnout went slow until about 5 p.m. when a steady stream of voters hit the precincts.
Once again, absentee ballots played a large roll. In the weeks leading up to the election a number of candidates zeroed in on getting supporters to vote early via absentee ballots. Some 872 ballots were issue, but only 669 were returned.
In total, 1,911 voters turned out.
A few tidbits we noticed on election day:
The preferred means of transportation for at least three candidates was by bike, which was a nice alternative to the number of candidates and their supporters tooling around town with their SUVs decked out in campaign signs.
And for a small town like Hamtramck, do you really need to drive around?

On election day, City Clerk August Gitschlag has to constantly remind campaign volunteers to stay at least 100 feet away from polling places.

Don’t hold us to this, but possibly the oldest voter participating in the election was Beatrice Woods, who recently turned 90 years old. She has been voting in every election, she said, since 1945.
And she still insists on casting her ballot by going to the polls. For those who sat this election out, and there are about 8,000 of you who did, let that be a lesson in taking your constitutional right to vote seriously.
And speaking of civic duty, we saw several voters bring their kids in tow to the polls, which is always heartwarming to see. What a great way to instill the value of voting in the next generation.
For City Clerk August Gitschlag, election day is a long day indeed. He handles it pretty well, from what we saw, but he did seem to have one pet peeve: Folks passing out campaign literature stepping over the 100-foot boundary they legally had to stay behind from the precincts.
It’s one of those cases where you give someone an inch and they insist on taking a mile.
One tradition is still alive on election day: There are still some candidates and their supporters, and just those interested in the election, who hang out at city hall after the polls close to wait for election results.
It’s a chance for everyone to let their hair down and get to rub elbows with fellow residents.
Plus there is an adrenaline build-up to when results are handed out. Despite the ease of finding out results through online social networks, nothing beats being there in the middle of the action.
And speaking again of the nice weather, candidates and their supporters who will meet again in November might want to bottle these warm days. It’ll come in handy on election day.