OBAMA WINS HISTORIC ELECTION

By Neil S. Friedman

President-Elect Barack Obama Suppose they gave an election and EVERYBODY came?

Well, not quite everybody, but from the unprecedented lines and longer-than-usual waiting times at many polling places on Tuesday in Canarsie — as well as across the city, state and nation — it looks like when the final tally is completed, a record number of voters will have participated in this year's historic presidential election that gives America its first president of African-American descent.

As of Wednesday morning the total popular vote was well over 100 million with Barack Obama amassing an estimated 52 percent to John McCain's 46 percent, which made him the first Democrat in decades to exceed the 50 percent mark. However in the more important electoral vote, Obama more than doubled his opponent's total — 349 to 162.

Almost every polling place in and around Canarsie reported dozens of voters already lined up by the time they opened at 6 a.m. on Election Day. By noon, those same places continued to have a steady stream of voters, though the wait time diminished by early afternoon, only to surge again in the early evening as commuters voted on the way home from work or after supper.

According to Tuesday's Daily News, there has recently been a marked increase in voter registration of Hispanics and black voters throughout the city, from Harlem to Williamsburg to Inwood (in Queens.) Among the five Brooklyn districts that reported the largest spike in voter registrations is Canarsie/East Flatbush, which ranked second with 7.8 percent.

While waiting in line in the basement of Public School 115 on East 92nd Street, Robin Drimmer, an 18-year Remsen Avenue resident, examined an over-sized ballot posted on a nearby wall. She said she regularly votes, but that "this is an important election based on what is going on in politics and the state of the economy."

After casting her vote, East 92nd Street resident Dina Fulton said, "Every election is important, but this time both parties have unique choices — the Democrats with Barack Obama and the Republicans with Sarah Palin — making it a little more special."

According to various media accounts there were scattered problems at some voting places across the city, though Canarsie seemed to have few, while 46-year-old voting machines in a few Brooklyn communities, including Crown Heights and Cobble Hill, endured breakdowns. The city's Board of Elections reported about 2,000 complaints from the borough's polling places, which they attributed "to unprecedented turnout."

Locally, incumbent Democrats easily held on to their seats and were part of a voting pattern across the city and state that retained a majority in the Assembly and gave the party a majority in New York's State Senate and, therefore, full control of the Legislature for the first time since the Great De-pression.

Going into Tuesday's election, the Democrats trailed 31-29 with two vacancies. They won 32 seats in the 62-seat chamber.

In local races, incumbent state senators John Sampson, Kevin Parker and Carl Kruger won by wide margins, while in the Assembly, Helene Wein-stein garnered 83 percent of the vote to outdistance her opponent 4-1; Alan Maisel received 95 percent of the votes over his Conservative Party challenger and incumbent Assemblyman Nick Perry ran unopposed.