Voting is supposed to be the easy part.
Rep. Charles Rangel and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman both had trouble casting their ballots in Manhattan Tuesday morning.
A scanner at Rangel’s polling station inside P.S. 175 in Harlem malfunctioned and poll workers made him fill out a second paper ballot.
When asked what went wrong, Rangel joked to a Capital New York reporter, “If I explain to you, The Post may get me indicted” and predicted the headline the next day would read “Rangel Voted Three Times.”
Schneiderman had similar problems 40 blocks away.
When his ballot was rejected twice at P.S. 75 on West End Avenue for “unreadable marks,” the attorney general grew frustrated.
“Someone has to take charge — what’s going on here?” Schneiderman asked an aide.
The third time was the charm — and 15 minutes later Schneiderman’s attempt to vote was successful.
“This new system requires people to get exactly right, filled-in, and some folks who have either bad handwriting, as I do, and I was actually kept after school in second grade because it was so bad,” he told reporters outside the polling site.
“Or people are, you know, somewhat senior citizens are having more trouble. So we’re going to just check up on that,” he said.
The New York Public Interest Research Group said it had 120 calls by mid-afternoon, but “less than a handful” were serious.
A Board of Elections official said he had no immediate reports of any problems.