The Jersey City Independent"

At 8:20 pm last night, as votes were coming in to the office of Hudson County superintendent of elections Marie Borace, deputy clerk Janet Larwa was accepting the last court-ordered absentee ballot in her office at 583 Newark Ave. The office was closed, and the process of receiving the cartridges from voting machines was in full swing next door at the county voting office where the results were being processed and posted in real time to the county’s website. The talk on the fifth floor of the county office building was of disappointment at the low voter turnout, even on a day with pleasant weather.

Meanwhile at City Hall, a small group gathered to watch a live simulcast of the election results in the City Council chambers. The management information specialist in attendance monitored the live feed on a laptop connected to a projector, periodically refreshing the county’s website with the most up-to-date results from the polling.

Among those in attendance was Devida Jones Wilson, the niece of independent Ward F candidate LaVern Webb-Washington. Wilson said she’d arrived at City Hall at 7:55 pm, shortly before polls closed, to keep an eye on the results for her aunt. When votes began rolling in, Wilson felt confident that the tallies favored Webb-Washington, a prediction that, in the end, did not turn out to be accurate. But hope is not lost for Webb-Washington — she is locked in a tight battle to enter a runoff with incumbent Viola Richardson, trailing the Manzo team’s Ron-Calvin Clark by less than 10 votes, with absentee and provisional votes still to be counted.

On the other side of Downtown, just down the street from Ward E councilman Steven Fulop’s headquarters, the Lamp Post Bar & Grille was full of Jersey City residents who came out for Melissa Surach’s weekly Babyhole open-mic event featuring comedy and live music. While Surach had promised in her email blast that “we’ll watch the returns from the big Jersey City election come in together,” the Boston Celtics were on the TV, not the live streaming results.

Most everyone at the bar was aware of the local elections but few actually participated, physically embodying what the polls showed. David Rowan, a Journal Square resident since 2005, admitted that he did not vote, despite receiving countless campaign mailers, phone calls and solicitations at Journal Square. Citing no motivation, Rowan noted that he was “just not impressed” by any of the candidates.

Another Lamp Post patron, Michael from Hamilton Park, said that he was turned off by an overly ambitious neighbor who consistently pressured him to vote for his chosen candidate. He also was not impressed by what he called the campaigns’ “marketing material” and lack of “concrete info” aside from what “spin he read in newspapers.”

Ward E residents David and Mary Beth bucked the trend, however, and both proudly voted. Though Mary Beth admitted to making “last minute decisions,” David said he had followed the campaigns and added, “If I get to vote, I should probably do it.” Both said they felt bombarded by information about the campaign but felt that, overall, the campaigns were more personality driven than based on issues. When informed that Steven Fulop had clinched their ward, they seemed relieved.

“I’m glad,” Mary Beth said. “I don’t want Healy to do whatever he wants.”