Vaccine mandate makes COVIDIOTS out of tennis fans clustering on line at the U.S. Open

 

Gothamist

 Tennis fans who flocked to the first in-person U.S. Open in two years were forced to endure hours-long lines on Monday, leading to “completely chaotic” and dangerous crowding outside the stadium, according to attendees.

The full capacity tournament drew thousands of visitors to the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens. But while the event was slated to begin at 11 a.m., fans said they were forced to wait outside for close to 2 hours — keeping them from some of the early matches and leaving attendees at risk of heat-related illness.

 Jessica Pearson, a Greenpoint resident who previously worked at the U.S. Open and has been coming to the tournament for more than two decades, said the lines and confusion were unprecedented.

“It was out of control,” said Pearson. “There was no crowd control from the stadium all the way back to the subway.”

In a statement, the U.S. Tennis Association said the delays were primarily caused by fans bringing an “inordinate number of bags this year.” They also said that patrons had arrived at the gates earlier than usual. "Previously, the number of patrons arriving to the grounds prior to 11 a.m. averaged approximately 10,000," the group said. "This year, the number arriving prior to 11 a.m. was only 3,000."

Others speculated that a last-minute decision to require COVID-19 vaccinations at the tournament was to blame. The USTA announced the mandate on Friday, after facing criticism for their original plan not to require vaccines or masks.

Pearson said the hold-up seemed at least in part due to broken metal detectors and a lack of staff. However, the association denied that vaccination requirement was a factor.

“The slow down seems to be centered on the Bag Check area,” the USTA statement noted. “The process to check proof of vaccination seems to be working smoothly and is not a major contributor hampering entrance to the site.

New York City Board Of Elections are very shitty at math

 

NY Post

The embattled city Board of Elections mismanaged key facets of its early voting program, The Post has learned, including allocating ballot scanners with little regard for demand and stuffing so many voters into balloting sites that it overwhelmed its system.

The examination of the BOE’s preparations comes as thousands of New York City voters again faced hours-long lines Wednesday to cast their votes in the hotly contested 2020 general election, giving the patronage-ladened agency its latest black eye.

Take two locations in Brooklyn: The BOE only sent five ballot scanners to the New York City College of Technology on Jay Street, even though it assigned more than 60,000 voters to the site for early voting. And Barclay’s Center was allocated the same number of scanners, despite being the early voting spot for another 32,000.

That pattern repeats in Manhattan. The Board of Elections provided only five scanners to the early voting polling site at the Church of St. Anthony of Padua in SoHo, despite assigning it nearly 81,000 voters — roughly one scanner per 16,000 voters.

Just a seven-minute walk away, BOE also set up its smallest early voting polling site in the city at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts near Washington Square Park. However, officials set up three scanners for the 8,300 voters who can use the site — roughly one scanner for every 2,800 voters.

The Post sent reporters to 15 early voting sites in the two boroughs and found the scanners were unevenly distributed and that even busiest sites had no more than seven such devices.

“It makes no sense, it shows you how poor their planning is and how unprepared they were for people to use early voting,” said John Kaehny, the executive director of the good-government group Reinvent Albany. “I think the BOE has completely misallocated resources and failed to the simple math to figure out how many poll books and scanners it needs based on the number of likely voters.”