Jose Serrano Wins Reelection In NY State Senate District 29

EAST HARLEM, NY — Residents of State Senate District 29 took to the polls Tuesday to vote for their representatives in the state legislature during this year's midterm election.

Democrat Jose M. Serrano handily defeated Republican challenger Jose A. Colon in a less-than-surprising result, according to election night results from the New York City Board of Elections. With 86 percent of precincts reporting, Serrano captured 93 percent of the vote compared to Colon's 7 percent, according to unofficial results from the BOE.

The 29th Senate District — one of the senate's oddest in terms of geography — spans the East Harlem, Upper West Side, Wards Island and South Bronx neighborhoods. Serrano has represented the area since 2005.

City dwellers packed public schools, apartment lobbies and places of worship to form massive lines as they cast ballots in Tuesday's midterm elections. Reports from many polling sites indicated an unusually high turnout for a non-presidential election.

Lines in some places stretched around the buildings where voting booths were set up, even in neighborhoods with no contested elections. Voters waiting outside PS 163 on the Upper West Side lined a full block between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues, a video posted to Twitter shows.

Despite the high turnout, the scene at many poll sites was bleak due to horrible weather and a general sense of dysfunction in how the election was managed. New Yorkers encountered widespread problems with the machines used to record their votes in Tuesday's midterm elections, adding to long waits caused by unusually high turnout. City officials blamed wet ballots on a rainy Election Day for jamming up scanning machines at dozens of poll sites in at least four boroughs.

Photo of Serrano (pictured middle) by Peter Kramer/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images Entertainment