From dawn till past nightfall on Tuesday, displaced residents from dozens of storm-smashed communities up and down the New York and New Jersey coastlines streamed home, gathering with their neighbors for the first time sinceHurricane Sandy, with one simple goal in mind.
“I wasn’t going to let no hurricane stop me from voting,” said Amos Eberhard, 61, of Queens, who journeyed 90 minutes by bus to the Rockaways from Brooklyn to cast his ballot.
For many people whose hometowns have been evacuated, whose houses were damaged by flooding or fire, or whose regular polling places were rendered unusable by a lack of electrical power, this was an Election Day unlike any in memory.
On Staten Island, voters from flooded-out neighborhoods trudged past National Guard trucks on a sports field and a line of drivers desperate to buy fuel by the local high school, where some said through tears that they had lost everything but their determination.
In Long Beach, the Long Island city that suffered some of the storm’s worst damage, Jose Barcia, a waiter who immigrated from Franco’s Spain — and withstood five feet of water on his first floor last week — said he was grateful just to be able to cast a ballot.
“I love America,” Mr. Barcia said, after voting in a darkened elementary school, where hundreds of people, some walking with canes, pushing strollers or clutching pets, clamored to vote.
And on the barrier islands of New Jersey, where emergency workers from around the nation are removing debris and downed power lines and plowing piles of sand to make the streets passable, Ocean County officials drove a bus across Barnegat Bay to deliver provisional ballots to National Guard troops, Red Cross volunteers, firefighters and law enforcement officers.
Aboard the bus, poll workers rolled into Ortley Beach to see a moonscape of vanished homes or their skeletal remains. In a supermarket parking lot, they found an Army mess tent, a Navy heater and police officers including Summer Cunliffe, 29, of Lakewood, serving up chili, soup and corn bread to relief workers.
Officer Cunliffe said she was grateful for the opportunity to vote, because her attention had been focused on other matters.
“The biggest thing was getting out here and giving the hard-working men and women the food to eat to keep them going,” she said.
Throughout New York, some displaced residents seeking to use provisional ballots to vote away from home reported problems from elections officials who declined to accept them. And in New Jersey, so many displaced residents sought to vote by e-mail or fax that the state extended by three days the deadline for returning provisional ballots, to 8 p.m. on Friday.
But in the hardest-hit locales, municipal officials and ordinary citizens insisted not just on their right to vote, but to do so as close to home as possible.
In Bay Head, where nearly all 800 voters had been evacuated for the storm, Ocean County officials did not think there were enough people currently in the borough to warrant a polling place. But Mayor William Curtis mounted a fierce resistance, and on Monday, the county relented.
“They didn’t want to deliver voting booths down here,” Mr. Curtis said. “They wanted us to go across the bridge because they didn’t think there was going to be enough people here to vote. I just said, ‘No, no, no.’ ”
He added: “This is us. This is our home.”
So Bay Head’s refugees filled the firehouse Tuesday, exchanging survival stories and recovery updates: Who has water? Hot water? Heat? Propane?
“I’m going to vote in here all day long — it’s nice and warm,” declared Brent Wentz, 72, as he arrived early Tuesday.
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