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Via CNN News

Four days before Election Day and four days after Superstorm Sandy ravaged the East Coast, Dennis Kobitz, administrator for the Union County Board of Elections, is on his way to polling sites to check on voting machine deliveries.

It would normally take Kobitz a few minutes to cross into the nearby city of Roselle from the Board of Elections office in Elizabeth, a city near Newark. This time it stretches into a 30-minute adventure.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Kobitz says while waiting his turn to pass through an intersection where the traffic lights have been out for days. “I never thought I’d be saying ‘after the hurricane’ in New Jersey.”

Sandy’s impact is most noticeable in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, the scene of widespread flooding, power outages and hurricane-force winds.

In New Jersey’s Bergen County, 327 voting locations have been consolidated to make up for those areas that still don’t have power. At each displaced polling place, election organizers hope to have officials directing voters to the correct polling place.

In Connecticut, another state slammed by Sandy, between 90 and 95 polling locations were still without power, according to Secretary of State Denise Merrill. That number is an improvement: More than 100 polling locations were out of power two days earlier.

Up the coast on New York’s Long Island, where Sandy also unleashed her wrath, Nassau County officials are scrambling to make sure polling sites are ready for Tuesday.

William Biamonte, Democratic Commissioner for the county board of elections, makes his way to a warehouse housing thousands of polling machines. The power only recently returned and a 1950s elevator is finally back online, allowing for election workers to move the droves of machines to the loading docks.

“Come hell or high water, and we got both of them, people will be voting on Tuesday,” Biamonte said. “It’s gonna happen, it’s a question of how much of an inconvenience it will be.”

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Article courtesy cnn.com