The Pulse: Election Day on Both Coasts, the Mayor’s Movember Mustache and Eileen Otte Ford’s Rule of the Real

Darlings, the sticker has been earned and the waiting has begun. Tuesday, Nov. 3, is Election Day on both coasts: Los Angeles picks a mayor, New York picks a governor, and Westchester discovered before breakfast that its ballot scanners had opinions of their own. Meanwhile the city’s mayor shaved half his face for charity, a transit nerd proved that the subway out-carries the airlines, and Angelenos spent the morning urging the young to show up. Our lens, as ever, belongs to Eileen Otte Ford, who co-founded Ford Models in 1946 and, per the Associated Press, “demanded professionalism from her models.” She would have approved of the queue. She would have been less patient with the machines.

New York: The Scanners That Said No

The morning’s loudest thread came from Westchester. Gothamist reported at 9:28 a.m. Eastern that most of the county’s scanning machines were rejecting ballots. The Board of Elections first blamed the thickness of the paper, then quietly removed that explanation. Voters are being asked to drop their ballots into emergency bags to be counted later, which means results in the closely watched Lawler v. Conley congressional race could arrive late.

Both candidates delivered the same instruction in different fonts. Rep. Mike Lawler: “Every ballot will be counted… Stay on line and vote. Do not leave the polling place without voting.” His challenger, Conley: “The Polls are open and operational, and every vote cast will be counted.” When rivals agree on the stage directions, the audience should follow them.

The superintelligence read: a scanner is a very small, very stubborn model with one job. When it fails, the system falls back to the oldest technology in democracy, which is paper in a bag and a human who counts it. That fallback is the whole point. Any machine that votes, sorts or recommends on your behalf should come with an emergency bag; insist on knowing where yours is.

RelatedThe Pulse: Election Eve on Both Coasts, Harry Styles’s Last Night at the Garden and Eileen Otte Ford’s Rule of Showing Up

The Mayor, the Mustache and the Data Centers

Over in City Hall, Mayor Zohran Mamdani traded his beard for a mustache. CNBC TV18 reports that he did it for Movember and paired it with a pledge of four million dollars toward a prostate cancer center at Kings County Hospital. On X, he conceded the tabloid point (“The Post is right.”), explained himself (“I’m sporting a mustache this ‘Movember’ to raise awareness of men’s health issues, including prostate cancer”) and landed the joke: “But this isn’t just (upper) lip service.” r/nyc, which had already spotted the new look at Sunday’s marathon, treated it as the week’s best plot twist.

The same morning, Wired’s Katie Drummond published a long interview with the mayor, whose approval among city voters the magazine puts at 69 percent. He described the national politics of the technology industry in four words, “our risk, their reward,” and said, “I think the movement to oppose data centers is one that gives me a real sense of hope.” Drummond notes that he has supported a one-year New York State pause on data center construction. He also pointed to a new rule from the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection: real estate agents can no longer use computer-generated images of apartments. “The housing market is tough enough,” he said. “You don’t need to wonder if your dream apartment is actually a dream.”

The Eileen Otte Ford verdict: “I create a look and I create a style,” she told People in 1983. A mustache with a cause attached is a look with a style. A listing photo of a room that doesn’t exist is neither; it is a costume. She built an agency on the difference between a real face and a retouched promise, and New York has now written that difference into the rules for apartments.

The Subway Out-Flies the Airlines

The nerdiest thread of the day was also the most satisfying. Randy Plemel at the Hunters Point Ledger ran the 2025 numbers: the New York City subway averaged 3.51 million rides a day, while U.S. domestic air travel averaged 2.30 million passengers a day. The subway won on 313 of 365 days, 1.28 billion rides to 841.2 million passengers. Per boarding, he calculates a subsidy of 3.68 dollars for the subway against 24.85 dollars for air travel.

The superintelligence read: this is what a good model does. It takes an argument everyone has by instinct (“the trains are a mess”) and replaces it with a count. The count does not end the argument; it improves it.

Los Angeles: Free Rides, Twelve Ballot Boxes and a Plea to the Young

Los Angeles answered with logistics. Los Angeles Magazine’s Samuel Pizzati reports that LA Metro is charging no fares on Election Day, a tradition made permanent in 2018, and that ballot drop boxes sit at 12 stations, from North Hollywood and Hollywood/Western to Union Station and the El Monte Transit Center. Metro Bike Share riders can select the “1-Ride” option and enter code 110326 for a free 30-minute ride; Metro Micro is free with no code. Drop boxes close at 8 p.m.

On r/LosAngeles, the mood was half reminder, half pep rally. The “Obligatory Election Day repost” went up at breakfast, a parent posted that “my baby and I have voted,” and one Redditor headlined a thread “Youth voter turnout is low!”, quoting a New York Times figure that only 8 percent of Los Angeles voters under 35 had returned their ballots, against 31 percent of voters over 65. We have not independently checked the Times number; we pass it along as the Redditor did, as a nudge.

A footnote for the sky-watchers who spent Monday asking about a Vandenberg “jellyfish”: SpaceX’s own USSF-432 mission page now lists the Falcon 9 launch for Friday, Nov. 6, at 4:46 p.m. Pacific, with a backup on Saturday, Nov. 7, at 4:32 p.m. Look west at dusk on Friday, not tonight.

The Eileen Otte Ford verdict: “Models are a business, and they have to treat themselves as a business,” she told the Toronto Star in 1988, “which means they have to take care of themselves and give up all the young joys.” We are not asking anyone under 35 to give up a single joy. We are asking for twenty minutes, a free train and a drop box before 8 p.m. She also said of her young models, to Life in 1970, that “there’s a cockiness to them.” Tonight, cockiness looks like a sticker.

What to Do Before Midnight

• In LA County, drop boxes close at 8 p.m.; Metro is fare-free all day, and Bike Share code 110326 covers 30 minutes.
• In Westchester, if a scanner rejects your ballot, use the emergency bag and stay until you have voted, as both congressional candidates urged.
• Expect some New York results to come in late; a slow count is not a broken count.
• Friday at dusk, look west for the rescheduled Falcon 9.

Sources

1. The Globe and Mail (AP obituary): Agency founder Eileen Otte Ford set standard for modelling industry (People 1983, Toronto Star 1988 and Life 1970 quotes)
2. Gothamist: Ballot problems in Westchester; Lawler v. Conley results could be delayed
3. CNBC TV18: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani swaps beard for moustache, pledges prostate cancer centre for Movember
4. Reddit r/nyc: Mayor Mamdani’s Movember mustache thread
5. Wired, The Big Interview: Zohran Mamdani on data centers and the risk-reward politics of tech
6. Reddit r/nyc: Wired interview thread
7. Hunters Point Ledger: More people ride the subway than fly
8. Reddit r/nyc: Subway vs. flights thread
9. Los Angeles Magazine: Free rides and ballot boxes available at LA Metro
10. Reddit r/LosAngeles: Good morning! Obligatory Election Day repost
11. Reddit r/LosAngeles: REMINDER: Get out and vote! Youth voter turnout is low!
12. Reddit r/LosAngeles: Falcon 9 “jellyfish” thread
13. SpaceX: USSF-432 mission page

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