Early voting begins Saturday in New York.
Local elections are November 7th, but voters can get a head start, according to Albany County Democratic Commissioner of Elections Kathy Donovan, who says "The hours on Saturday and Sunday are 9 to 5. They are 9 to 5 every other day, except for Monday and Wednesday, they're 12 to 8 p.m. in Albany County."
New Yorkers will cast their vote for different local races depending on where they are registered. All New Yorkers will vote on two ballot proposals:
The first removes the special constitutional debt limitation now placed on small city school districts, so they will be treated the same as all other school districts. The second proposal makes it easier to construct or repair sewage facilities by exempting those projects from the overall debt limits that apply to local governments. The current sewer debt exception expires on January 1, 2024. This amendment extends it for ten more years until January 1, 2034.
Donovan says early voting comes with an abundance of choices and availabilities for voters. "Well, they can go to any of the early voting polling sites. If they happen to be out shopping at Colonie Center say, and that's nowhere near their home, and they want to vote at Pine Grove Church on Central Avenue, they can go there if they wanted to vote. If they were taking a ride out to Thacher Park and they wanted to go out to Berne and vote they could do that. You know, you can vote at any of the locations that are open,” said Donovan.
Ravo Root, a community organizer with Citizen Action of New York in the Southern Tier, says early voting has been a gamechanger. "Expanding early voting has been really quintessential to getting folks out to the polls," Root said. "I know many people who haven't been able to vote before, because they were working, or they had something going on on Election Day. So it gives folks that opportunity. And I think we need to talk about it as much as possible. So people have that civic engagement, and are able to express those fundamental rights."
Common Cause New York Executive Director Susan Lerner says Saturday is the only day new voters can register to vote in person at a poll site and cast their ballots the same day.
"We worked with the legislature to change the deadline for voter registration from what had been a 25-day deadline before the election, to 10 days before the election, which is what's in our state constitution," said Lerner. "That means that the last day to register to vote overlaps the first day of early voting. The governor just signed a bill, which ensures that someone who hasn't registered in advance, but still wants to vote and is eligible, can go to their early voting location and register on the spot, file an affidavit ballot. And then after the election, the Board of Elections will check to be sure that they are eligible to be registered. And if they're eligible, their vote will be cast."
Root urges voters to go online and look up hours for early voting in their local area as they're not uniform between counties, and they're not the same day after day.
"You can also go to the New York State Board of Elections website, and go out, and there's a bunch of different websites that you can go on, and find where your polling places and there will also tell you where your early voting location is. Voting is so important, and everyone should get out there and vote this cycle. These off election years usually have lower turnout. So it's so important that everyone gets out there and expresses their rights and votes," Root said.
Donovan adds that if you have been issued an absentee ballot for an election, you cannot cast a ballot on a voting machine for that election.
"What happens is you have to vote by an affidavit ballot, so that we can check to make sure that you didn't send your absentee ballot back and vote on the machine," Donovan said.
Early voting continues through Sunday, November 5th. Election Day is Tuesday, November 7.
