Early voting in presidential elections at Rockaway YMCA in Averne, Queens on Monday , October 26, 2020. Image Credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office.
Election administrators and policymakers are weighing various changes to New York’s nine-day early voting program, some of which may curtail access if enacted.
By Jarret Berg
More than 2.98 million New Yorkers voted early in the 2024 General Election, excluding mail-in ballots. That’s an increase of 20% (or more than 477,000 voters), compared to the 2.51 million New Yorkers who turned out during the 2020 early voting period. In 2024, the vast majority of New York counties saw an increase in early voting participation compared to four years ago. In response to increased demand, at least in even years, localities have added locations, with New York City deploying 155 early voting sites across the five boroughs in the 2024 General Election.
But not everyone is enamored with the program. This week, Democrats in both chambers of the State Legislature are advancing a bill to cut a weekend of early voting from April 29 Special Elections due to Easter, requiring officials to make up the lost hours on the remaining days. Other Democrats in each house have introduced a bill to prohibit early voting on federal holidays that occur during early voting (e.g. Juneteenth), despite policy in the existing law that explicitly treats holidays like weekend voting days—ie, requiring robust access when voters may have more time to cast a ballot. Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery, is always an early voting day in New York as the annual primary occurs on the fourth Tuesday in June.
Republicans have introduced nearly half a dozen carve-out proposals that would allow certain counties (e.g. Warren, Fulton) to locate early voting in their county seat rather than the most populous city or municipality as the law requires.
The State Senate also recently advanced a bill to categorically prohibit locating early voting sites in public schools (S654), which would also lift a prohibition on locating polling sites on premises where alcohol is sold, potentially mitigating the restriction on schools if the law is enacted. In past years, the bill has failed to advance in the Assembly.
In New York, the controversy over siting early voting locations in public schools is primarily a challenge in densely-populated New York City, which struggles to find secure, local, ADA-accessible alternatives that are viable for the duration of the early voting period. While there is no early voting in Queens public schools, the other four boroughs still relied on dozens of public schools to host early voting sites in 2024. Nationally, several states and localities are grappling with similar concerns at the intersection of school safety and America’s increasingly heated political climate.
When New York’s early voting program began in 2019, more than half of the initial 60 locations in the City were public schools, while 52 cultural institutions that receive hundreds of millions in tax benefits like the Met, Lincoln Center, and the Historical Society sent objection letters to the Board of Elections, citing hardship and interference with existing programming. Eventually, several of these institutions caved, and agreed to serve as early vote sites. Proponents of the bill argue that siting early voting at schools disrupts the school routine for several days and raises security concerns, rendering vital areas such as cafeterias and gymnasiums unavailable multiple times per year. On the other hand, schools are anchors of community, and residents—including parents and teachers—have a vital interest in familiar poll sites that are centrally located in their neighborhood, and which are ADA accessible.
While the bill’s proponents raise real concerns about the impact of the longer early voting period on schools, trading one categorical prohibition for another is unlikely to yield better policy outcomes than a stakeholder-driven approach to polling place siting and a case-specific review and relocation process that takes into account the actual impact and the alternatives. Many of the same concerns raised regarding voting in schools could be extended to public libraries or rec centers.
Meanwhile, the New York State Election Commissioners’ Association (NYSECA), which held its Winter conference in January, announced bipartisan support among election officials for reducing the statutory nine-day early voting period during primaries and special elections, as well as the minimum of 72 operating hours required under the program. The minimum standards in New York’s Early Voting Law do not distinguish between federal and local election years nor does it set a different requirement for general elections as opposed to primary or special elections, with respect to the number of days and minimum hours required. At joint legislative budget hearings in Albany regarding “aid to localities” funding for the coming election cycle, NYSECA leadership testified “in favor of more flexibility in times and days for early voting” for low-turnout special and primary elections.
The early voting statute sets ratios for the minimum number of sites required per county based on its registered voter population, but already permits election boards to disregard those ratios during primaries and special elections, allowing local commissioners to cut the number of early voting locations down to one site if they agree “a lesser number of sites is sufficient,” and many boards routinely do so.
For example, Nassau County with over a million registered voters reduced its 27-site early voting plan down to just two locations for the June 2023 party primaries, but maintained more operating hours than required by law. Onondaga halved its 10-site early voting footprint for the June 2023 primaries before adjusting the program upward to eight sites for the April 2024 Presidential Primary; tailoring the plan back down to six sites for the June 2024 state and federal primary; and then expanding up to the 10-site plan for the high-turnout 2024 General Election. Small and medium-sized counties do this as well. In 2024, Broome County reduced its early voting footprint to one location for the state and federal primaries before expanding the plan to five locations for the Presidential—one site more than the law requires for nearly 141,000 Broome voters. In the 2024 General, half the counties in the state (31) offered a total of 94 more early voting locations than required by law and 20 election boards offered more hours than the law requires.
What election officials can’t currently do is eliminate the early voting program entirely, or starve it into virtual nonexistence. Let’s remember that for decades, New York maintained a single election day for millions of voters, while dozens of red and blue states modernized and expanded voter access. The minimum standards in the early voting law set a baseline of voter access for all citizens wherever they are located, and prevent the most egregious abuses of discretion or mal-resourcing schemes. That said, local officials should have discretion to right-size their program to meet local needs and conserve limited resources in light of the likely turnout pattern, which varies dramatically based on the election event, and which is still evolving due to the even more recent expansion of vote by mail in the wake of the COVID pandemic.
Although many changes to the early voting program have been made since it launched in 2019, some proposals that seem like obvious improvements still require careful planning. Since many state and federal districts cross county lines, differing program days and hours for the same contest could lead to a patchwork of voter access disparities—perhaps correlating to a county’s wealth or partisan leaning—that may raise equal protection or fairness concerns.
Through a national lens, the knives are out for early voting elsewhere. In North Carolina, GOP lawmakers have a fresh proposal to drastically reduce the three-week early voting period down to six days, eliminating all Sunday voting and thereby hindering, for example, the prominent ‘get out the vote’ efforts by Black churches ahead of elections known as “souls to the polls.” Early voting has been established for decades and is widely used in North Carolina, where more than 73% of the state’s 5.7 million voters cast their ballots early in the 2024 General Election, excluding those who voted by mail.
A similar tactic was part of a sweeping law change passed by North Carolina Republicans in 2013. The Federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately found this device (along with others), to be an unconstitutional form of racial discrimination, finding the drafters intentionally used racial turnout data to undermine Black voting practices with nearly “surgical precision.”
In Indiana, GOP state lawmakers are moving legislation to reduce the early voting period from 28 days ahead of an election down to 14 days, citing staffing concerns. ACLU of Indiana and Common Cause Indiana opposed the move, citing hours-long lines to vote early in parts of the state under the current program, and the access needs of elderly and disabled voters. In the 2024 General Election, a majority of Indiana voters (54%) opted to cast ballots early in-person or by mail.
New Jersey Democrats are also moving legislation to adjust their early voting program during primaries. Like New York, early voting for general elections lasts nine days, but primaries have a shorter three- or five- day period covering one weekend. The five-day period applies only in presidential primaries. Last week, NJ Senate Judiciary Chair Brian Stack advanced a bill to standardize six days of early voting for all primaries, increasing access and uniformity. However, Stack’s initial proposal would have expanded early voting during all primaries to ten days.
Connecticut’s political leaders are raising similar funding concerns to those being raised by administrators in New York. Governor Ned Lamont recently proposed a significant funding cut for Connecticut’s in-person early voting program, just months after voters approved a 2024 referendum to allow universal vote by mail.
***
Jarret Berg is a New York attorney and voting rights advocate. He is a Fellow at New York Law School’s New York Elections, Census, and Redistricting Institute.