More New Yorkers Voted Early Than Ever Before, Through Both Early Voting and Mail-in Ballots

By Yehudit Garmaise

 While 2.5 million News Yorkers participated in Early Voting for the first time for the presidential election, five times as many New Yorkers requested mail-in ballots than they did four years ago.

    According to the latest count from the state Board of Elections, at least 1,920,176 people, out of the 13.6 million registered voters in the state, voted by absentee ballot for the 2020 presidential election.

   As of Friday, approximately 2.5 million New York voters, or 18.4% of voters had requested absentee or military ballots, but of those ballots requested, only 1.4 million voters completed and returned their mail-in ballots, data from the state and New York City election boards shows. 

  Voters who live in New York City accounted for most of the mail-in voters.  In the city, more than 1.1 million voters requested mail-in ballots, and approximately 551,000 had been returned by Tuesday, according to the city Board of Elections. 

   Rural counties saw a much lower percentages of voters who requested mail-in ballots, although voters in Monroe County accounted for 26.1% of mail-in ballots, and voters in Tompkins County accounted for 23% of the absentee ballot requests.

   The lowest numbers of mail-in voters came from Wyoming County, which is between Buffalo and Rochester, and which accounted for only 9.4% of the county's 26,027 registered voters who requested mail-in ballots.

   Back in March, Gov. Andrew Cuomo had relaxed several rules governing forthcoming elections to reduce social interactions as the coronavirus pandemic continued to spread.