Early voting for New York state general elections began Saturday, marking the first time state voters were able to get to the polls before November.

Early voting will last for nine days and end two days before general elections take place on Nov. 5. The reforms are meant to reduce wait times and make voting more accessible. 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo included early voting measures in his 2019 Justice Agenda, a series of reforms addressing issues like social and economic justice, climate change, workers’ rights and gender equity. Cuomo signed legislation enacting early voting in January.

One day of voting that requires in-person participation makes it difficult for certain populations to vote, said Shana Gadarian, an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. These populations include people who have inflexible jobs, who are disabled and who have to travel for work. 

“There are lots of populations for whom one voting day means essentially that they can’t participate in the voting act,” Gadarian said.

The reforms primarily impact voters of color, poor voters and voters working jobs that prevent them from getting time off, said Jenn Jackson, an assistant professor at Maxwell. There are fewer social circumstances limiting people with flexible daily schedules from being able to vote, she said.

Early voting reforms should be focused on long-term growth rather than immediate results, Jackson said. 

“I think the goal is less to think about seeing more participation or greater turnout, but what you want to see is access increase,” Jackson said. “Do we see more registrations? Do we see more people who know where their polling places are? Do we see fewer people with ambiguity about the voting process?”

The early voting reforms may not have a huge effect on local elections, said Kristi Andersen, a professor emeritus at Maxwell.

“Turnout in off-year elections, local elections like these, is very low,” she said. “I know that some of the mayoral elections, turnout has been somewhere around 30% of the registered voters.”

Even with voting reform, voters may feel their voices aren’t being heard in government, causing them to be unmotivated and not participate, Gadarian said. Andersen is interested in seeing how many people vote in the 2020 presidential election compared to the turnout in 2016. 

“Presidential elections obviously have the highest turnout,” she said. “We saw the (2016) election without any of these reforms and the (2020) election will have the reform.”

Efforts still need to be made to make voting more accessible everywhere, all three professors said. Strict voter ID laws make it difficult for some to vote in certain states, Jackson said. Same-day registration could be helpful for some, Andersen said. 

Nationwide, Gadarian said, voting accessibility is not trending toward one specific direction.

“There’s variation across states. There are lots of states that are implementing policies that make it even harder to vote, and then there are places making it easier to vote,” she said. 

Published on October 29, 2019 at 9:22 pm