New Yorkers across the five boroughs hit polling stations Tuesday to cast election-day votes in a deadlocked, high-stakes presidential race.
Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one in New York state, which is anticipated to deliver its 28 electoral college votes to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
No citywide candidate is on the ballot in New York City, where Democrats are even more dominant.
Down-ballot contests include a proposal to add abortion and civil rights protections to the state constitution and five proposals that would make changes to the City Charter, opponents of which have framed as a power grab by Mayor Eric Adams.
The only statewide candidate, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), has led her Republican opponent by wide margins in pre-election polls.
Turnout across the city was high as of mid-afternoon, hitting the 2 million mark, including 1,089,328 early voters, according to the city Board of Election. Despite some hiccups and long lines, as some machines broke down and the Board raced to fix issues, voting across the city proceeded smoothly for the most part on Tuesday.
Polls are open in New York until 9 p.m., and any voter in line by then can remain there to cast their vote.
Even the NYC voters who had to endure long lines were ready to finally have their views registered at the end of a very long and polarizing race.
At the Flatbush Tompkins Congregational Church in Ditmas Park, broken scanners triggered an hours-long delay and a line that snaked around multiple blocks.
Marvalyn Christian, a registered nurse who declined to give her age, took the wait in stride, saying that “I’m determined to make my vote count. I’m willing to wait for as long as I have to.”
Christian is voting for Harris, she said, “for women to have to make decisions over their own bodies, to make sure we have a leader who will unite us and not to have one group feeling superior to others.”
‘A Very Strong Difference of Opinion’
Thirty-six-year-old Julie, a lifelong Sheepshead Bay resident and mother of three who declined to give her last name, said political differences with her former husband, a Trump supporter, were one of the main factors in their 2021 divorce.
“We’re good friends now, but we still have a very strong difference of opinion there,” she said.
As Julie cast her ballot for Harris, she said she reflected on the future she wants for her 8-year-old daughter and her 15-year-old old, who recently came out as nonbinary.
“I was thinking about them and their rights,” she said.
“My biggest thing is I was thinking about equality, and I don’t want Idiocracy [the cult 2006 comedy about a future where intelligent people stop reproducing, and a professional wrestler is elected president] to become a guide to the future.”
A Jewish voter in Sheepshead Bay, who declined to give her name or age, said she was voting for a Republican for the first time in her life because of Trump’s support for Israel.
She said her teenage son, who’s concerned about civilian suffering in Gaza, told her “If you vote for Trump, I will lose all the respect I ever had for you.”
“I am not telling a soul,” she said.
A less divided family including 20-year-old Ingrid Wehrle went to cast their votes for Harris in Carroll Gardens on Tuesday morning.
While voting for Harris was simple, says Ingrid, she turned to her 23-year-old sister Hannah for guidance on the ballot propositions. Hannah, in part following advice she’d found on Instagram, voted “yes” on the statewide measure and “no” on the city-only ones.
“There needs to be more education and understanding of it all,” said Ingrid, adding that if not for her family, “I would have really no idea what I was voting for.”
‘I Am Regular People’
In Ridgewood, Queens, 71-year-old Polish immigrant Mariola Krzebiot cast her first-ever vote for Trump. Harris “doesn’t want to change anything,” she said.
“I don’t like the politics on the border,” Krzebiot continued, adding that she doesn’t want to pay taxes for people who just arrived when she spent years becoming a citizen and worked hard to buy a house.
“Abortion is not the main issue for this country,” Krzebiot said, adding that she’d left the ballot measures unanswered because, “the questions are created very complicated.”
Elizabeth Rieser, a 55-year-old interior designer who immigrated from Columbia 33 years ago, also voted for Trump.
“Normally all the immigrants come little by little,” she said, but too many people have arrived in the last two years as “people come to do bad things here. I want the city to be safe. Right now it’s very dangerous.”
About Trump, she said, “I think he’s stronger. Kamala’s been three years and I haven’t seen anything”
Raymond Rivera, 68, voted for Harris in Ridgewood this year after voting for Trump in 2020 and Hilary Clinton in 2016.
Rivera, who is Puerto Rican, says he was on the fence until his sister convinced him a week ago.
“She said, ‘Kamala is for the regular people,’” Rivera recalled.
“And I am regular people, so I’ll vote for her.”
‘This One Feels Different’
At Samuel Gompers High School in the East Morrisania neighborhood of The Bronx, 22-year-old Benji Diallo voted for the first time on Tuesday, saying he did so “to make my mom and dad proud that I was able to do it.“
He added that “It felt good. I felt more responsible, I ain’t gonna lie.”
Diallo said he hadn’t been aware of the ballot measures before turning over his own ballot, and skipped them.
Annette Santos, voting along with her 30-year-old son Justin Bravo in Tribeca on Tuesday afternoon, said “This one feels different because it’s more divided.”
Santos, a native New Yorker and Puerto Rican — “Latin from Manhattan!” as she put it — said she was shocked to discover some family members were still planning to vote for him.
“I don’t really embrace the disrespectfulness that my friends and family have accommodated. They’ve normalized it,” Santos said.
Though Bravo said he thought Trump had some good policy proposals, he ultimately went with Harris as well.
“Trump is just a clown,” he said.
Sixty-eight-year-old Lou Ortiz, a longtime Trump supporter, said he was supporting the “law and order” candidate as he voted in Sheepshead Bay on Tuesday afternoon.
“I went with the fugitive and the hillbilly,” Ortiz said, using some of the insults opponents might use to describe Trump. “I think he’s the best.”
Ortiz, who is half Puerto Rican, said he wasn’t swayed by the remarks of comedian Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at Trump’s recent Madison Square Garden rally.
“They got set up. They didn’t know they didn’t know what the guy was going to say and he was paid to do that,” Ortiz said.
But Samuel Navarro, 80, said he was voting for the first time in over 20 years to back Harris because of the Trump rally speaker’s joke.
“Everything was fine until that guy comes, and I was like, ‘what?’” said Navarro. “I couldn’t believe it. That bothered me because I was born there. We are not trash.”
Harris and Trump seemed the same to him in terms of policy except for abortion, he said — but he wanted to see a Black female president.
Another older Harris voter offered a different perspective.
“I’m just glad I’m not young,” said Alex Holub, a resident of the West Village for a half-century who was voting there for Kamala Harris on Tuesday morning, saying that under Trump, he doesn’t “see any future for this country.”
“I’ll be very happy to leave this world, I hate to say,” said Holub. “Because every day it gets worse.”
Holub added, though, that he’s hopeful about Harris’ chances: “I’m an optimistic person!”
