July 7, 2020 By Allie Griffin
The Board of Elections will begin counting the tens of thousands of absentee ballots Queens voters mailed in for the June primary election tomorrow.
The board received a historic amount of absentee ballots after Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order allowing all New York voters to vote via absentee due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Queens voters sent 83,712 absentee ballots ahead of the primary election on June 23, according to BOE data as of July 2. The sheer amount of mail-in votes is unprecedented. By comparison, Queens voters cast 5,936 absentee ballots in the June 2016 Congressional primary.
“We are proud to have run the best absentee ballot field program in this race, and now the energy and momentum is on our side,” he said.
Another tight race in Queens could be swayed by absentee ballots.
Progressive newcomer Zohran Mamdani is leading incumbent Aravella Simotas in a close race to represent Astoria in the state Assembly.
Mamdani has taken roughly 54 percent of in-person votes, while Simotas has secured 46 percent, in the race to represent the 36th District in the Assembly, according to the BOE unofficial results. The difference is 589 votes.
Mamdani, a housing counselor and Indian-Ugandan New Yorker, remained more cautious.
“We’ll have to see if our lead holds,” he tweeted on election night.
4 Comments
How on earth has it taken this long to get started? NYC BOE is a disgrace. This should have been sorted out long ago. Unreal.
Donovan Richards is best for the job. He better watch out as the attorneys for Crowley still run the Board of Elections in Queens, Reich and Bolz , there will lots of absentee ballots for Elizabeth Crowley – same as Bolz worked pro bono to help with absentee ballots for Katz, when Caban won.
These two attorneys the same guys who kept Joe Crowley in office for 20 years by keeping all viable opposition off ballot. They became arrogant and dismissed AOC!! Congrats Mr. Richards – keep a close eye on absentee ballots and Crowleys!
Who got the Calvary cemetery vote? A massive turnout again for Democrats.
Election was 2 weeks ago. This us farcical.