What Is on the Ballot in New York City on November 3: Governor, Congress, Albany and Five Charter Questions
Tuesday's ballot is longer than the marquee race. New York City voters will choose a governor, an attorney general and a comptroller, send a full House delegation to Washington, refill every seat in Albany — and then flip the ballot over for five questions that rewrite the City Charter.
The top of the ballot is Albany. New Yorkers voting on Tuesday, November 3 choose a governor and lieutenant governor, an attorney general and a state comptroller — the officers who run the state, prosecute in its name and audit its books. Every one of those races is citywide in effect even though they are statewide in law: the city's turnout is a large share of the state's vote, and the last days of early voting, which end today, have already banked hundreds of thousands of city ballots.
The middle of the ballot is Washington and Albany at once. All of the city's seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are on it, in a midterm that decides control of Congress. So is every seat in the state Senate and the state Assembly — the two chambers that write the laws the city's agencies then live under. In some districts, voters also choose state Supreme Court justices and Civil Court judges, the least-researched lines on the ballot and the ones a sample ballot, checked before Tuesday, helps most with.
Then comes the part voters most often meet for the first time inside the booth: the back of the ballot. Five proposals would amend the City Charter, the city's governing document — this station explained each of the five in its charter-questions file earlier this weekend. The Board of Elections' poll-site locator shows each voter their own sample ballot, and the honest advice of every guide read by this desk is the same: read yours before Tuesday, at your assigned Election Day site, which may not be the site where you voted early.
The mechanics close the file. Polls are open Tuesday from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., and a voter in line by 9 p.m. votes. New York voters are entitled to two paid hours off at the beginning or end of a shift when the polls are open for less than four hours before the shift starts and after it ends. Early voting ends today at 5 p.m.; Monday's only errand is the in-person mail-ballot request deadline at the Board of Elections. After that, it is Tuesday, and the whole ballot at once.
