Election Day is less than a week away, but New York City has already witnessed record turnout for early voting since the polls opened on Saturday, October 26. The city’s Board of Elections reported yesterday on the fourth day of early voting that a total of 495,478 New Yorkers have so far cast ballots in this year’s general election, surpassing this time in 2020 by almost 38,000 votes.
Across Brooklyn and Manhattan, several arts and cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum are open for early voting this week, some for the first time this election cycle.
“The Met is committed to serving as a resource for our local communities, and we are honored to host a polling place in support of access to voting,” Director Max Hollein told Hyperallergic in a statement, adding that the museum encourages all of its neighbors to “make their voices heard.” The Upper East Side institution first became a voting site in 2021 for the city’s mayoral election, and this year is serving as both an early voting site and a polling station on Election Day next week. Registered voters can find polls in the Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall, accessible via the museum’s 81st Street entrance.
Across Central Park at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), registered voters from Manhattan’s West Side can cast their ballots at polling stations on the first floor of the museum’s Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at 79th Street and Columbus Avenue. A representative for the museum told Hyperallergic that this election cycle is the first time it is serving as an early voting site. AMNH is also accepting mail-in ballots from voters registered in New York County (Manhattan).
This is also the first year that Brooklyn’s Weeksville Heritage Center in Crown Heights is an early voting site, a representative for the museum told Hyperallergic. On Saturday, October 26, the historic site was the destination for Brooklynites participating in a voter parade led by the borough’s branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Notably, Brooklyn has been leading the way in early voting across the city since the first day the polls opened.
Registered voters can also access polls at the Brooklyn Museum, which has “proudly served as a polling location for many years, both for presidential elections and state primaries,” a representative told Hyperallergic. Located in the museum’s front pavilion, voting booths are open throughout this week for early voting and on Election Day.
Early voting takes place from 8am to 8pm this week, and from 8am to 5pm on the weekend. Registered New York City voters can find their local polling stations on the Board of Elections’s website.
