New York CIty Council Member Ben Kallos

New York Daily News NYC Councilman Kallos to push for expanded early voting access, blasts Albany lawmakers by Michael Gartland, Denis Slattery

NYC Councilman Kallos to push for expanded early voting access, blasts Albany lawmakers

Just months after New York City offered early voting for the first time during a presidential election, voters could soon get more early voting options under a new City Council bill expected to be introduced Thursday.

The bill, which Upper East Side Councilman Ben Kallos, plans to introduce to the Council at a Thursday meeting, would increase the number of early voting sites, with expanded hours of operation and at least two sites required in each Council district initially for the upcoming June primary.


“This would add at least two early voting polling sites per Council district for the coming election and would eventually scale up to eight. It would also give voters more hours to vote,” Kallos told the Daily News. “During the last election, there were zero early voting sites in my Council district. To be fair, one was 500 feet outside my district, but we don’t have enough early voting sites.”

Kallos blamed the city Board of Elections and legislators in Albany and called state lawmakers “corrupt” for not passing a law mandating more early voting sites.

The current state law requires just seven sites per county, he pointed out.

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