Primary Day Open Thread

Who will be doing the people's business at City Hall in 2018? Photo: Momos/Wikimedia Commons
Who will be doing the people's business at City Hall in 2018? Photo: Momos/Wikimedia Commons

Primary day is here.

With contested races for many City Council seats, and Democrats dominant in most districts, today voters will decide who will set city transportation policy for the next four years.

There are other races to watch. Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez is up against several challengers in the first election since the death of his boss Ken Thompson. Four candidates, with Sal Albanese getting the most press, want to unseat Mayor Bill de Blasio. (See Gotham Gazette for a complete list of candidates citywide.)

Despite their importance, primaries usually don’t draw a lot of people to the polls, and races can be decided by small margins. This is the rare election in New York where your vote counts for something.

Check our 2017 primaries archive for coverage of this election season, candidate Q&As, and to see how StreetsPAC weighed in on City Council contests.

Thoughts on today’s races? Long lines — or no lines — at your polling site? Let us know in the comments.

  • Joe R.

    My thoughts here are we shouldn’t have primaries (or special school board elections on a separate day). In most of the city Democrats win by huge margins. Whoever wins the primary generally wins in November. Few vote in primaries. Many are ineligible because they’re not registered to a political party. As a result, people are elected sometimes with only hundreds of votes.

    I say just put anyone and everyone who gets a certain amount of signatures on the ballot in November and let them compete with each other. If it means we have ten choices for each open seat so be it. And also do away with political parties on the ballots. You should be voting for the person, not the letter next to their name.

  • Brad Aaron

    Tumbleweeds at my District 10 polling place.

  • Another BOE clusterfuck at my polling place in District 40. Half the precinct got shifted to another polling place. I was lucky and got to stay, but my name wasn’t on the rolls at the table they sent me to and I had to fill out an affidavit ballot.

  • 1ifbyrain2ifbytrain

    https://medium.com/@hollylecraw/nyc-primary-certification-how-many-affidavit-ballots-were-counted-9f42c208c69f

    Ben: I hope you wrote yourself in at least once so you can follow up to see if your ballot is actually counted.

  • Didn’t know about that, unfortunately. Would have been a good use of my civil court judge vote.

  • voter

    When do results become available? Tonight? OR does it take longer?

    Very quiet in the morning in my district 2 polling place. Curious to see what happens. I was annoyed to find fliers smearing Rivera & her husband with a printout of a NY Post article & Facebook screenshots in my mailbox this weekend. Wondering which candidate resorted to such Trump-like tactics. Also, Cho yesterday claimed a non-existing endorsement from Derek Jeter… I feel like I live in complete Trumpistan.

  • Four years ago I think most of the races had been called by 1 a.m. the night of the election.

  • FLYINGCHOPSTIK

    Omg im in district 40 and i wasnt even in the book. Had to do ab affidavit?

  • Larry Littlefield

    Good use of votes in elections where votes don’t really matter.

    Voted for Daffy Duck for President last year, and for state legislators running unopposed.

    Don’t know if it was counted.

  • vnm

    Same here. No one voting.

  • 1ifbyrain2ifbytrain

  • Lots of Monserrat vs Moya people on the street up the block. Pleading with people to vote for them. Sadly, I wouldn’t be able to cast a vote for either. Thankfully Dromm is my council member by two blocks.

  • Larry Littlefield

    Here’s a candidate off that list lots of people could get behind.

    THRAWTHE BUMSOUT
    (Write-In)
    1

  • Tralfaz

    Number 61 at my polling place. Actually surprised that many. Democracy in action.

  • Joe R.

    Turns out we got an even bigger quack for President.

  • Max

    I think I saw 3 other people voting at 9:45am in District 33, Brooklyn. Quite quiet, granted Levin is an uncontested democrat.

  • Suburban Dem

    Crickets at the polls in Westchester County for the County Executive Democratic primary. This does not bode well for the Democrats chances against huge Trump-supporter Republican Rob Astorino. Astorino has let Bee-Line Bus and the county’s planning dept wither; when someone retires, the position is eliminated. No new bus routes have been created that I can think of.
    Once again, Democrats might be no-shows in off-year elections. We have nobody to blame but ourselves.

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