Early Voting

We are a Special Legislative District library holding our annual Budget Referendum and Trustee Election soon. It has come to my attention that we may be obligated to mail absentee ballots to certain people on a county supplied list. We have never done this before and with our small budget and staff time, this would presents a significant hardship for us to do this properly.

In legalese, this question is: Does the Early Mail Voting Act apply to special legislative district libraries?

The answer is: NO.

The Early Mail Voting Act applies to elections conducted by the following entities:

Our school district public library has offered early mail ballots for our 2024 and 2025 budget vote and trustee election. The school district is now telling us that the library is not obligated to offer early mail ballots and that only the school district is obligated to participate in early voting.

So, we have two questions:

Early mail ballots are required in most school district elections by the 2023 “New York Early Mail Voting Act” that went into effect January 1, 2024.[1]