Polls close in Queens as voters wait for results of primary elections

The polls in Queens are officially closed on Election Day.

Voting sites across the borough have closed Tuesday, June 22 as of 9 p.m., marking the end of the primary elections. According to the city’s Board of Elections (BOE), more than 35,00 Queens residents — approximately 1.6 percent of the borough’s population — took advantage of early voting, which took place from June 12 to June 20, representing about 18 percent of all the early votes cast in New York City.

But Queens had the most absentee ballots requested of any borough, with more than 66,000 requested and more than 23,000 completed ahead of Tuesday, according to the BOE.

In-person voter turnout on Tuesday seemed relatively low throughout most of the day in polling sites across the borough. However, a worker at a polling site in Rochdale Village at P.S. 80 was impressed to see their turnout Tuesday morning, telling QNS they didn’t “expect this many people.”

In Astoria, two city council candidates and a comptroller candidate continued campaigning near the P.S. 122 polling site, saying they were full of energy and ready to continue talking with potential voters.

Many Queens voters shared their thoughts about this year’s election process with QNS. Most seemed to understand the newly implemented ranked-choice voting system.

Nicholas Seotchie, a Bayside resident who cast his vote at Bayside High School Tuesday afternoon, argued that electoral reform has been an ongoing issue in the U.S. and said he supports ranked-choice voting, noting that some states and cities already implemented the system.

“I think I was sufficiently educated on how to use it and the process went smoothly,” Seotchie said.

But there were some Queens voters who were still skeptical about the new process, with others confused about how to use it.

Nikki Breedlove, who voted at the Rochdale Village Community Center, said she thinks ranked-choice voting “disenfranchises” the Black and brown communities.

“Blacks and browns don’t turn out the same way to vote like other areas,” Breedlove said. “Then what happens? We are the ones that suffer and it’s not the other communities and that’s terrible. We do vote, but we don’t vote in primaries and we don’t vote when need to vote and that hurts us.”

But the new voting system has been found to not only benefit those communities in particular, but also elevate candidates who are of color and who are women, according to FairVote.org.