New York City breaks early voting record, surpassing one million voters

BROOKLYN, N.Y. (PIX11) -- Early voting is breaking all records for New York City.

The Board of Elections says they broke the million voter mark just after 10 this morning when the early voting was just getting underway for the last day.

“We definitely didn’t want to get caught out there and we were coming from another event and we had the chairs,” Danielle Hawkins, an early voter, told PIX11 News.

Danielle and J’Mari Hawkins came prepared. The Brooklyn couple knew to bring folding chairs for the long line at Brooklyn Borough Hall for early voting. To them, it was important to cast their ballots, no matter how long the wait.

“I feel whoever wins the election, there’ll be a big, detrimental time in America,” J’Mari Hawkins, an early voter, told PIX11 News.

By mid-afternoon, the wait at Brooklyn Borough Hall was estimated to be an hour and 15 minutes.

The New York City Board of Elections used fireworks in their 10:33 a.m. tweet to say that “we officially hit one million voters.”

Here’s the breakdown by the boroughs, not including Sunday voting.

Brooklyn was leading the pack with the most early voters, close to 297,000, followed by Manhattan, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island.

“We feel that voting is a huge responsibility and we want to teach our kids the right thing,” Dom Sirianni, who came to early voting with his wife and three young children, told PIX11 News. “To make sure our votes get counted,” he added.

For some Brooklyn families, early voting was an important way to send a message to their children, even very young ones, that this is a right that everyone who is eligible to vote should exercise.

“This is convenient to go early and get it over with so that it doesn’t go into my work time,” Jonathan Burden, who was voting with his 19-year-old daughter, told PIX11 News.

“I’m very fortunate when a woman’s on the ballot so I feel like I’m really participating in American democracy and happy my voice can be heard,” Ophelia Burden, 19 years old and voting for the first time, told PIX11 News.

And another young woman, Pauline Merman, told PIX11 News, why she was voting early.“Mainly because I have to work early Tuesday and I wanted to make sure I got my vote in,” Merman said.