These New York Museums Have Opened Their Doors for Early Voting

New Yorkers taking advantage of the opportunity to participate in early voting this week can do so at cultural sites across the city including the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the American Museum of Natural History.

And upstate, the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House in Rochester, home to the historic suffragist, is an especially fitting place to vote, given the potential to elect Vice President Kamala Harris as the nation’s first woman president.

Early voting kicked off Saturday, with a record turnout in the city of 140,145 voters, according to the Board of Elections. The weekend total for ballots cast was 257,860.

The state of New York introduced early voting in 2019, giving voters an extra nine days to cast their ballots. The measure allows for more flexibility for voters, including the chance to vote on weekends, and means less waiting in line on Election Day.

The Brooklyn Museum was an early voting site for the 2020 presidential election as well. “We have served as a polling location for many years, both for presidential elections and state primaries. This cycle, we are both an early voting and Election Day voting site,” a museum representative told me.

The Met became a polling place for early voting for the 2021 mayoral election, hoping to help alleviate the long waits many experienced the previous year. This year, the voting machines are set up in a lecture hall.

People voting at the Brooklyn Museum in 2023 in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

“The Met is committed to serving as a resource for our local communities, and we are honored to host a polling place in support of access to voting,” museum director Max Hollein told Artnet News in an email. “We encourage all of our neighbors to vote at the Met and make their voices heard.”

The AMNH is a new early voting site this year, opening the doors to its new Gilder Center at the behest of a trio of local politicians. State senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, assembly member Linda Rosenthal, and city council member Gale Brewer reached out to the museum because there were logistical difficulties and security concerns at the nearby public school building that had hosted early voting at its cafeteria in 2022 and ’23.

“The American Museum of Natural History is an important civic resource for our community, so we are particularly excited about the opportunity to serve as a voting site and to provide a convenient and accessible way for or our neighbors to exercise their fundamental democratic right,” museum president Sean M. Decatur said in a statement, noting that the museum also served as a vaccination site.

(Hoylman-Sigal called the news “dino-mite!”)

In New York City, voters are assigned to one of 155 designated polling places, as are all state voters on Election Day. But across the rest of the state, one can participate in early voting at any location in their county.

That meant especially long lines in Monroe County, where the Susan B. Anthony Museum is serving as a polling place for the first time. But the property’s electoral history dates back to 1872, when a deputy federal marshal visited Anthony and informed her that he was arresting her for voting in the recent presidential election.

A “vote here” sign outside the Susan B. Anthony Museum and House in Rochester, New York. Photo courtesy of the Susan B. Anthony Museum and House, Rochester, New York.

Anthony was tried, convicted, and issued a $100 fine for the offense—which she never paid. Women would not get the right to vote until the passage of the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920.

The Susan B. Anthony Museum had wanted to bring in ballot boxes since the introduction of early voting. The museum’s small rooms, none of which could accommodate more than a single voting machine, and limited capacity of just 35 people, proved a stumbling block.

After the museum introduced a second entrance to its larger carriage house building, the election board finally approved the institution as a polling site.

“Susan B. Anthony dedicated her entire life to securing voting rights so we feel that serving as an early voting location is right in line with our mission. It is something we have wanted to do for a long time and are proud to support our community in this way,” Allison Hinman, the museum’s chief operating officer, told me in an email.

A total of 721 voters turned out on the first day of early voting. “This is such a historic landmark for women’s rights and equal rights in general,” Rochester Institute of Technology student Alex Reing told the New York Times. “It just felt right to place my vote for a woman here.”

Also among those who voted there was Lystra McCoy, a Democrat who defeated a Republican incumbent in the 2023 election to win a seat on the Monroe County legislature.

“We then when to [Anthony’s] grave to place the ceremonial ‘I voted’ sticker,” McCoy wrote on Instagram. “I have never had so much fun voting in my life!”