A quarter million Queens voters cast their ballots early

Over 200,000 Queens voters showed up to cast their ballots ahead of the Nov. 3 election. Eagle file photo by Christina Santucci

By Rachel Vick

More than a quarter of a million Queens voters braved the lines outside the borough’s 18 polling places to cast their ballots early in the 2020 presidential election.

At times, the lines stretched around blocks and down streets. At others, voters got lucky, sliding in without much of a wait. 

Overall, 250,083 people cast their ballots at the early voting sites in Queens, trailing only Brooklyn’s 373,270 for the highest tally among the five boroughs. A total of 1,119,056 cast their ballots during the 10 days of early voting across New York City, according to the Board of Elections.

The early voting total — which doesn’t include mail-in ballots — already constitutes 36 percent of Queens 2016 voter turnout. That year, 691,209 residents cast their ballots in the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Voters across the borough said the stakes were too high to sit out — despite the long lines. 

“This is a battle for democracy,” Glendale resident Betty Ann Belaire told the Eagle while she waited with hundreds of people outside a polling place in Middle Village on the second first day of early voting.

Trump’s presence at the top of the ticket turned out several voters, like Luanne Rozran, who waited three hours at an Astoria site in a face shield and a “Grandmas for Biden” shirt.

“We are willing to wait four more hours not to have four more years of what’s going on,” Rozran said.

The 2016 Democratic nominees received more than three times the number of votes of their Republican counterparts from Queens, according to the Board of Elections. 

The 2020 early voting total already equals more than half of the turnout for the 2018 gubernatorial election, where 495,188 turned out to re-elect Gov. Andrew Cuomo.