Early voting for the Nov. 2 election opened Saturday, with substantial turnout in the City of Buffalo, where a hotly contested race for mayor has sparked interest.
The Erie County Board of Elections said 2,323 votes were cast in the city out of a countywide total of 4,374.
With just a week and half until Election Day, both mayoral candidates ramped up their efforts on Saturday, the first day of early voting.
The county total is a far cry from the 14,724 votes cast on the first day of early voting in the presidential election last year. But it's substantially more than the 3,485 cast on the first day in 2019, when, like this year, the ballot offered only local offices.
The Board of Elections said 3,045 Democrats voted Saturday, along with 929 Republicans, 118 Conservatives and 24 members of the Working Families Party.
Voting will continue from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday at 38 locations: one polling site in each Buffalo Common Council district, at the Board of Elections office, and at one site in every other city and town in the county.
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With one of the nation's most watched local elections less than two weeks away, on the day before early voting was set to begin, the two people who want to lead Buffalo as the city's mayor for the next four years continued to highlight their differences and gather support they hope will carry them to victory.
Unlike on Election Day, voters may vote anywhere in the county, not just in the polling site nearest to their home.
Erie County early voting will continue from noon to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and from noon to 6 p.m. next Saturday and Sunday.
At four city polling places visited by The Buffalo News on Saturday, volunteers for the write-in campaign of Mayor Byron W. Brown had staked out the prime real estate, right outside the 100-foot limit from the polls, within which politicking is not allowed.
In each case, volunteers for Democratic primary winner India B. Walton were further down the sidewalk or across the street.
While the Walton forces offered palm cards and signs, the Brown workers had light blue rubber stamps reading "Byron W. Brown," which could be applied to the write-in space in the lower right-hand corner of the ballot.
Hundreds gathered for a downtown rally featuring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and former gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon.
The mayor's team had sample ballots to show voters where to put Brown's name and to remind them to fill in the oval on the write-in space to make sure the vote is counted by the ballot scanner.
"People have been cordial," said Lisa Yaeger, a Brown volunteer outside the North Buffalo Community Center on Sanders Road. She said numerous voters had accepted offers of rubber stamps and pens.
"There's a steady stream of folks, which is nice," she said.
Of course, Walton's name is preprinted on the ballot, since she won the primary.
Claudette and Mike Rivera, who voted at the Sanders Road site, went for Brown.
The mayor and his supporters described the election in dire terms, with democratic socialist India B. Walton painted as a threat to Buffalo.
"I like the direction the city is going is," Claudette Rivera said. "I didn't feel like Walton has enough experience. I feel she should have taken a different position before she ran for mayor."
"I worked in the community, so I know what Byron Brown did for the West Side and the Hispanic community," said Mike Rivera, former president of the Father Belle Center. "People who are against him, they don't know what the man has accomplished."
That would be not much, according to Robin Fischer, a Delaware District voter for Walton.
"Her actions speak louder than words, and so do Byron Brown's. He's concerned more about developers than he is about people in the city. A lackluster mayor," Fischer said. "The results in the city haven't changed for the last 16 years."
Jennifer Ryan-Bryant, an English professor at SUNY Buffalo State, cast a ballot for Walton in the Gloria J. Parks Community Center on Main Street.
"I really appreciate her approach to social policies, her focus on policies that directly affect people, her focus on the working class and working-class rights and just fundamental human rights that everyone deserves," Ryan-Bryant said.
Ed Herndon, 90, voted for Brown at the same site.
The debate is scheduled for 9:15 a.m. Wednesday at the Kenmore Avenue school, six days before Election Day.
"Mayor Byron Brown has done more for this city than anyone else who's been there prior to this," Herndon said. "Since the mayor has been the mayor, between Ferry Street and East Utica Street, there's 23 new businesses. Look at all the new buildings all over."
David Caligiuri voted for Walton at the Matt Urban Center on Broadway.
"Through all the protests over the past two summers, I was there and she was there," Caligiuri said. "She spoke from the heart, and I totally believe everything she believes in."
At the Delavan-Grider Community Center, Antwan Garner, a city Streets Department worker, voted for Brown "because of fears of the direction the city would go in if the wrong candidate was in office."
"He's an experienced guy, and he can continue," said M.D. Mowla, another Brown voter at Delavan-Grider.
But no matter who they supported, voters Saturday agreed on the importance and convenience of early voting.
"I'll exercise my right if I have the option to do that," said Maya Johnson, who voted at Delavan-Grider. "Sooner than later, I'll take it."
Erie County Democratic Elections Commissioner Jeremy Zellner discusses the early voting turnout during election season back in 2021.
