This week:
N.Y. Mid-Decade Redistricting Effort; NYS Campaign Finance Board Appeals Blakeman Funding Decision; NYC Campaign Finance Board on 2025 City Vote; State Senate Election Law Legislation Calendar; Primary Petition Challenges Proceed; New York City Estimated to Have Lost An Estimated 12,196 Residents; Attorney General’s Preclearance Activity; Upcoming Events; Around the Nation (From Redistricting Network)
REDISTRICTING & LITIGATION
What’s Next For New York’s Mid-Decade Redistricting?
As negotiations on the state budget continue and the June 4 session adjournment date approaches, it is expected that the legislature will consider one of more amendments to reform New York’s redistricting process. At a minimum, the legislature is expected to approve an amendment sponsored by Senator Mike Gianaris and Assemblyman Micah Lasher (A.9014/S.8467) that would permit mid-decade redistricting before the 2028 elections. There may also be other amendment alternatives to reform the state’s “independent” redistricting commission that is appointed by legislative leaders. Another approach would be to eliminate the commission process entirely and keep the line drawing within the legislature. No other details are available at this time.
Campaign Finance: Blakeman v. New York State Public Campaign Financing Board
In March, the New York Public Campaign Finance Board (PCFB) voted in a 4-3 decision along party lines to deny Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, public campaign matching funds in his race because Blakeman’s running mate, Madison County sheriff Todd Hood, did not submit the required paperwork by the deadline.
On Wednesday, April 8,Blakeman filed suit in New York’s Albany County Supreme Court claiming it improperly disqualified him from receiving public matching funds.
On Tuesday, May 12, Judge Denise A. Hartman ruled that the PCFB must give Blakeman one week to file the proper form for the chance to receive public matching funds. Judge Hartman found that the PCFB failed to give Blakeman notice that his application was incomplete, or an opportunity to cure.
Judge Hartman’s decision overruled the March 31 vote by the PCFB to deny Blakeman public campaign matching funds. The voluntary public campaign matching funds program, created in 2020, is intended to reduce the influence of special interests, increase government accountability, and encourage broader candidate participation and public engagement in elections. Notably Justice Hartman was appointed by Governor Hochul.
However, on Wednesday, May 13, the PCFB filed its notice of appeal to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. The question is whether a campaign seeking public funds gets another chance after failing to meet a mandatory filing deadline.
ELECTION LAW
N.Y.C. Campaign Finance Board Reviews 2025 City Vote
Last week, we reported that the New York City Campaign Finance Board released its review on how New York voters voted in 2025. Here are a few additional highlights:
- More than 5.3 million New Yorkers were registered to vote in 2025, marking a registration rate of 94.3%, and an increase of nearly 10 percentage points compared to 2024’s rate of 85.5%.
- New voter registrations more than doubled in 2025 compared to 2021, with 260,195 newly registered voters, a 103.8% increase from 127,641 in 2021.
- While the number of new registrants fell short of 2024’s presidential-year spike (295,465), 2025 figures reflected engagement levels closer to that of a presidential election year than a typical citywide election year.
- Newly registered voters turned out at unprecedented rates: 59.6% in the primary and 61.8% in the general election, triple the 2021 turnout among new registrants.
- Young voters drove this trend, making up nearly two-thirds (64.8%) of all new voter registrations in 2025, up from 54.5% in 2024.
- New registrants participated at much higher rates than their more established counterparts, showing that they were not only more numerous but also more engaged than newly registered voters in prior city elections.
- General election turnout reached 41.6%, far exceeding participation levels in both the 2017 (25.2%) and 2021 (23.3%) city elections.
Senate to Advance Voter Protection and Voter Access Bills Ahead of High-Stakes Midterm Elections
This week the Senate Elections Committee meets Wednesday to advance a package of voter access, election protection and resiliency measures ahead of the June primaries and looming State and Federal Midterm contests this Fall. With time running out on the Legislative Session scheduled to conclude the first week in June, the race is on to shore up election processes and implement safeguards that can address evolving threats to American democracy.
Streamlining Access to Mail Ballots and Voting Information
S6995 / A8310 harmonizes New York’s parallel vote-by-mail and absentee balloting programs and improves access for military and special federal voters. This allows election officials to use the same envelopes for mail ballots and to treat otherwise-complete absentee requests that fail to indicate an “excuse” as a regular mail-ballot request (which any voter may apply for without an excuse), and allows mail voters to request ballots once for all elections in the two-year cycle. The bill also modernizes and streamlines ballot request processes for military and overseas voters so they can request ballots electronically or by fax, and continue receiving them so long as they remain eligible and duly registered.
S7689B / A8257 improves access to registration and ballots for military and overseas voters by authorizing electronic submission of federal post card applications, removing redundant paper-copy requirements, and requiring higher-education institutions to provide study-abroad students with timely and relevant voting information.
S6259 / A11263 directs all public and private colleges to provide notice to students of approaching ballot request deadlines at least three times by email or via posting on the university website, one month before the deadline.
S6253A / A6741 directs the state board of elections to post sample ballots online for every election district in the state at least twelve days before early voting begins, with security features to prevent tampering or foul play, and authorizes and encourages local boards to do the same.
Voter Protection and Resilient Democracy
S4602A / A5846 provides an equitable time-extender remedy that protects voters and communities from lengthy disruptions to voting at the polls by requiring boards of elections to toll, adjust, and extend voting time at impacted election districts to restore the time lost for voting, when balloting is fully interrupted for more than fifteen consecutive minutes, unless bipartisan election officials agree that the remedy is unnecessary. This avoids costly and often elusive emergency litigation; provides greater accountability for foul play; improves resiliency, intergovernmental cooperation, uniformity and rapid-response communication. This proposal is a 2026 priority of the statewide Let New York Vote Coalition.
S3233A / A6354 regulates challenges brought by persons other than bipartisan election officials to the eligibility of registered voters at the polls and mass challenges ahead of elections, by requiring these challengers to first sign an affidavit that identifies the challenger, the basis for the challenge, and the provenance of the information underlying the challenge, if not based on personal knowledge. This prevents unscrupulous actors or vigilantes from bringing baseless, bulk, or discriminatory challenges, providing accountability and curbing abuse, while preserving integrity. This proposal is also a 2026 priority of the statewide Let New York Vote Coalition.
S9857 / A11416 requires election boards to provide domestic-violence survivors and other at-risk voters with notice and the timely opportunity to reapply for the four-year Address Confidentiality Program, no later than six months prior to the expiration of their protection.
Republicans Remain Singularly Focused on Strict Photo ID Laws
S2574 / A3302 Imposes a strict photo-identification requirement before voting. This bill would require all duly-registered voters to present a current, valid government-issued photo identification to election officials before voting in person, or a photocopy of such proof when voting by mail. Critically, the bill would not permit the use of HAVA-compliant identity proofs to satisfy the inquiry (like a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or even a government document that shows the name and address of the voter). Any voter who could not provide a compliant photo ID or passport would be required to cast an affidavit-ballot, which would still need to be cured to be counted. The bill includes a DMV fee-waiver for Medicaid-eligible individuals, but no plan to supply the required ID. The bill has been defeated in Senate Elections in the past, and is not likely to advance out of committee in either chamber.
Primary Petition Challenges Continue
Courts across the state are hearing challenges to candidate petitions. In the Albany Times Union, Alexander MacDougall took a look at some of the over 100 challenges he identified.
In the 21st congressional district primary, Democratic primary race for New York’s 21st Congressional District, Stuart Amoriell, a Lake Placid restaurant is running against dairy farmed Blake Gendebien. The TU reports that “three plaintiffs argu(e) their names had been put on petitions without their knowledge.
In the 18th Congressional District (Orange County and parts of Ulster and Dutchess counties) Republican primary candidate Sharanjit Thind is defending against a challenge filed with the Board of Elections by Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck, who demonstrated that Thind used Long Island mailing address.
In the lower Hudson Valley 17th Congressional District, Republican Rep. Mike Lawler is objecting to Democratic challenger Effie Hhillips-Staley’s petitions and aRockland County judge found that the Democrat had more than 500 invalid signatures collected by a fraudulent canvasser, but had over 2,000 valid signatures, which kept her on the ballot.
As we reported last week, In the primaru against incumbent Democrat Thomas DiNapoli, the state Board of Elections determined that 11,225 signatures submitted by primary challenger Adem Bunkeddeko were invalid. Bunkedekko challenged the decision in state Supreme Court in Kings County, “but was rejected by the judge, who said the burden fell on Bunkedekko to establish “that each challenged signature was improperly invalidated.”
CENSUS
New York City Estimated to Have Lost An Estimated 12,196 Residents
The U.S. Census Bureau reported that during a widespread national slowdown in population growth, midsized cities remained close to the previous year’s patterns between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025. Drop-offs in average growth were steeper among the largest cities,
Even where the largest cities maintained strong growth, they were often outpaced by smaller cities in the outer portions of the same metro area.
“Big-city growth slowed significantly between 2024 and 2025, with some major hubs even seeing small declines,” noted Matt Erickson, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Population Division. “In contrast, midsized cities found a ‘Goldilocks zone’ where domestic and international migration, paired with new housing, helped prevent the sluggish growth seen in small towns and larger metropolitan centers.”
New York City’s population declined by 12,196 between 2024 and 2025, the greatest numeric decrease in the nation. Yet four incorporated places in the New York metro’s outer reaches numbered among the country’s 200 fastest-growing places by percentage change, led by Port Chester, N.Y., which ranked number 80 with a 4.1% increase. These fast-growing suburbs are all medium-sized, with populations between 25,000 and 40,000.
Growth slowdowns in the nation’s largest cities were most pronounced in the Northeast, where regional trends such as a drop-off in population gains from net international migration and domestic migration patterns favoring warm-weather destinations trickled down into these major population centers.
Jasper County, S.C., had the fastest-growing housing stock of any county in the nation for the second year in a row according to the Vintage 2025 estimates — and by a wide margin. The distance between Jasper County’s growth rate (8.3%) and that of the number 2 fastest-growing county (Dawson County, Ga., at 6.3%) was about the same as the distance between number 2 and number 18 on the list.
For the second year in a row, Maricopa County, Ariz., gained more housing units than any other county: about 42,000 between 2024 and 2025. Rounding out the top five counties by numeric gain in housing units were Harris County, Texas (28,000 units); Kings County, N.Y. (19,000); Los Angeles County, Calif. (19,000); and Tarrant County, Texas (18,000).
Five Census Bureau Tools Every Local Election Official Should Bookmark
The Census Bureau offers a growing suite of free, browser-based tools that are directly useful for local election administration and redistricting work, and most officials don’t know they exist. All five tools are free, require no account or login, and are updated regularly with the latest ACS and decennial census data.
QuickFacts: The first stop for any local official should be QuickFacts, which delivers instant demographic snapshots; population, age, race, income, housing, etc., for any county, city, or town in the country with no data expertise required.
TigerWeb: Next is TIGERweb, the Census Bureau’s interactive boundary map viewer. TIGERweb allows users to select features and view their attributes, search for features by name or geocode, and identify features by selecting them from a map, all without downloading any data or using GIS software. For redistricting work specifically, TIGERweb is the fastest way to check whether the Census Bureau’s official boundary for your jurisdiction matches your actual legal boundary, which is the first and most important step before any redistricting process begins.
Data.Census.gov: Third on the list is data.census.gov, the main Census data platform, which gives local officials access to American Community Survey tables at the county, city, census tract, and block group level- the population and demographic data that underpins virtually every redistricting decision.
OnTheMap: The fourth tool, OnTheMap, is less well known but highly practical. It shows where workers live and work at the local level, drawing on the Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program, and is useful for understanding commuting patterns, economic concentrations, and neighborhood composition, context that regularly comes up in community of interest arguments during redistricting.
CRE Viewer: The fifth tool is the Community Resilience Estimates (CRE) Viewer. The CRE tracks how socially vulnerable every neighborhood in the United States is to the impacts of a disaster, and was specifically designed to aid local planners, policymakers, public health officials, and disaster management professionals in planning mitigation and recovery strategies. While not a redistricting tool in the narrow sense, it is directly relevant to local officials responsible for understanding where vulnerable populations are concentrated and informs both district design and the community of interest analysis that courts and commissions increasingly scrutinize.
N.Y. VOTING RIGHTS ACT PRECLEARANCE
N.Y. Attorney General’s Office Preclearance
1424 New York City Board of Elections- poll site locations- under review
1421 Orange County Board of Elections- poll site locations- additional information provided- under review
1261 Westchester County Board of Elections- poll site locations- granted
1461 Nassau County Board of Elections- poll site locations- under review
All submissions can be viewed at: https://nyvra-portal.ag.ny.gov/
EVENTS
May 20- Newburgh- Redistricting Forum
When: Wednesday, May 20. Doors open at 6:00pm, program runs 6:30-7:30pm.
Where: Community Voices Heard, 87 Broadway, 1st Fl., Newburgh, NY 12550
RSVP: bit.ly/newburgh-redistricting-forum
In the wake of the Supreme Court case decision, Louisiana v. Callais,efforts are now turning to state governments to protect minority voting rights. Join a community forum on the state of redistricting in New York and around the country, and learn how you can take action. Dinner will be provided.
This event is being organized by Community Voices Heard, Common Cause NY, and New York Civic Engagement Table. Contact us at [email protected] for questions.
AROUND THE NATION
From The Redistrict Network (@RedistrictNet)
May 11: The Supreme Court allows Alabama to use its 2023 congressional map, which lower courts previously blocked for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, in the 2026 midterms.
Advocates and the public can view Alabama’s 2023 congressional map here — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 12: A new lawsuit has been filed claiming Tennessee’s new congressional map, which splits Memphis into three districts, intentionally discriminates against Black voters in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 12: The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that that act of merely turning in the redistricting referendum signatures did not automatically suspend HB 1 under article III, sections 49, 52(a), or 52(b) of the Missouri Constitution. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 12: The Missouri Supreme Court rules that Missouri’s new congressional map does not violate constitutional requirements for compactness. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 13: Governor Tate Reeves (R) is rescinding his special session call intended to redistrict the state Supreme Court map. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 13: A federal lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s Senate map for violating Section 2 of the VRA has been dismissed (Pierce v. North Carolina State Board of Elections). — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 13: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) called the state legislature into special session next month to consider revising congressional and state legislative districts for the 2028 election. — @RedistrictNet [from X] RT
May 14: The amended Louisiana congressional map has passed the Louisiana Senate on a 27-10 vote. It now heads to the Louisiana House. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 14: Gov. Henry McMaster has issued an Executive Order calling the South Carolina General Assembly back for an extra legislative session to address the state budget and congressional redistricting.
The special session will begin on May 15, at 11:00 AM. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 15: A hearing was held this morning in the lawsuit seeking a temporary injunction against Florida’s congressional map. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 15: The US Supreme Court has denied a stay in the Virginia Redistricting Referendum Case. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
INSTITUTE RESOURCES
The New York Elections, Census and Redistricting Institute has archived many resources for the public to view on our Digital Commons Page.
Our Redistricting Resources page contains resources on the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act. You can access the page here: https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/redistricting_resources/
Archived Updates can be accessed here: https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/redistricting_roundtable_updates/
Please share this weekly update with your colleagues. To be added to the mailing list, please contact [email protected]
The N.Y. Elections, Census & Redistricting Institute is supported by grants from the New York Community Trust, New York Census Equity Fund, the Mellon Foundation, and the New York City Council. This report was prepared by Jeff Wice, Esha Shah, Jarret Berg, Michelle Davis of Redistricting Online & Jason Fierman of @RedistrictNet.