New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said voter turnout tripled during May school budget elections that took place during the COVID-19 quarantine.
Over the last few years, school budget elections have only managed to get less than 600,000 voters to turn out. But at the height of New York’s pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered schools to switch to all absentee balloting and then 1.6 million voters sent back ballots.
DiNapoli said voting by mail increased voter participation.
He added that while the same number of school budgets passed this year as did last year, there was an increase in the number of people voting them down.
