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Early Mail and Absentee Ballot Information

**Important Information Regarding Early Mail or Absentee Voting**

New York State has enacted laws that will change the ability of voters who have applied for an early mail or absentee ballot to vote in person on the voting machine. With these new laws, voters who have applied for an early mail or absentee ballot may still go to the polls on Election Day or during Early Voting, but they will no longer be able to vote on the machine. If they wish to vote in-person, it will be by affidavit ballot only. If you have any questions about this law, please call the Board of Elections at (607) 274-5522.


Request a Ballot

Early Mail Ballot

Who May Apply for an Early Mail Ballot (Deadlines)

Any registered voter may apply for an early mail ballot. Each person must apply for themselves. It is a felony to make a false statement in an application for an early mail ballot, to attempt to cast an illegal ballot, or to help anyone to cast an illegal ballot.

How to Apply for an Early Mail Ballot (Deadlines)

You may apply for an early mail ballot in any of the following ways:

  • Using the online Ballot Request Application portal: https://ballotapplication.elections.ny.gov/home/earlymail [Effective January 1, 2024]
  • If you are visually impaired and require a ballot with accessible features you may apply using the online Accessible Absentee Ballot Application portal. Please find the link to the portal in the section below.
  • By going in-person to your local county board of elections
  • By designating another person to deliver your application in-person to your local county board of elections and receive your ballot

You can download a PDF version of the New York State Early Mail Ballot Application Form using the links below:

Download English Form (pdf pdf 680KB) >  Download Spanish Form (pdf pdf 203KB) > 

When is it Due?

Applications requesting to receive an early mail ballot must be received by the board of elections in your county no later than ten days before the election. For early mail ballots to be received in-person, applications must be received by your board no later than the day before the election.

How to Cast an Early Mail Ballot

  1. Once your receive the ballot, mark the ballot according to your choices for each office following the instructions on the ballot.
  2. Once you have completed marking your ballot fold it up and place it in the Security Envelope. (This envelope will have a place for your signature.)
  3. Sign and date the outside of the Security Envelope.
  4. Seal the Security Envelope.
  5. All early mail ballots include a pre-paid Return Envelope. Place the Security Envelope in the Return Envelope. (This envelope will have the return address of your county Board of Elections on the outside and should have a logo that reads, “Official Election Mail”.)The Return Envelope does not require any additional postage.
  6. Seal the Return Envelope.

You may return the ballot in any of the following ways:
For the April 2, 2024 Presidential Primary Election:

  1. Put it in the mail ensuring it receives a postmark no later than April 2nd.
  2. Bringing it to your County Board of Elections Office no later than April 2nd by 9pm.
  3. Bringing it to an early voting poll site in your county between March 23rd and March 30th.
  4. Bringing it to a poll site in your county on April 2nd by 9pm.

For the June 25, 2024 State and Federal Primary Election:

  1. Put it in the mail ensuring it receives a postmark no later than June 25th.
  2. Bringing it to your County Board of Elections Office no later than June 25th by 9pm.
  3. Bringing it to an early voting poll site in your county between June 15th and June 23rd.
  4. Bringing it to a poll site in your county on June 25th by 9pm.

For the November General Election:

  1. Put it in the mail ensuring it receives a postmark no later than November 5th.
  2. Bringing it to your County Board of Elections Office no later than November 5th by 9pm.
  3. Bringing it to an early voting poll site in your county between October 26th and November 3rd.
  4. Bringing it to a poll site in your county on November 5th by 9pm.

Absentee Ballot

တၢ်ကြၢးဘၣ်တုၤထီၣ်ဘးလၢတၢ်ကဟ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးခီဖျိပှၤတထီၣ်ဟ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးလၢနီၢ်ကစၢ်အလံာ်တၢ်ဖးအက့ 

1. Absent from your county on Election Day.
2. Unable to appear at the polls due to temporary or permanent illness or disability.
3. Unable to appear because you are the primary care giver of one or more individuals who are ill or physically disabled.
4 A resident or patient of a Veterans Health Administration Hospital.
5. Detained in jail awaiting Grand Jury action or confined in prison after conviction of an offense other than a felony.

To Request an absentee ballot you may request one in one of the following ways:


How to cast your Absentee Ballot

  • Once you receive the ballot, mark the ballot according to your choices for each office following the instructions on the ballot
  • Once you have completed marking your ballot, fold it up and place it in the Security Envelope.
  • Sign and date the outside of the Security Envelope.
  • Seal the Security Envelope.
  • All absentee ballots include a pre-paid Return Envelope.  Place the Security Envelope in the Return Envelope.  The Return Envelope will have the return address of your County Board of Elections on the outside and should have a logo that reads "Official Election Mail".  
  • Seal the Return Envelope.

How to return your ballot:

  • Put it in the mail ensuring it receives a postmark no later than Election day.
  • Bring it to your County Board of Elections no later than Election day.  Someone else may drop it off for you if the Security Envelope is sealed and signed.
  • Bring it to an early voting poll site in your county.
  • Bring it to any poll site in your county on Election day.

ပှၤတထီၣ်ဟ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးလၢတၢ်မၤန့ၢ်အီၤသ့

Voters with a visual impairment that require a ballot with accessible features may apply using the online Accessible Absentee Ballot Application portal: https://ballotapplication.elections.ny.gov/home/accessible

ပှၤဟ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးတဖၣ်လၢအသူ၀ဲဒၣ်ပှၤတထီၣ်ဟ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးအလံာ်က့လၢတၢ်မၤန့ၢ်သူအီၤသ့အသနူလၢအလိၣ်ဘၣ်၀ဲဒၣ်တၢ်ကစဲးကျံးထုးထီၣ်အတၢ်မၤစၢၤမ့ၢ်ဒ်သိးအစဲးကျံးထုးထီၣ်အ၀ဲသ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးအလံာ်က့န့ၣ်မၤန့ၢ်သူတၢ်မၤစၢၤဒ်သိးအံၤတဖၣ်လၢကမျၢၢ်တၢ်စဲးကျံးထုးထီၣ်တၢ်အဂံၢ်ထံးတနီၤအလီၢ်သ့လီၤ,တၢ်အံၤပာ်ဃုာ်ဘၣ်ဆၣ်တမ့ၢ်ထဲ,လံာ်ရိဒၢး,တၢ်စဲးကျံးထုးထီၣ်တၢ်အလီၢ်တဖၣ်,တၢ်ဆါတၢ်ပှ့ၤအလီၢ်တဖၣ်ဒီး၀ဲၤဒၢးတၢ်သူတၢ်စွဲအလီၢ်တဖၣ်ဧိၤန့ၣ်ဘၣ်. ပှၤဟ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးတဖၣ်ကြၢးဆဲးကျိး၀ဲဒၣ်အ၀ဲသ့ၣ်အလီၢ်က၀ီၤတၢ်စဲးကျံးတၢ်အဂံၢ်ထံးတဖၣ်လၢတၢ်ဂ့ၢ်လီၤတံၢ်အဂီၢ်လၢအဘၣ်ထွဲဒီးတၢ်စဲးကျံးထုးထီၣ်အတၢ်မၤစၢၤလၢအဟ့ၣ်၀ဲတဖၣ်အဂီၢ်လီၤ.

တၢ်ဟ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးလၢကစၢ်သူ၀ဲဒၣ်တၢ်ဖးအလံာ်က့လၢတၢ်မၤန့ၢ်သူအီၤသ့တၢ်မၤနီၣ်အစဲးပီးလီ (“BMD”) ဖဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဆိတၢ်ဖးအဆၢကတီၢ်မ့တမ့ၢ်ဖဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးအမုၢ်နံၤ(Election Day)န့ၣ်အိၣ်ဒံး၀ဲဒၣ်လၢပှၤဟ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးတဖၣ်လၢအအိၣ်ဒီးသးနီၢ်ခိတလၢတပှဲၤတဆူၣ်တချ့လၢအတအဲၣ်ဒိးဟ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးခီဖျိပှၤတထီၣ်ဟ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးလံာ်က့န့ၣ်သူ၀ဲဒၣ်ပှၤတထီၣ်ဟ့ၣ်တၢ်ဖးလံာ်က့အသနူလၢတၢ်မၤန့ၢ်သူအီၤသ့န့ၣ်သ့လီၤ.

New York State Request a Ballot information page